The Myth of the Superhero Teacher | Dr. Desiree Alexander

This is truly making authentic points on all cylinders

Just gems and diamonds!! All the facts. Going to follow Dr. Alexander!

THANK YOU. This is SO important and I have always thought is a much bigger contributor to losing new teachers and substitute teachers than anything else. They come in expecting to be heroic and it turned out the systems make that difficult and it turns out your coworkers and admin are human beings. Also, kids don’t simply give up gang affiliations just because you did some mixed group work as you might think if you watched Freedom Writers. Teacher hero movies started this, in my mind. As well as what I call the Florence Nightinggale sexism. Women are nurses and teachers and SHOULD do it out of selfless love, right? Be like Florence Nightinggale. NOW, the TRUTH about FN is that she transformed nursing. We never hear about that.

Moving teachers into Admin won’t help in my opinion because they have always done that and it attracts those narcissistic teachers because of the way the hierarchy is constructed. Then they are under a LOT of political pressure they are not ready for. Until we have much more collaborative teams running schools, districts, and overall flatter organizational structures, this won’t change things. I think that’s first.

Have you built student leaders? If not, you’re not a leader. PERFECT!!!! I love that. High point of the interview, I think. Leader is not a job title. Perfect. IDEA: PAY teachers extra for a one week pure planning week before each TRImester. Require certain things like turning in a substitute teacher binder with plans. And have them meet a checklist with peer review.

Moving into Admin is a downgrading.