Friday, May 25, 2012

Diary of a Social Art-tivist Mommy: Systems. How they can inspire or burn us....

Diary of a Social Art-tivist Mommy: Systems. How they can inspire or burn us....:


Systems. How they can inspire or burn us....

                Systems. We exist within them, we work in them, we send our children to them. There are systems all around us. School systems, government systems, economic systems, food systems. After my experience working in DCPS for 3 years, I have become ultra sensitive to systems and how they have the potential to make its participants either thrive or wilt. This is one of the reasons I am resigning from DCPS. 


                Currently, I work for DCPS, a system notorious for being highly disorganized, top-down, and distrusting of its teachers. Most of its teacher-directed policies are created with the premise that,  'there are some really bad teachers out there who are not doing their job right and we must weed them out". This was all fine at the beginning of the process, but every year we have what Washingtonians now call, "Churn and burn". Most currently, I have been appalled