Have you heard of a “floating teacher”? Is a teacher regulated to teach but has not been assigned a fixed classroom, may or may not have a fixed class roster. They “float” to a classroom as a “push-in teacher”. It is frustrating for the teachers, students, and families when their teacher does not have a permanent home base just an email address as their point of contact. Also, devices such items as a fixed base telephone, printers and internal lines of communication just don’t exist. Contact then becomes a public address system campus-wide. Are there intangibles? Yes, benefits to traveling, a floating teacher gets to meet and greet many faculty, guest visitors, students and students they normally wouldn’t have known on their assigned campus.
Being assigned as a floating teacher, I have experienced first hand the thought process and technology available within the campus. What’s being purged and the inter-actions of the administration, students, and teachers. One of the excellent features is to be able when in a welcoming environment, it is to collaborate with all parties. Good, bad or indifferent.
Traveling or floating teachers is not for everyone as it does remove one from the core groups and compass situations. You often are greeted daily with many questions! First being, what did you do? Followed by, “We thought you left”? You know, I have been assigned the closet adjacent to the teachers lunch room.
 Catherine Barrett is an Arizona Governor’s Master Teacher and currently Chair of citizens initiative petition, A Classroom Code of Ethics For Public Schools K-12. You can find her on Twitter @ReadersLeadPD, and on Facebook at Yes4Ethics. |
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