This was my comment in response to a questionnaire asking if I felt that my school adequately sopported my teaching.

   This school has been very supportive of my work as a teacher. However, many of these practices I have applied on my own based on my lifetime experience and learning as a teacher. That is, the "school" (however you want to define it) has been supportive but not necessarily instructive. Which I prefer, by the way. Some schools can be pretty heavy-handed yet bone- headed about what they want teachers to "do" in the classroom. I would be tempted to describe DESE in those same terms.

   I am sorry, though, that structurally/politically there is no mechanism that allows experienced teachers to help inexperienced ones. I am thinking about the way that experienced plumbers, for instance, have a well-worn path to and mechanism for being able to help inexperienced plumbers.

   It always seems that "coaching" for teachers has to come from outside institutions, programs, and consultants etc. rather than from within a school. Apparently once you become a teacher, you are always just a teacher, for good or bad.

William H Calhoun