Too Many Acronyms

Education is too full of acronyms.

IEP, IDEA, ESEA, NCLB, PLC, PLN, FF, GPA, ACT, MEMSPA, NASSP, TFA, SBG, CBI, CBL, BLT, Personalized Learning, PBL, UDL, and the list goes on and on.

I was in a webinar learning about special ed in my new school district where my daughter will be attending.

I'm an educator, and have been for a long time, and I couldn't understand what these people were talking about! Even though I know special education, there were too many acronyms for me to understand.

Acronyms are created as a way to shorten communication, but they actually make it worse, especially if you are not aware of the jargon.

At Elon Musk’s SpaceX, acronyms are not allowed.

Individually, a few acronyms here and there may not seem so bad, but fi a thousand people are making these up, over time the result will be a huge glossary that we have to issue to new employees. No one can actually remember all these acronyms and people don’t want to seem dumb in a meeting, so they just sit there in ignorance. Source (emphasis added)

While acronyms may be bad for new teachers, they are especially bad for parents, who don’t have any understanding of what that particular acronym means.

There are a couple additional reasons why we should name things better in education: we might actually do what they say.

My biggest frustration is the Individualized Education Program. When you say that out loud, it really emphasizes what it should be: individualized. Unfortunately, the only individualization that I have seen in the last 15 years is that the name at the top is unique. Otherwise, I’ve seen loads of IEPs that are essentially the same as everyone else’s IEP.

One district even had a bank of goals from which teachers could choose. If the goals were not from the bank, they weren’t allowed to use them!

If we name things better, we will be more likely to create whatever is required by that name.

Also, acronyms can lose their meaning over time. If you’ve been in a “PLC” school, you likely had a very different understanding of that designation than someone in another PLC school. I’ve interviewed hundreds of people, and it is rare that two people give the same definition of a PLC school. If you weren’t there when the original PLC training took place, you likely don’t have any idea what PLC means and what the expectations are. Unless you are in a rare situation where you had additional training that continued on.

There are better ways to express ourselves. A few years ago I had a conversation with a teacher who thought teaching to the test was bad. I asked her what approach she used to plan her lessons. She said she used UBD.

I asked what that was, and she showed me her lesson plan. When I showed her on her own lesson plan that she was in fact teaching to the test by listing what assessments she would use to determine student understanding, she didn’t believe me. She didn’t actually understand that UBD means understanding by design and that it is all about starting with the end in mind.

Here’s my suggestion: rather than using acronyms, use the full name, or come up with a more descriptive name.

Instead of saying PLCs, we started using the words “collaboration time.” Because that’s what we wanted teachers to do: collaborate. We honestly didn’t want teachers to be in a professional learning community. We wanted them to work together and collaborate.

Instead of saying GPA, say: “A meaningless collection of letters turned into numbers because what we really care about is measuring kids compared to others on a scale that is entirely made up and meaningless outside these four walls.”

• My Goals - pretty self-explanatory: goals.
• Why I’m Awesome sheet - learner profile, learning styles, preferences, interests
• Don’t Bug Me - This is my favorite activity. Don’t bug me when you see me doing this.
• Messy Area - While we may try to organize, there’s a part of us that needs to see a mess and rummage through things to find something interesting.
• Teacher Growth - Time for teachers to get better at their craft.