The Roots of the Equation

Last week our school had a Quality Review, where an outside team from the city came and reviewed documents, data, budgets, etc, as well as visited classrooms, sat in on meetings, interviewed students and parents. It’s a two-day process, and at the end of the first day, the review team saw mostly newer teachers, and then the second day saw the more experienced teachers, which included my class.

I was struck by that, falling into the “more experienced” category. I certainly didn’t last year. But by my reckoning, it’s true: last year I was in the lower half of the experience range for my school, and now I am in the upper half. (I was going to make box plots for these, but I was just guessing for some of the years, so I didn’t.) It’s strange because I’m only a 4th year teacher, and yet there it is. I’m not in the upper quartile yet – still a good number of long-timers ahead of me. But by my estimation Q3 is around 8 years for my school – I wonder if it would take me that long or if the boundary will move. (Or if I will.)