When some Kammerer teachers tried to arrange just two hours a week for professional time together, they ran into an insoluable problem of school bus schedules. And the district's recent decision to more than double the stipend paid to teachers for attending professional meetings makes school-based workshops terribly pricey. Then there's the matter of who teaches what. Most Louisville middle school teachers are not certified to teach in a particular subject area, but can teach any subject in the elementary and middle grades. Hard-pressed principals often shuffle teachers from one subject to another as they juggle schedules and try to manage frequent staff turnover.
Many people think so.
Many believe the real energy for change must originate in the schools themselves. Schools have to have the conversations around standards. Rather than rely on the traditional outside experts to tell them how to change, many teachers say what they need is more study and sharing of best practices among themselves. What we need is time to do it and discuss it and keep working on it. We don't know what it looks like in the classroom.