Nice to see this honest and clear-eyed post over at Fordham’s Flypaper about the minute-by-minute stress of trying to be effective in a high-needs school. Eric Osberg describes his recent behind-the-scenes visit (as opposed to the typical VIP dog-and-pony show often given to visitors) to a friend’s “new paternalism” school.
It was amazing how many problems my friend encountered in the hour I was there – we must have been interrupted 20 times by students needing discipline, teachers needing guidance about discipline, others needing observation while they worked with a struggling student, etc. It was a whirlwind, and it was tiring just to watch. It gave me a deeper appreciation for the special talent, constant hard work, and unwavering attention to detail that it takes to run one of these schools.
I’m cheered to see this on Flypaper for no other reason than it’s nice to see policy types speak candidly about just how hard this work is. Teachers often feel that policy types don’t get it, so credit to Osberg for merely reporting what he saw instead of writing a prescription. “My friend confessed her fear that the ‘model’ of such hard work and long hours won’t be sustainable,” Osberg concludes. “That principals and teachers who exert that kind of energy day after day will inevitably burn out. From my vantage point, it was hard to disagree.”
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