Diagnostics: Teachers are Good Medicine

Your case load is high, I know that. For high school teachers a case load of 180+ students is a norm, for middle school teachers 160+ students is business as usual. And, much like a physician you are expected to administer treatment of one sort or another to each of the individuals with which you come in contact. The big difference though between you and the medical practitioner is that you see all of your "patients" in one day and in clumps of 30-40 at a time.

Under these conditions triage is the order of the day. There are times when the classroom becomes chaotic like a hospital emergency room, but the triage "team" is you and nobody else. We need to ask ourselves, even when we are consistently successful with this seemingly impossible situation, how long can we continue without wearing ourselves out? At what point does our own health begin to degrade? When does our unfaltering commitment to resolving our students' "ills" erode our personal relationships? This is serious stuff. We need to take care of ourselves.

The secret is to become really good with diagnostics. As quickly as possible we need to figure who falls into which segment of the "80/20%" categories. Let me explain. For the most part, 80% of our students are in no immediate danger—they may develop symptoms later, but for now, they're fine (just keep an eye on 'em). Then there's the remaining 20%, of them, 15% are showing symptoms, while not acute, they are chronic and deserve your attention. The final 5%—they're the one's showing acute symptoms, either instructionally, behaviorally, or most likely both.

That 5% is 2 or 3 students in a class—that's manageable. If we really work on diagnosing those students and prescribe appropriately, we can begin to get a handle on the situation. We'll have many more conversations about this on the blog throughout the year. For now, remember this, teachers are good medicine.

Stef