President's address to Schools

 It seems that the President's address to schools is causing quite an uproar partly political and partly educational. You can read the text of his statement here. What I wish we would spend more time discussing is the time missing in school. Each and every day, there is time wasted in school for a series of reasons beyond the control of teachers. It is in this vein that I hear some people having issue with the Presidential address. Teachers have more and more to cover, in less and less time. You have a school day which can consist of only 4 hours, how do you cover everything that needs to be covered?

We must work harder at finding more time for teachers. This does not mean simply adding to the school day or year. Instead, we need to make sure we all leave the teacher's time alone and use other times for events, even seemingly important ones.