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thebravecowboy
climber
The Good Places
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I spent all those years in public schools and they never even taught me how to pleasure a lady. Hella stupid, hella lame!
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Jan 10, 2018 - 12:21am PT
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I would highly advise looking over Chongo Chuck's website That education website needs some serious remodeling by someone who actually has some education, and who knows WTF they are doing
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Sierra Ledge Rat
Mountain climber
Old and Broken Down in Appalachia
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Jan 10, 2018 - 09:07am PT
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Greatest teacher in the world is needed to overcome bad parenting BAM!!!!!!!!!
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jeff constine
Trad climber
Ao Namao
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Jan 10, 2018 - 09:36am PT
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New School Teachers!!! Not FAKE news. True story.
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rgold
Trad climber
Poughkeepsie, NY
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Jan 10, 2018 - 09:44am PT
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Full disclosure: I was a middle-class kid who went to a terrific private school and had the most wonderful teachers. Looking back, I can see that these men and women shaped my life, my choice of profession, and my attitudes towards others. I learned a lot from my college and especially my graduate school teachers, but by that time I was gonna learn by myself regardless of what my teachers did or didn't do---they were the icing on a cake baked in high school.
My daughter went to a very big public school in Dutchess County. It wouldn't be right to call it a suburban public school, but calling it a rural public school is wrong too. Although I wouldn't say that her teachers were uniformly as good as mine, she still had a superb education and, in particular, got a music education fully equivalent to a conservatory while having access to academic AP courses. My small private high school couldn't have begun to offer that kind of experience.
I have an idea what my teachers were making, and an idea what her teachers were making, and in terms of what they did for their students, the time, effort, and thought they put into it, doubling or tripling their salaries would not have realized their contribution to the lives of their students. It also wouldn't have come close to the single year-end bonus of a hedge-fund manager who added value to his or her client's portfolios but nothing to their personal development.
Are we hiring the wrong teachers? Sure, some of the time. Just like any other industry or organization (especially in view of the fact that teachers jobs, by and large, are far harder than the work most people do). Are we paying them too little? Generally, I think so. This is partially a reflection of when teaching was "women's work" and so an artifact of the gender pay gap, but there are a host of other reasons as well.
I don't know why people go into elementary and secondary teaching nowadays. The pay is minimal for the educational investment required, the atmosphere is poisonous, both in terms of public disrespect and in terms of being endlessly buffeted by "standards" and "evaluations" designed for purposes that may be distantly related to learning and are increasingly infused with political considerations that run counter to anything recognized as valid by experts in the fields, there are virtually no mentoring and support mechanisms to help teachers develop, they are isolated in their classrooms and have almost no opportunity to intact with colleagues, and they are held solely responsible for the effects of societal issues well beyond their control. Who exactly are the "right" teachers in this situation, and what level of pay is "too little?"
I was a fortunate beneficiary of the Sputnik "crisis," in which Russia was perceived as leaping ahead of the US in science and technology and money poured into education at all levels, allowing us to catch up and surpass the USSR. My guess is that the education situation won't improve much until an analogous crisis happens---and the country's current social and political situation guarantees that such a crisis will happen, as we fail to develop our own talent, disparage the talent we have, and unilaterally instigate an immigrant brain drain to the benefit of other countries. The only question is, when the inevitable happens, whether we will have dug too deep a hole to ever get out of.
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chainsaw
Trad climber
CA
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Jan 10, 2018 - 11:08am PT
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We have a culture of "credentialed" "highly qualified" teachers. These are people who had enough time and money to add years to their college education. But people who had no choice but to work after college are basically excluded. Internship programs are rare. As a result we have a workforce of "professional" teachers, not unlike career politicians.
There are very few professional athletes teaching PE. There are no doctors, lawyers or professional scientists teaching biology, anatomy or debate. Most of the English teachers never worked as journalists, authors or media producers. The art instructors were not professional graphic artists or painters. The Ag teacher was not a farmer or botanist. The History teacher was not a soldier, ambassador, or public figure. The foreign language teachers are frequently not native speakers. The music teachers often have no professional entertainment careers on their resumes. The drama teacher is not a movie star. There are no policemen or city council people teaching government or civics. Health classes are usually not taught by health and wellness practitioners. Math and physics are never taught by engineers who actually practice engineering. Chemistry is taught by somone with a bachelors degree who never worked for a chemical company or refinery. As a science teacher, I have found no colleagues who ever worked any length of time at a lab bench or in professional academia or research for the private sector. The computer teacher didnt work at Microsoft.
Most and sometimes all of the faculty at our schools are teachers who chose teaching as a career. They recite what they have been taught but not what they have actually done. Would you hire a climbing guide who has never been on real rock? But we hire far too many teachers who have never practiced the craft they endeavor to teach our children. Our kids are not dumb. They see these "highly qualified" teachers as posers and they are right to see them that way. How can a credentialed teacher inspire and mentor our youth to excell in fields that the teachers didnt find worthy of real persuit themselves? The moment the teacher opens a textbook, the class knows they are about to be given a TV dinner packaged by some government agency that didnt bother to hire a chef!
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NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
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Jan 10, 2018 - 12:24pm PT
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Chainsaw, I'll be blunt. The skills required to inspire, motivate, and guide young people in gaining basic knowledge are very different from the skills required to excel in some specific application of that basic knowledge. I would MUCH rather have my kids taught by professional teachers who understand the psychology of kids and how to manage a room-full of pubescent energy and how to share the basic knowledge that kids are learning at that age, than to have a "professional" of some "real-world" (i.e. non-educational) practice who may or may not be able to cope with kids.
You don't need to understand the corporate culture of big pharma or have a portfolio of patents or leading publications to teach kids the periodic table of elements and spdf orbitals and electronegativity and how to figure out the weight of one mole of a given molecule. (that said, I take it for granted that teachers need to be competent in their knowledge of the level of material they are teaching).
Teaching IS a profession, and people in our society who do not respect or appreciate that are part of the problem of why we find ourselves with daily opportunities to make dark-humored jokes that end with #MAGA.
I know several good teachers that inspired my kids who are considering leaving the profession because they can't afford to buy a house within an hour commuting range of where they work (in a great wealthy school district filled with parents who value education and paid a premium for their houses to be around other parents who think the same way). There is no future path to making a modestly financially secure life possible for teachers in affluent areas. It is a servant class in our growing divide of rich and poor. Maybe these great teachers don't want to put up with a room of kids where a significant percentage are trouble-makers with no sense of boundaries or respect for authority and who are on the fast track to prison, because they didn't enjoy the presence of loving and supportive care-givers that could guide them in their critical early years.
As a dysfunctional society, we create children who enter the school system with myriad problems and poor disposition to excel in a scholastic environment: poverty, racism, addiction, lack of affordable childcare while parents work, lack of access to healthy role models and behaviors and early education during the first critical years of life... and somehow we expect under-appreciated, under-respected, under-paid teachers to make up for all these problems and perform miracles, and when kids still come out screwed up, it is the teacher's fault! Until we as a society can recognize the burden we place on teachers and the lack of responsibility we take for the problems we lay at their laps, we aren't going to make America Great Again.
Instead, we will say "the system is broken" and privatize it so wealthy folks can squeeze out extra bits of profit, and they will enforce socio-economic filters to block out the unworthy classes, and ignore that piece while touting their students' high performance as a success and proof that the model works. And the divide will be deepen. And America will become dumberer. And vote for more mindless stuff that carries us toward our destruction. While thinking people fret and wave their hands and are disparaged by the dumbererest masses.
p.s. Sorry Tad if I extended the diatribe beyond that which you initially supported :) But I couldn't help myself!
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Gary
Social climber
Desolation Basin, Calif.
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Jan 10, 2018 - 12:48pm PT
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I spent all those years in public schools and they never even taught me how to pleasure a lady. Hella stupid, hella lame!
That's because they get thrown in jail when they teach that.
Erin McAuliffe, 25, was arrested Thursday and charged with three counts of sexual activity with a student and one count of indecent liberties with a minor, WNCN-TV reports.
McAuliffe is no longer working for Rocky Mount Prep, the school said Friday, which was the last class day of the year for the public charter school.
Those poor abused boys. How will they ever recover from this trauma?
Then there was his monster preying on our youth:
A 27-year-old Texas high school science teacher has been accused of being “engaged in sexual contact” with a 17-year-old student.
Sarah Madden Fowlkes has been suspended from her job at Lockhart High School after she was arrested Monday, the school district announced.
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SC seagoat
Trad climber
Santa Cruz, Moab, A sailboat, or some time zone
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Jan 10, 2018 - 12:55pm PT
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persuit is really pursuit
Sorry, just one of those (albeit former) uninspiring professional educators.
Susan
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Jan 10, 2018 - 01:03pm PT
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Those who can't, teach.
Those who can't teach, teach P.E.
Those who can't teach P.E. become administrators.
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Jan 10, 2018 - 01:08pm PT
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Truth, Nut. I recently left teaching after nearly 30 years of busting heads--mostly my own, I fear. I, however, had it WAY easy compared to my brothers and sisters in the K--12 world. As a community college instructor, I had much more freedom and autonomy. Beyond some general standards/guidelines, my classes were my own. Lazy students earned their "F's," and those who missed a lot of class got cut--sweet! No parents could touch me. Their little darlings were adults, and FERPA regulations make it clear that I must not discuss the students' work or experience without specific consent. As I was leaving, I heard rumblings that teaching at my level was in for more regulation, so I'm glad I got out when I did.
What I can tell you, however, is that even the BEST TEACHER--whatever that means--will usually fail with students who don't have the support at home. No doubt there will be exceptions, but unless the student is well supported or unusually self-motivated, much of what we do in the classroom will not amount to much. Time after time after time I tried to work with students, offering personalized help, referrals to tutors and support centers, revisions on papers...you name it. Time after time, the students just folded, refused to do the work, racked up "D's" and zeros. I would typically lose 1/3 to 1/2 of my classes by the end of the semester. I know I got through to some, but, man, that's a lot of tilting at windmills. The problem is that a lot of learning, especially at the lower levels, involves hard work, repetition, toughness. Kids will rarely persist without some pushing from behind (home/parents).
And don't get me started on the CRAZY workload for K--12 teachers. In my discipline--English--high school instructors will typically have 180 students. That's fu*king insane. Giving meaningful feedback on student writing is incredibly time consuming and difficult. Try it sometime if you doubt me. To do a good job with that many students? Well, that's why God invented alcohol.
BAd
Edit: What is it with these hot, hot, hot six kittens going after young men? And why wasn't I one of them--the lucky young men, that is. I'm pretty comfortable with my gender. Heh.
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plund
Social climber
OD, MN
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Jan 10, 2018 - 01:21pm PT
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"A real education allows you to critically think and understand why they want you to swallow those talking points and regurgitate them.
Fundamentally, the problem is not teachers, but a culture of anti-intellectualism and anti-science pushed (mostly) by resource extractors with billions in cash that hate pesky smarties calling them on their destruction of the Earth".
Replace everything after 'mostly' with "LW admins & institutions that value politically correct party-line indoctrination over critical thinking and rigorous debate" and you may be onto something.
The example of a RW speaker being physically chased from a Berkeley stage (Berkeley, birthplace of the FREE SPEECH movement!!)would be the ultimate irony if it wasn't so pathetic and disappointing.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 10, 2018 - 01:27pm PT
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Son of a 5th grade teacher. Wanted to be a teacher but after seeing what a toll it took on her,
especially with regard to the horrid administrators, I said no. I have a nephew who is
a high school science teacher and I am unanimous in averring you will not find a better teacher,
on this planet at least. He is pretty mellow so he seems to roll with the BS punches.
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WBraun
climber
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Jan 11, 2018 - 07:40am PT
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Teacher in Louisiana get handcuffed and arrested for questioning
Yes, that's how it is now.
Do not question authority, remain st00pid.
There is no need for truth they have said .......
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Jan 11, 2018 - 08:19am PT
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^^^^^ Huh?
Where's your sense of humor, dude? Besides, most of us on this thread are supporting teachers and teaching--regardless of who's doing it. Most straight males, however, find the fantasy of the teachers featured above to be hard to resist.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
BAd
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plund
Social climber
OD, MN
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Jan 11, 2018 - 08:24am PT
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Thanks for helping make my point, tut, by skipping debate & discourse and going directly to the ad hominem. And regurgitating LW talking points while bloviating about punching Nazis is no way to go through life, son. Does that apply to Commies as well? You must be a real tough (anonymous / online)guy....
FWIW, I DO have a public school education, AND I've watched with dismay as my HS art teacher brother gets hosed by the union whose dues he has no choice but to pay. Seems his district is more concerned with parking, landscaping and maintaining 6-figure admin positions than with staffing and curriculum. So a tenured art teacher (who actually IS a potter, to refer to the whole qualifications thing)has his hours cut to 80% while there are more than enough students to justify more classes.
Advocating violence is the online equivalent of 'nanny nanny boo boo', akin to citing faith or belief in support of an argument. And while immediately ridiculing an opposing viewpoint is a classic debate technique it resolves nothing, while actually showing the weakness of the original argument.
Not everyone shares your beliefs / interpretations / conclusions; last I checked that was permitted in this country. It doesn't make those people evil, or stupid, or even wrong.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Jan 11, 2018 - 08:37am PT
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Seems his district is more concerned with parking, landscaping and maintaining 6-figure admin positions than with staffing and curriculum.
So true. You forgot looking after their pensions. The rest of yer rant was spot on, too.
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Lituya
Mountain climber
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Jan 11, 2018 - 08:51am PT
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You can cite one example of some f*#ked up podunk high school district all you want. It does not mean for a second that you have a clue how the pre-eminent Public University system on Planet Earth, The University of California, is run or how critical thinking is taught.
Preeminent be one word they no teech in the UC sistum with no haberdashery.
And they no teech Voltaire any moore eether.
[Click to View YouTube Video]
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plund
Social climber
OD, MN
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Jan 11, 2018 - 08:58am PT
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University of Minnesota....guess that's private in your world.
So the CA University system is the paragon which should be emulated by all? Please...it seems the only 'critical' in your definition of critical thinking is "It's CRITICAL that you think like me or else".
Why are you so angry? Was the Starbucks out of macchiata?
And is it my duty to punch Commies in the face as well? They can be every bit as racist / misogynist / chauvinist as Nazis. If you're so hung up on duty, take an oath & join the armed forces, then you can do more than punch people in the face.
How many Nazis have you actually punched in the face? How were the battery charges resolved, if it wasn't self-defense?
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