Gerry Brooks posted a video that has gone #oklaed viral (if that term has not been used can I take credit for it?) discussing bumper stickers and numbers. I can't find it, but it was all over the place...
It got me thinking about my numbers and what my “metrics” would look like. My father was a CPA (or as I told people when I was young a C3PO). I wasn't ever a big fan of math but I can count, and I do have some organizational tendencies. I try to hide them but they are there... Unfortunately I don’t have the time or resources to be exact but I know what I’ve done and I can put together some things.So here it goes...
I’ve taught for nine years in three schools. that is 18 semesters, 36 nine week periods. I’ve had, 3 Superintendents, 7 Principals, taught with easily over 50 teachers, and by my conservative estimates over 725 students have come through a classroom for which I was responsible. I’ve been a part of over 150 parent meetings and conferences.
I’ve taught for nine years in three schools. that is 18 semesters, 36 nine week periods. I’ve had, 3 Superintendents, 7 Principals, taught with easily over 50 teachers, and by my conservative estimates over 725 students have come through a classroom for which I was responsible. I’ve been a part of over 150 parent meetings and conferences.
I have logged over 150 days of Professional Development. I have attended 15 content specific lesson workshops for my current discipline in the past 4 years. Over all I have attended approximately 25 conferences, meetings, workshops, and events. I am certified in every social studies subject for Oklahoma Secondary Schools. And with that I have taught over 25 separate “preps” for social studies. (Yeah, some of these are the same course but I had to reinvent and prep due to class size, school mission, and student capability.) I have used over a dozen textbooks as classroom resources and countless internet and library resources (I really don’t know if I could remember all of the stuff I’ve used… )
I have been in a school doing my job for 1,544 days. That is 11,508 hours. I’ve taught 7,131 specific class periods (not counting Advisory or study halls, that would add another 15 class periods). I have conservatively assigned 2 graded assignments a week, that totals over 469,000 grades. One exam a month means I've tested my kids at least 80 times.
What does this mean? Well, this is one way of looking at what I’ve done with my life for most of the past decade. There is a part of this job that is absolutely maddening to me, and it gets at why you can’t quantify what we do into an algorithm. These numbers represent what I’ve done, but there is no way of knowing what would have happened if i hadn’t done it. Well, the easy answer is someone else would have. And we’ve now come to the unholy and dangerous intersection of “Savior” and “who cares”. We have to find our balance somewhere in there. Somewhere between savior and cog in the machine…
Perhaps we could find a balance in our numbers, it couldn't hurt to try. I'm glad I did this, and I would encourage you to do the same. I am well aware and would love to see the incredible numbers some of us can put up. Let's see what we've done, and allow it to motivate us. And once we have seen what we've done, we know what we can and will do.
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