Wednesday, September 19, 2007 4:53 AM
by
jtspencer
planning to plan for planning - or why the system is OCD
I sit in the library at 7:30. School does not start for another hour, but those in "leadership" must attend this biweekly meeting. I use quotation marks because, if you could see me right now, I actually stopped talking for a moment to use the hand signal for quotation marks. See, I am not really a leader. I facilitate a team and we work as a democracy. We each respect our own professional autonomy and it usually works out well.
The entire meeting was a time to plan for how we would make plans for meeting the School Improvement Plan. To me, that's simply too much planning. Yet, that seems to be the story of my teaching experience right now. During professional development, we learn about how to create lesson plans (as if four years of college did not teach us this skill) and how to create a team plan for the implementation of an Individualized Instructional Plan. We had a planning meeting to figure out we would schedule the readings of SMART goals, whose sole purpose is to set goals for more planning.
At first glance, our school seems very disorganized. It is rare that something happens on time. There is a failure to implement new ideas. Communication breaks down often. Teachers are quick to say, "We just need to get more organized." The reality, however, is that we are too organized to the extent that we are beauracratic. We have a cumbersome system of micromanaging. The issue isn't that we fail to be structured, but that we are hyperstructured and we lack the freedom to ask "why?" In many ways, I think the educational system is almost obsessive compulsive. The system is organized, but in a way that says we must do the same thing over and over again, because "that's how it's done." We even have some of that paranoia and fear that seems to plague those who suffer from OCD.
The sad part is that I wasted an hour on a meeting that did not need to exist. I could have done something constructive with that hour of my life. Instead, I had to cancel the mural painting, a project which is probably not going to make the school meet Adequate Yearly Progress, but to me the progress I am seeing in the students is more than "adequate."