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NOISY WORDLE
Teaching Can Be Noisy
Focus on teaching the children
My classroom is often noisy.
Sometimes it’s good noise like discussions, projects, collaboration, or students helping each other. Of course, there is also bad noise related to off task behavior, bad language, dropping pencils or chairs that tip just a little too far backward.
I can deal with both of those types of noise because they comprise the typical operation of a high school classroom. It’s what I’m trained to do. I minimize one noise while maximizing the other. There are trade-offs, of course, but as long as I can keep the meter closer to the good side I consider it a successful day.
Then there is the other kind of noise. These noisy tasks are things not directly related to the job of teaching the children. There is a mountain of paperwork to be done every semester that is no more than the writing down of things that I have done in what has to be the pinnacle of micromanagement.
There are professional development days where the presentations seem designed to check a box rather than provide any real information, and required yearly training on everything from cybersecurity to using the language line. Very little of which has changed in the several years I’ve been employed.
