How to Burn Out a Science Teacher

Administrators, if you are looking to burn out your teacher, here's what you do:

• Provide a classroom that does not meet the basic needs for a working day, e.g., an unheated classroom.
• Ensure that classroom does not have the basic equipment for the course being taught, e.g., no fume hood for teaching high school chemistry.
• Do not provide for adequate laboratory supplies to perform inquiry science, but require that labs be done.
• Provide no more than 50 minutes out of each day to: prepare for teaching five classes; grade papers; enter grades into grading program; fill out IEP forms; complete referral forms for at risk students; write college recommendations; clean up lab materials; print progress reports; and more.
• Schedule several after-school meetings in each week, during time when students could be getting extra help.
• Mandate the curriculum you expect to be followed.
• Stress the importance of "hands-on" science but do not provide adequate supplies or allow modification of curriculum.
• Add two to four new initiatives each year that must be layered on top of the curriculum. Do not repeat the initiatives from year-to-year.
• Be inaccessible for pedagogical discussions, and if caught in the hall and spoken to, act distant.
• Do not listen to the concerns of your staff, or try to understand their concerns, or support them in the work they need to do.

Of course, you could do something else.

Thank goodness for my students!