At an education roundtable Wednesday at the Statehouse, six teachers from around the state told Gov. Branstad and Lt. Gov. Reynolds what Iowa teachers need to make students globally competitive.
Iowa teachers spend 180 days in the classroom. They want more time away from the students to become better teachers.
“We find the issues, but we don’t have either the professional development time or collaboration time to fix it,” said Philip Moss, a teacher in the North Tama district.
Spending more time learning from each other was something teachers stressed.
“It’s all in how you organize the time we do have. A lot of time the master schedule is more based on the finances, not based on what’s actually our goal,” said Jessica Gogerty of North High School in Des Moines.