Lecture Monday 4/6

In class this week we discussed an article titled, "At Chater School, Higher Teacher Pay" by Elissa Gootman. This article talked about a charter school that is opening that is going to pay teachers a salary of $125,000 plus a potential bonus based on performance. The idea behind the school is that the higher pay will bring in the best and most qualified teachers, leading to higher success for the students. In order to accomidate for the high salaries, the teachers will work londer days, years and assume more responsibilites. They will be attendance coordinators and discipline deans. The school will also scrimp on other things for the building and classrooms.

This article is very controversial. There are many people that support the idea and are up for trying new things, while others think it is a bad decision. The people that disagree think that you are going to have overworked teachers. They will be getting more pay but will be doing so much work that they will get burnt out. They also believe that the students willl be missing out by not haveing extracurricular options and have different electives to chose from. The question is also raised, as to how do you decide who these wonderful teachers are. What makes them the best? In the end I feel that it is worth trying. Why no give it a shot? I am not sure that is will neccesarily succed, but if they have enough people backing the idea, and families and students who are willing to be a part of it, I don't think we are doing any harm by attempting something new.

In calss we also talked breifly about learning tasks and professional tasks. Learning task are; content exploration tasks, production tasks, communication tasks, data collection and analyse tasks, and productivity tasks. Professional tasks are things that cover assesment, administration and classroom managment. The professional tasks are the things that the teacher needs to deal with themselves. They are not tasks given to the students.