The Teaching Professional

Yesterday began the second half of my "Teaching Professional" course which focuses on the laws around teaching. This class teaches us about the different positions within a school or district and what types of decisions they make. This class will also teach us about the rights we have as teachers and other things like teacher duties and salary. For the introduction of the course the professor targeted the school board, superintendent, principal and vice principal. She had a lot of information to offer about  these positions which I really had no knowledge of. For example school boards are made up of people who generally have no background in education but are using the position as a political stepping stone. I believe this isn't beneficial because the school board holds responsibility for things like hiring a principal, curriculum content, and what books are being banned in the school. I think it's really ineffective that people who have no knowledge about an educational system or pedagogy get to determine what we teach. There is a lot of talk in this country about how poor our education system is and I think this has a lot to do with it.

We also spoke about superintendents which are responsible for hiring and firing, tackling the business side of education, and development of buildings. The salary of a superintendent in New Jersey is generally around $350,000/year. Next on the chain of administration are school principals ($120,000-$200,00/year) who are the face of all of the decisions made by the school board and superintendent. The principal mostly deals with the problems the arise from those decisions, hiring and firing of teachers, and teacher evaluations. Lastly, vice principals ($80,000-$150,000/year) act as a support to the principal in handling the problems of the school. Mostly vice principals deal with discipline and behavior issues of the students in the building.

Here is a link to the New Jersey School Board Association homepage which has a lot of interesting information.

http://www.njsba.org/