Teaching Tips & Tricks, Uncategorized | Jun 11, 2010
Switching grades: teacher needs vs. school needs
By Angela Watson
Founder and Writer
Switching grades: teacher needs vs. school needs
By Angela Watson
8 little words can invoke panic in the heart of almost any teacher: “You’re moving to a different grade next year.”
Changing grade levels is a big topic of conversation in June. In some schools, nothing’s been decided yet, so the rumors are flying and everyone’s unsettled. Other principals have already dropped the bomb: I’ve heard of one school in which a kindergarten teacher is being moved to 7th grade, which means the 7th grade teacher is being moved to 4th, so that teacher’s moving to 2nd, and the 2nd grade teacher’s going down to kindergarten.
Why the huge shuffle? Because one teacher is the weakest link, and the principal’s playing a game to make sure he inflicts the least amount of damage on students.
Situations like that infuriate me. It’s one thing when a drastic move is necessitated by budgetary reasons; for example, when a position must be cut due to decreased enrollment or funding. I can also understand moving a teacher into his of her field of expertise or preference. However, causing a chain reaction of switches for no reason other than to shuffle an incompetent teacher is a tragedy.
I’m amazed at how often this happens. Sometimes the principal is trying to run the teacher off or force early retirement (and it often works). But many times it’s a matter of placing ineffective educators in non-standardized-testing grades, as if children who don’t get scored by the state one particular year are of any less value or don’t deserve a top-quality education.
Another grade-switch reasoning that bothers me: This teacher’s been in the same grade for too long. He’s getting stale and stuck in a rut. I’ll move him up two grade levels and he’ll have no choice but to change with the times!
Wrong, wrong, wrong. He DOES have a choice: to get really angry, shut down, and try even less. He has the choice to take his frustration out on the kids and everyone around him. And chances are, if he’s the kind of teacher who refused to try new things in his former position, he’s not going to be too excited about learning to work a SmartBoard now that he has a whole new curriculum to figure out.
I’m not excusing the laziness and incompetence of certain teachers. I’m ascertaining that moving ineffective teachers to another grade level doesn’t fix the problem by itself, and it can make things worse for everyone else affected.
Most teachers have an increasingly limited amount of autonomy in their jobs, and I believe that choosing the age level or subject area they’d like to devote their career to teaching is a reasonable expectation. An unhappy teacher is never going to be as effective as a happy one, so shouldn’t a principal honor a teacher’s wishes whenever possible?
Not everyone agrees with me on this, I know. Whether you do depends on your feelings about a few fundamental questions:
- What is a legitimate reason for forcing a teacher to switch grade levels?
- Are administrators obligated to make any switch that will benefit the maximum number of students? If so, how can those potential benefits truly be gauged in advance?
- Is it worth making a few teachers unhappy if it’s advantageous to the school as a whole? And when we refer to the benefit of the ‘school’, do we really mean the faculty, the students, or the test scores?
We can all agree that the purpose of school should be to meet the needs of children, but teaching is a professional career choice. I don’t think anyone should be stuck teaching something they’re not passionate about.
So what’s more important in your perspective, the good of the ‘school’ or the good of the teacher?
Angela Watson
Founder and Writer
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Elementary Teachers are certified in numerous grade levels for a reason. Master Teachers are not just teachers that can teach a certain curriculum well, they are teachers that can teach children well. Remaining in one grade level for your entire career is unrealistic and lazy. There are valid reasons why teachers need to be moved. One year a school may have five sections of grade 1 and the next year four sections. Someone has to move. Should it always be the new teacher with little experience? Sometimes it must be the more experienced teacher. I was a teacher for many years and am now a very good proncipal. Movement sometimes must be made. Teachers need to stop being so inflexible. You need to read “Who Moved My Cheese” by Spencer Johnson M.D. You are an Elementary certified teacher, not a Grade 1 certified teacher etc… You seem a bit spoiled to me.
Hi, Marianne. I agree that it’s unrealistic to expect to remain in one grade level for your entire teaching career, and that movement must sometimes be made. However, this post was not about moving teachers because of student population changes, etc. as you mentioned, it was about moving competent teachers to compensate for ineffective ones and other highly questionable practices.
While I agree in principle with your statement that “elementary teachers are certified in numerous grades for a reason”, I’m not sure that reason is a good one–I think the range of grade levels is based on an outdated model of education in which children were all taught the same way. A K-8 certification makes sense based on a one-room school house model or even a model from 30 years ago when kids sat in rows and all read from a basal text with no differentiation–4th grade teaching methodologies weren’t that different from 1st grade. But a K-8 or even a K-6 certification in 2010 is ridiculous in my opinion. I know very few kindergarten teachers that would truly excel in a 6th grade position, and vice versa. Just because a teacher has a piece of paper saying she can teach a grade does not mean it’s the best fit for her. I’d like to see more departmentalization in the elementary grades, as well, because I don’t think the average 3rd-6th grade teacher has enough content-area knowledge to teach reading, writing, social studies, math, health, AND science well (and it’s usually math, science, and social studies that suffer).
That’s all a bit of a tangent, but my point is that teachers should be in positions that utilize their strengths. The same goes for any profession. And if they’re NOT, then there should be a very good reason.
I really commend you, Angela for your reply to the post by Marianne. I can’t believe a principal would resort to calling a teacher lazy and spoiled for being uncomfortable with a change in grade level. The point of this discussion is that principals need to take into consideration to the greatest extent possible what bouncing educators around means for both the students and the teachers. Yes, if your population changes a principal needs to decide who stays and who goes, but if it is to move an unaffective teacher to a position where she will do the “least” amount of damage or for a bump in tests scores it only serves as a punishment to the students and the effective teacher. Being moved to an age that is not your passion to work with is a hard thing to hear and boards like this help teachers to vent frustration while being encouraged. I truly feel that an apology needs to be said as I am very offended by the rude tone of that post.
I am offended by that principal’s post as well. I’m certainly not lazy. I love my grade level & should not be bumped because a probationary teacher wants to try 5th grade. I’ve worked over 2 decades & have earned my position. I don’t want to be an administrator.How would that principal like to be VP because parents have unfounded complaints about her and the first yr. instructional coach wants her position?
Ditto on the rudeness….I have been in my district for 9 years and have been tenured in 3 areas (reading, spec. ed & elementary)….what does that tell you? Every time we are cut or moved, we have to learn a new curriculum, which takes time…I don’t care how good a teacher you are…until you are comfortable and feel you have mastered it, you cannot each it as well as you would the second, or third year.
As for being lazy, I am always learning and growing and adding more things to better the curriculum I am teaching.
I am a kindergarten teacher and my principal wanted me to move from k to grade 5, the reason is that i am not fitted to the position because i am a male teacher, but i really love kindergarten, that’s why i have a feelings of frustrations,uncomfortable and freaking my mind. I’m so much mad of this.
I am middle grades (6-8) Language Arts/Social Studies certified. My college had strong, but very separate middle grades and elementary programs, so I graduated assuming most middle school teachers would be middle grades certified. Imagine my surprise when I took a 6th grade position (the grade I really wanted) and realized most of the teachers were K-6 certified, former elementary school teachers. That was all well and good until the end of the year approached, and I realized I was literally the only 6th grade Language Arts teacher who could legally move grades. Luckily, I’ve been able to keep my 6th grade position for 3 years. On our last teacher workday of this year, my principal called me in to tell me I was “taking my show on the road” (his words) and moving up to 7th grade.
I definitely went through stages of grief. I had to fight not to burst into tears right there in his office, and it took me a few days to even begin to grasp the idea of changing grades. I was completely blindsided. I was especially sad because I spent this past year piloting a two-man team, so I’d just created an entire social studies curriculum and re-worked my LA to match.
The “anger” stage came later that day when I realized I was being moved up to 7th, and a 7th grade teacher was being moved down to 6th. I’m still not completely sure why I was moved. But the best I can figure, it was because…
1. 6th grade scores have been strong. 7th… not so much. And through the grapevine, I’ve discovered that the other teacher who’s moving may have been a contributing factor in that.
2. My scores have been good, and my classroom management is strong. Basically, they figured I could handle a move up to the crazy world of 7th grade.
3. My two-man team teaching partner had a rough year. She’d only taught science before, so adding math (a tested subject) was a big leap for her. Her curriculum and classroom management both suffered. The majority of our kids went down in math. My principal didn’t hide the fact that they wanted her back in a science-only position, but I think he wanted to spare her feelings by not just putting someone else in her spot and making it obvious they didn’t trust her with math.
I definitely feel like I was moved to fill in the gaps where other teachers fell short. On one level, I see it as a vote of confidence in my teaching abilities, but I’d be lying if I said I don’t feel a little resentful. Part of me feels like Donna: I’m being punished for doing my job.
HI, Carlie, thank you for taking the time to share that. It is incredibly difficult when you spend hundreds of hours creating curriculum and then find out that you won’t be able to use it the following year (or possibly ever again). Very tough stuff. Your admin’s decision to move you was definitely a vote of confidence in your teaching abilities, and if you stay focused on that, hopefully it will keep you from feeling resentful. Imagine how much stronger your skills will be after you learn to teach another grade level. 🙂
I found this article while google-ing to find support and encouragement from other teachers who have had this happen to them. I am in my 11th year of teaching. I have earned my master’s degree in reading and literacy and am currently about a year or so shy of completing my Ed.D in Teacher Leadership. This is not the same as administrative leadership. All of my eleven years have been spent teaching kindergarten (6 of which have been EIP). I was called into my principal’s office yesterday and told that I was under consideration to be moved to second grade next year. I took the blow quite well in front of my principal and asst. principal. However, inside I felt the breath snatched from my lungs. I live and breath kindergarten. I can often (3-4 days per week) be found working in my classroom until 4:30 or 5:00 in the afternoons, when most other teachers leave at 3:00. I bring my work home with me almost every night. I am constantly looking for or creating activities to use in my classroom. Any teacher knows how much time this takes and not to mention the out-of-pocket expense that is incurred. I have spent countless hours making activities and hands-on lessons to use with my kindergarteners (I am not a worksheet kind of teacher). Because my class is total EIP, I am involved in intervention programs with each child. This requires a great deal of my time to create the lesson and complete the paperwork involved with each case. Of course, this is another task I must complete at home or after school because I can’t do it while I have students and am teaching. When the new performance standards were put into place about 5 years ago, I was one of the first on-board to try and get our curriculum mapped out so that we (kindergarten team) could all know what was expected to be taught, when it should be taught, etc. I spent time trying to get our current report card in place and to reflect the new standards. All of this is to say that I have invested a great deal of time, effort, money, and sweat into my job. Why???? Because I fell in love with teaching kindergarten when I was hired and I put forth all my effort and more to build our program. The reason I am so passionate about kindergarten is because I find such a reward in seeing my students (and remember they are EIP) learn to read and write sentences, add numbers and solve story problems when on the first day of school they can not hold a pencil correctly. Many don’t even know how to tell you there full name. They know absolutely no letters, sounds, or numbers. They are basically a “blank-slate” and I get the thrill of making the first etch! Now, to be told that I may have to move to a grade-level I have no clue about. I don’t know the curriculum. In fact, the second grade level at my school did not get on-board as they should have when the standards were released to us. They continued trying to get by with doing their same-ole, same-ole. Now we have a principal that wants to better our school. She wants to see scores increased. She wants to have our school become accredited. She has a great desire for our school to be a top-notch educational facility and lose the title we have carried for so long of being a second-class school. I admire her enthusiasm and I think she has done a fabulous job running our school and bringing it up to where we are now. However, I don’t want to go to another grade level and start over when I have worked so hard to get our kindergarten built to something we can be proud of. I am not at all insinuating that I have done it entirely along. There are about 5 out of 10 kindergarten teachers that have step up to the plate. If I am forced to move to second grade, I will have leave the grade level that I know and am comfortable teaching. All the money I have spent creating pocket charts, file-folder games, instructional group activities, etc. will be of no use for second grade. And with budget cuts (I am losing $5000 per year due to our local supplement being removed and 10 furlough days taken for this school year) I will have no money to spend on establishing a new classroom of resources. I will only have the textbooks and whatever worksheets that are shared with me from other teachers. Again, I do not like using worksheets unless it is for assessment or for morning work practice while children are coming in and settling in for the day. The reasons I was given for being moved is that my quality of small group instruction, intervention planning, documentation, parent relation, etc. is much needed in second grade “where the scores are” (that is quoted from my principal). I understand and believe that this quality is needed across the board in all grades. I accept the compliment but feel punished for doing my job and putting forth more than 100% effort. I know that what I am about to say does not sound professional and many people would say that if I really love my job and teaching that it wouldn’t matter what grade I am in, BUT…If I am forced to move, I will no longer spend my extra hours after school or taking work home with me. If it can’t be done while I am on duty, then it won’t get done. I guess I won’t be as efficient as I can be. I put forth the extra effort because I love what I have accomplished and I love what is to come IN KINDERGARTEN. I don’t want to start over.
Hi, Annie, thank you for taking the time to vent and share your story. I was cringing the whole time I was reading that, and actually groaned out loud when I read the line “where the scores are”. Ughh! How frustrating!
I guess the most important part of what happened is that you are “under consideration” to be moved. It’s not happening for sure. I think the best think you can do is focus on the fact that you are in kindergarten now and enjoy every day of it. Don’t anticipate being unhappy in the future; it’s a waste of time. If and when you are actually moved to 2nd grade–and we all know that anything can happen in school systems!–you’ll handle it then and you’ll be just fine. Don’t spend your mental energy worrying about this.
In the coming weeks, you might consider talking with your administration about about how you feel. Tell them you want to be a team player and you want to help 2nd grade move in the awesome direction K has, but you are truly passionate about kindergarten. Explain that you’ve found you’re niche and you believe your talents are best utilized with the youngest students, and respectfully ask them to consider that when they make grade level assignments next year.
Beyond that, you can also make a decision about whether or not to request a transfer (if there are other teaching jobs in your district.) If there is a good possibility you can teach K at another school, you might want to pursue that, and/or let your administration know that you would consider pursuing that because you feel so passionately about kindergarten.
I hope this is helpful. Please feel free to vent some more here, and let me know how it all turns out!! 🙂
I did go back and talk to my principal last week and told her that I would be willing to take that step in moving to second if she felt is was best….She said nothing was definite and that a few things had to fall into place before she could make that decision. Well, today I was called in to her office again. This time I was asked to consider taking a certification test in February to add-on a special ed title to my certificate. She said the cost would be taken care of by the school. I am so confused. I am trying so hard to find the positive in whatever becomes of my career (remind you that I have taught kindergarten all of my 11 years), but I am not feeling the peace about making this decision that I did with the possible move to second grade. Why would I be asked to do this if there are other regular ed teachers who have the spec. ed qualification already on their certificates? I don’t want to seem unwilling to comply but I really don’t want to do special ed. I don’t really prefer being moved to 2nd either, but had made up my mind that I could make it work. I need encouragement again!
OK, Annie, I’m definitely getting the feeling that there’s a lesson you’re supposed to be learning in all this, because this is an almost comical turn of events! Wow! Most of us come to this place of desperation and helplessness at one time or another in our lives and it can be the catalyst for real change is we’re willing to see it that way. This is your chance to really grow as a person and come to a point where your happiness is not based on your circumstances, but on your inner state of mind. Once you get to the point where you can accept ANY teaching assignment and believe it will work out for your good, your emotions will no longer be swayed by anything your principal says or does. You’re already working toward this–you mentally accepted the idea of the second grade assignment–and this is your chance to go one step further and really find peace about *whatever* happens.
That’s the most important thing that can happen out of all of this mess, because you’ll never have to worry again about being moved…simply because being moved won’t worry you. That’s true freedom.
This doesn’t mean you can’t talk to your principal about your preferences, and again let her know that you feel your gifts are best used in kindergarten. If you don’t want to do the special-ed add on, let her know. And then release the outcome to God or the universe or however you choose to perceive things. It’s out of your hands. And you’re going to be okay no matter what.
Is any of this helpful?
Yes, Angela…your words were very encouraging. I have spoken with my principal once again to let her know my feelings about all that she is considering as far as my placement. I still feel a devotion to kindergarten but the willingness to give second grade my best effort is also strong. I have not found any peace about the SpEd add-on at this time. I explained to her how I felt rushed to make such a decision since the test will be this spring-which isn’t far away-and I feel I need more time to really contemplate this decision. She did say that maybe the move to second will be a good start and then maybe I could do the add-on later. I feel that IF a move is necessary, this will be the best choice for me right now. I will continue to post to let you know the outcome since you have been so diligent about responding to my requests for encouragement. I do hope that the move will be for the best interest in the “school” and “kids” and not for the reason that I am hearing through the grapevine, which is to move me out so that a new teacher, who was hired as SpEd this year, can be moved into my place in kindergarten. For one, this won’t be right or fair and second, the teacher is my friend. This is such a frustrating time of year.
Yes, definitely let me know how this turns out. I supposed we won’t know for sure until the first day of school…and realistically, things can change even after that due to unexpected increases or decreases in enrollment.
At the very least, you know you are a valued member of your school staff. Your administration clearly thinks of you as a miracle worker who is extremely dedicated to her job and who has the capacity to create far-reaching change. The fact that you are so effective and your school leadership recognizes your talents is a true blessing, and a rarity. In the end, you can look back and know that you were a pillar of your community and made a real difference. 🙂