Small Rant

 This is about something personal, so I'm sorry to my five readers who were expecting something pithy about the world. 

We have a new Head of School, and he has a mandate to shake some things up, as we have been run mostly the same way for the history of the school, which stretches back to 1890.  Fine, we need that.

One thing that has happened this summer is that we have had a lot of renovations of administrative offices and the transitioning of a couple of classrooms into administrative offices. What we have not had - for many years - is the renovation and upgrading of classroom space. We had a small spasm of doing that over a decade ago, but there are some classrooms that are essentially what they were like either when I returned to teach here in 2000 or when I graduated in 1985. All we've really changed is the addition of a massive screen that allows us to project our laptops. 

It became clear to me many years ago that I was never going to be on the administrative track, so I dedicated myself to being the best teacher I could be. I concede that my definition of "best teacher" does not always gibe with the current pedagogical fads, but I have kids who come back and thank me for their experiences, and that strikes me as the validation for my pedagogy.

The trend since the new guy came here has been to expand the administration of the school, and there's a compelling argument that this was needed. The old Head ran everything out of his office and things got missed as a result.

However, prioritizing administrative spaces over teaching spaces strikes me as an extension of the problems facing higher education. We charge a ridiculous amount of money for a high school, and it's not going to massive pay increases for the teachers. 

Luckily, I'm hopefully about 6-7 years from retirement, but I worry about the long term viability of all this.