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ExfifteenExfifteen
climber
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May 18, 2018 - 12:40pm PT
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Something that's crazy in this education profession...
Many brand new teachers come into the field with 5 years of education, maybe six, and they have a bachelor's degree, a teaching credential, and a master's degree.
I think that's crazy. And with that Masters they get big bumps on the salary schedule.
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looking sketchy there...
Social climber
Lassitude 33
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May 18, 2018 - 01:34pm PT
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My wife was a teacher (HS and Junior College) and BadClimber's observations are dead on point to her experiences.
A student's home life and degree of parental support are certainly the best predictors of educational success. Teachers have zero control over this.
That kids with good parental support and/or better home life from poorly performing schools do well in Charter Schools should shock no one. That teachers in Public Schools who are left with dealing with everyone else have a tough job should be equally obvious.
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wbw
Trad climber
'cross the great divide
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May 18, 2018 - 02:22pm PT
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Teaching is the highest paying, no accountability job there is.
This is one of the more clueless comments I've read on this forum in a long time, and that's saying a lot!
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Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
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May 18, 2018 - 02:57pm PT
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Charter schools are effectively re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Unlike public schools, they can filter out the "undesirables" and thus easily show better average results.
Kids who have parents with means can be driven to those charter schools and avoid all those pesky kids with learning impediments and those darn ESL kids.
Private schools get to be even choosier, and their clients are almost always in the top 15-25% of income.
Once classes become too concentrated with the undesirable poor, slow, and behaviorally challenged kids it gets really easy to show how badly these public schools are "failing" (especially if hating on public institutions was part of your pre-planned agenda anyway). Failing schools don't deserve more good money thrown after bad after all, so justification for raising taxes goes out the window. Class size goes up while teacher quality goes down. The whole process can spiral down in a self reinforcing process.
But it must be the teacher's unions and Obama's fault, right?
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ExfifteenExfifteen
climber
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May 18, 2018 - 08:05pm PT
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Teaching is the highest paying, no accountability job there is.
This is one of the more clueless comments I've read on this forum in a long time, and that's saying a lot!
Yet, as long as you show up and do the minimum to keep your job, your pay raise is a guarantee...
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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May 19, 2018 - 11:18am PT
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Well said, Moofie. It's a miserable nut to crack.
BAd
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 19, 2018 - 09:31pm PT
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ExfifteenExfifteen: Yet, as long as you show up and do the minimum to keep your job, your pay raise is a guarantee...
Correct. Sometimes (sometimes) it makes sense to do it that way. There are sometimes certain things that you don’t want to attempt to measure (because it’s hard or stupid to do it that way), and other times because one gets unintended consequences.
There was this company known for efficiency and productivity. There was never any waste. All profits went to the company and it’s employees, who often made enough money running machines as to live next door to doctors and lawyers and accountants. Secretaries were found to be sitting at their typewriters pushing meaningless keys as fast as they could. (The company was Lincoln Electric.)
Sometimes the greatest reward is intrinsic, not extrinsic. It can be very difficult to find those people sometimes.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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May 20, 2018 - 05:58am PT
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It won't matter as you will always be drawing from the same pool: Our society- you're going to get every type of person. We tend to mirror where we came from.
The same as any job. You can narrow the funnel by encouraging certain skills like they do for engineering- but that might not be wise as you will end up with a bunch of clones with similar vision.
Elementary teachers tend to be really hard workers. English teachers also put in the time if their good.
The teacher has no choice on the ability or the quality of the material they work with. You take the kids you get and do your best.
Same with the families- no choice in the matter.
Some people want to paint a broad brush statement that covers all situations- but like everyone being different -every kid needs many different things. Sometimes you get it in school. sometimes not.
You try to pay enough so you don't bankrupt your state and so you can give teachers a livable wage.
Almost everyone on this forum has had some education, so they feel they are entitled to an opinion based on their experience- not too much backing up most of the ideas IMO- just words flopping around.
I just retired after 32 years in the classroom. Taught somewhere around 5000 students. It was a great career and I was good at it.
The people I would listen to are the ones who have actually been in the classroom teaching.
The value of a union is that it protects your right to an opinion without being fired if you disagree with your administration- check out Wisconsin, they don't have unions anymore and so they can trim out any dissenting votes by dismissing the teachers. The pushy people in the communities are given more voice- but does it make for a better experience for the kids?
Regarding trimming out the fat- the kids do this for you. They know if a teacher is a dud and they sink that ship. In the first five years about half of teachers get out of the profession- the kids chase them out, by making them miserable.
Very few veteran teachers are incompetent- at least at the schools I worked in Minnesota. Not to say that they didn't get tired or unmotivated-but everyone has those problems.
You can cherry pick and find the stories you want to back up your opinion.
If you're a teacher you have a responsibility to put out the best lessons you can
Parents need to provide support as best they can for their kids and to communicate with their schools.
Some of you might have children of your own, so you know that raising a kid is a pretty messy job- you do what you can.
Some of you even had parents, so you know what a pain in the ass you were and how miserable you made everyone else.
I was thinking about what the most important skill I developed over my career- it was having the ability, after a good day or a bad day to be able to get up the next day and do it again and again and again. Ultimately what I decided was that I could be most influential if I had built relationships with my students and their families.
Sorry for the ramble.
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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May 20, 2018 - 06:37am PT
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Thanks for that, Hobo Dan. Congrats and thank you for three decades of getting it done. What you say about so many teachers bailing after only five pitches--er, years--on El Cap/career is troubling. I think out of control kids are a problem as well as overly intrusive admins, and I know parents can be a serious drag, too. That triple threat pushed me into higher ed. where I thought all would be wonderful. Hah. I would have probably needed to be at some fancy pants grad school to get the kinds of classes I dreamed about, but I got them occasionally. Through dumb luck, I'd get a group of students that would be so engaging, hardworking, and fun that I couldn't wait to see them. Each day was, like, F*CK YEAH! Reading the papers was still a grind, but you felt like you were going somewhere, that the whole enterprise worked, and that you had picked the right profession. I was fortunate to have plenty of days and classes like this, and most of the time, I was grateful and happy as a community college instructor. But the dead beats, the admins, the lazy and WAY unprepared students started to really drag on me.
I remember a couple of years before retiring, I was running into a kind of existential crisis in my career. I taught in Bakersfield, which plays into this little drama. The town can be pretty bleak--worst air quality in the country, very poor community, places with rough crime, etc. And the college sat on "Panorama Drive," which did indeed have a panorama...of the oil fields of Oildale--square miles of dead grass, pipes, pumps, industrial nightmare wasteland usually overhung by a thick blanket of beige puke. Many times, you could stand in Bakersfield and not know there were mountains all around.
I'd been having a rough semester, taking on an extra class that really wasn't doing well. Very quickly it became obvious that they weren't preparing, and few participated. Asking even provocative questions was usually met with silence but for a couple of regular contributors--thank God for them! One student I really felt bad for. He was a fairly young father and totally unprepared for what I was asking of him. I don't know how he got in. He missed a lot of class, and his papers were poorly developed and loaded with grammar and punctuation mistakes, bad ones. He needed to be in a remedial course, which still would have been a struggle, but, if I recall, he'd already "passed" it! (Cue angry face for lame colleagues with low standards....) He had dreams and ambitions, wanting to get into some profession that I don't recall. He was obviously concerned about providing for his children. And there was no way in hell he was going to pass.
I stood there waiting for the bus and just felt tired of the whole game. Was I going to do this for another eight, maybe ten years as I'd considered? Something in me shifted as I stood there with students glued to their damn phones, the toxic clouds of junk simmering in the Central Valley heat. I was done. It took a couple more years to make the final moves, which, fortunately, we could do. I can only imagine how hard it is for my K-12 colleagues. And my high school English colleagues? Holy crap, Batman! That shizzle is nutz. One hundred and eighty or more students? Papers coming in every week? Talk about a soul crushing grind. It helps to be young starting out, I tell you that.
BAd
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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May 20, 2018 - 08:28am PT
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I’ve worked in many different industries, which seemed to be useful when I got a terminal degree in business and corporate strategy. I’d say in each of those industries I worked in I would find people who became deeply disenchanted with their work. It doesn't just happen in education.
It seemes especially disheartening when folks start-out believing that their professions or jobs are noble, but later come to see that their industry / work is really mundane, with all the common objectives and values that do not contribute to what seemed to be noble causes. All of those noble causes are extrinsically motivated: changing the world, helping others be better people, solving this or that big problem, etc.
Find something that rewards you intrinsically, and you’ll have found true nobility. (Of course it might be poorly related to income.)
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Dapper Dan
Trad climber
Redwood City
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May 20, 2018 - 02:26pm PT
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It won't matter as you will always be drawing from the same pool: Our society- you're going to get every type of person. We tend to mirror where we came from.
The same as any job. You can narrow the funnel by encouraging certain skills like they do for engineering- but that might not be wise as you will end up with a bunch of clones with similar vision.
Elementary teachers tend to be really hard workers. English teachers also put in the time if their good.
The teacher has no choice on the ability or the quality of the material they work with. You take the kids you get and do your best.
Same with the families- no choice in the matter.
Some people want to paint a broad brush statement that covers all situations- but like everyone being different -every kid needs many different things. Sometimes you get it in school. sometimes not.
You try to pay enough so you don't bankrupt your state and so you can give teachers a livable wage.
Almost everyone on this forum has had some education, so they feel they are entitled to an opinion based on their experience- not too much backing up most of the ideas IMO- just words flopping around.
I just retired after 32 years in the classroom. Taught somewhere around 5000 students. It was a great career and I was good at it.
The people I would listen to are the ones who have actually been in the classroom teaching.
The value of a union is that it protects your right to an opinion without being fired if you disagree with your administration- check out Wisconsin, they don't have unions anymore and so they can trim out any dissenting votes by dismissing the teachers. The pushy people in the communities are given more voice- but does it make for a better experience for the kids?
Regarding trimming out the fat- the kids do this for you. They know if a teacher is a dud and they sink that ship. In the first five years about half of teachers get out of the profession- the kids chase them out, by making them miserable.
Very few veteran teachers are incompetent- at least at the schools I worked in Minnesota. Not to say that they didn't get tired or unmotivated-but everyone has those problems.
You can cherry pick and find the stories you want to back up your opinion.
If you're a teacher you have a responsibility to put out the best lessons you can
Parents need to provide support as best they can for their kids and to communicate with their schools.
Some of you might have children of your own, so you know that raising a kid is a pretty messy job- you do what you can.
Some of you even had parents, so you know what a pain in the ass you were and how miserable you made everyone else.
I was thinking about what the most important skill I developed over my career- it was having the ability, after a good day or a bad day to be able to get up the next day and do it again and again and again. Ultimately what I decided was that I could be most influential if I had built relationships with my students and their families.
Sorry for the ramble.
I've been following this thread for awhile and thinking about responding, but now I don't need to say much. Hobo Dan has nailed it on so many points.
I'm in my tenth year as a teacher, 7 in kinder , 3 in third grade; public school district in the Bay Area. So much to agree with in Hobo's post but what resonates most with me is the necessity to build relationships with your students and their families.
Any yup, you get up every day and try to bring some joy and warmth into young people's lives while trying to push them a little further down the road in their education. You try to be a positive role model, watch what you say, and lead by example, keep them safe, and send them home with a smile on their face at the end of day.
And all the while you take the good and bad. You take the smattering of heart felt thank you cards from kids and parents, and you take the ridicule from people who think you're lazy, underworked, over-vacationed, and quietly you wonder how long it will be until the next mass shooting and where that's going to happen.
That's my two cents. Teaching is a great job and I'm proud to do it...
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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May 31, 2018 - 03:05pm PT
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Dapper-it takes ten years to learn how to do it
Ten more to enjoy it
and ten more to figure out what you want to do next
Enjoy the next decade now that you've built a tool box and a skill set.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Me mum was a teacher so I’ve nothing but respect for them. But she was despairing about
the increasingly bureaucratized admin nazis way BITD. It must be nigh insufferable now.
La Femme waxes nostalgically about the rigid discipline and rote learning of her French
grammer schools. Boy, howdy, but those kids sure learned to write beautifully, their grammer
was excellent, and they knew their sums. What the hell happened? I know our teachers are
still inspired but our schools are turning out functionally illiterate kids who are barely able to
do basic university level chores and if they don’t go to university they’re barely employable.
The main difference seems to be that administrations are now magnitudes larger and, based
on results, magnitudes more incompetent. Oh, and what happened to
“GO SIT IN THE CORNER UNTIL YER READY TO BEHAVE!”
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Reilly,
It may not be only about the discipline of students. I’d offer that it’s also about the discipline of the system and the teachers themselves. The system does not reward academic discipline.
I taught the last required course in business schools, and it was a course that was often left until the final semester by students because it tended to be onerous. Student often had short-timers’ attitudes. If I failed a student in the course, they might not know about it until after they had walked graduation and started their jobs in another city. I would fail students, but it wouldn’t happen very often because I made it clear that it could and had happened.
I failed one student in the course at Santa Clara University because he missed a passing grade (C in required courses) by .33 of a point. I ended up meeting with the parents, my department chair, the associate dean, and finally the dean about the decision. Although everyone in administration said to me that it was my call, the experience was very hard.
I think many of us complained about teachers who passed forward failures. By the time students would get to you, you’d see that someone earlier on had not been successful—yet passed the failure forward to you. What are you supposed to do with that? Failure tends to breed more and greater failure.
I’d say that everyone from all sides has parts in the complaints about education.
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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I’d say that everyone from all sides has parts in the complaints about education.
Of course, but nobody is willing to accept even the merest shred of accountability, are they?
Since the whole system has obviously failed I say the admin nazis have to fall on their swords.
Last June I was particularly struck by our encounters with British grammer school field trips.
We would show up at some venue and at first I was all like “Oh, great, a load of bloody juvenile
delinquents.” But then we would watch them in their cute little uniforms actually showing some
self-discipline and paying attention to the docents! Then they would actually ask intelligent
questions which showed actual interest, not to mention an acumen I would not expect from
American high schoolers. Did I mention I am talking about third graders? They’re clearly
doing something right in Olde Blighty, and it ain’t just the uniforms. GOD SAVE THE QUEEN!
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Yes, Mr Con, but only for the admin nazis and the grammarless.
The parents will go to re-education camps, for accountability training.
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Bad Climber
Trad climber
The Lawless Border Regions
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Reilly said:
Of course, but nobody is willing to accept even the merest shred of accountability, are they?
I tried, but it meant failing many, many students. I wanted my classes to mean something, to count. Alas, that meant having some standards that too few were prepared to meet.
BAd
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jonnyrig
climber
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Well, I quit because I recognized I was a sh#t teacher with students who wouldn't read the assigned material, some of whom wouldn't even buy the text.
I think I'm just gonna sit back and such the world burn, teach my kids to shoot guns, drink whiskey, climb, and take my sigh and my music to your favorite places.
Ron Anderson was right to be angry at the world, only he was angry at the wrong people. He should have been angry at everyone, not just you educated liberals.
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hobo_dan
Social climber
Minnesota
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I had 90 + % of my students do 100% of their work. These kids grew up to be successful and exceptional people. Good school, good community, good families.
I gave them work that was fun, interesting and worthwhile. If they needed more time I gave it to them. I wanted them to learn and it didn't matter to me how long it took them to grasp an idea. We also had a retake policy.
Hard to believe this idea, but life isn't a race.
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