March 16, 2015 - 19:46
Karp's section on teacher seniority and how they are reluctant to adapt to new teaching methods struck me while I was reading particularly because of my high school experience.
In my Catholic high school, there were many teachers that had been there for a rather long amount of time. First there was Mr. O, who retired my senior year, he had taught at my high school for 50 years; one would expect him to have a set teaching method considering the fact that he taught the same courses every year: geometry and Latin. Mr. O however managed to defy the odds. He was constantly listening to coworker criticism and actively adapting to his class evaluations so that he could successfully help his students understand the material. This was quite the opposite from what Karp described.
I had another teacher, Mr. R, that taught social science every year in the same way and never varied from his lecture routines. He has been teaching for about 30 years, at least 20 of them at my high school, and no matter what percentage of success he produced or failed to produce with his students, he would not vary from his plan. I had heard from many of my peers that he was not teaching quite successfully and that he did not appeal to be sympathetic toward the students in any way. I remember asking other teachers how it was that someone who was not actively engaged could be amployed for so long and more often than not the answer I received was that he had seniority. This meant that despite his teaching results, he would not be dismissed or discouraged because he had been around for so long.
This hints a bit at Karp's idea because it proves that working with these members in a school community can be difficult. That i not to say that they cannot adapt and continue to be great teachers, but it is the simple fact that some teachers, like Mr. O, are willing and other teachers, like Mr. R, are not.