Student Learning is Our Number One Priority...So Why Do You Keep Pulling Us Out of the Classroom?

Colleagues at my current school and in other schools have been reporting the same odd phenomenon lately.  Administrators are actually pushing them to schedule meetings during class time.  It's a a bizarre turn of events that seems to run counter to every reminder that 'student learning is at the heart of everything we do.'

[Note to administrators everywhere: Learning/teaching is kind of all we do every day unless we have to go to meetings, so you don't really have to tell us that all the time.]

I have worked in schools where teachers refused to meet at any time outside of designated meeting times. I have worked with people who refused to meet at lunch times or 'prep' times.  Attempts to get everyone in a team or department together to discuss important issues of curriculum or student issues that required a broad range of participation were often stymied by teachers who clung to 'rules' about meetings.  In those cases, schools often had to take on significant extra expenses to get substitute coverage for teachers in order to get everyone together at a so-called convenient time.  

At my school, however, teachers are really protective of the classroom contact time.  They don't want to give up time in their classes with their students because it's the most valuable time we spend at school.  Period.  Nothing else comes close.  It also happens to be the most fun time spent in school, but that's another story.  We even like each other a lot and have a lot of fun when we get together for our regular meetings, but class time comes first for every teacher I know well.

You would think our administrators would be thrilled by that, but instead many different groups of teachers keep being pressured to meet for full or half days.  Colleagues and I have offered alternatives like meeting three days in a row for an hour during our prep time, meeting after school, or meeting during lunch, but each time we have been pressured to get subs and miss class time.  Actually, let's be honest, 'pressured' is not the right word.  We've been forced; you can't call it anything else when the bottom line is that you have to meet and every option you offer is rejected in favour of the one your administrators proposed.  

We have all been baffled by it and keep asking each other:

• Why do they want us out of class when student learning is the priority?
• Why do they want to pay for subs? 

On one level it defies logic.  On another, it shows a lack of respect for the role a teacher plays in his or her classroom. It has not come up for me, but peers have had parents complain about these meetings and the effect they have on students.  Those peers have danced around the issue, trying not to lay blame where it truly lies but also trying to show that they never wanted to miss class in the first place.  It's tempting to out the decision-makers, but out of professionalism, to my knowledge all my colleagues have avoided doing so.

If anyone has any insight on this bizarre trend, I would love to hear it.  Otherwise, look for me hiding under my desk trying to avoid those 'invitations' to meetings during class time.