Teacher Criticisms...(rant)

twanthe1

Socio-economic background has more to do with student performance than teacher pay, union vs non-union, and any other stat people throw around. Here in California many schools get additional funding based on property tax receipts, the higher the home values in the area surrounding the school the more resources the school will have. Schools in high property value areas typically have a smaller student to teacher ratio than schools in poorer zip codes.

ZombieSlayer

bumping just to follow

did you get a look at part one? it's a riot!

I've been following it since you first posted. Sometimes I need my blood pressure to go up and this thread delivers!

fjrandol

tl;dr

My first year teaching high school I had 4 different subjects in 3 classrooms, only 2 periods of which didn't require me to switch locations. The average class had 35 students, with two at over 40 pupils. I had students sitting on the floor because there weren't enough chairs for everyone.

The school told me to just deal with it because quite a few would (supposedly) be gone before the end of the first month. When I gave tests, I would have fewer than 10 students, due to people out for student council, ball games, field trips, etc; also have to count the 5-7 ESL students who would be out with the interpretor, and the 4 or 5 LD kids who also needed to take tests with an assistant.

The feedback I got from the principal when he observed my classroom? "You should hang more student work on the walls." Gee, thanks for all the help there bub! BTW, my total budget for the year was $75 (total, not per class), which needed to include all my copier paper, pens, and any other supplies I or my students might need.

The school was over 90% free and reduced lunch. The last morning bus didn't arrive until just before first bell, so I had quite a few students who still had their breakfast in their hands when they came to class. There was only one lunch period, and the lines were so long that unless they ran from class straight to the gym it could take the whole lunch break before the kids got to the front of the line.

For quite a few of my students, these were the only two meals they had for the day.

Anyhow, I'm not teaching anymore. Sometimes I miss it, and then I remember that when I get off work now my job isn't following me home. I don't need to grade papers, prepare assignments, call parents...

tchrnmommy

I am a teacher and would gladly take the pay of a babysitter!

Let's say that I charge $3/hour/kid. I have 27 kids in my class:

$3 x 27 = $81/hour

I am SCHEDULED to work from 8:45 - 4:15 (though I am usually at school before 8 and leave around 5):

$81 x 7 (taking out my lunch - 30 min.) = $567/day

I work 36 weeks per year, and that does account for summer break and other days off:

$567 x 5 days/week = $2835 x 36 weeks/year = $102,060/year

Now, I also have a MA in education, but I won't charge extra for my extra knowledge of how to better serve your children.

I make less than $40,000/year. So, PLEASE let me charge babysitter rates! I would love that!

^^Haha..>THIS...I CHOSE this undervalued and underpaid field because I am passionate about education. Those teachers who educated the nuckleheads that speak out against teachers are embarrassed.

EDIT: Apparently I'm a thread killer. But I wanted to say factor in the fact that there are no "laws" for the level of education a "babysitter" has to have - that's downright scary!

chanstriste13

Anyhow, I'm not teaching anymore. Sometimes I miss it, and then I remember that when I get off work now my job isn't following me home.

well said! i think this is what people outside of education don't realize - that our time off is *not* really time off!

chanstriste13

Those teachers who educated the nuckleheads that speak out against teachers are embarrassed.

very much agree!

i get a kick out of my friends who have children get to b!tching about how all the teachers are doing it wrong, summers should be cancelled because their dear heart's have so much trouble catching up in the fall (translation for my friends: i don't want to deal with the little heathens i've spawned for ten weeks!), about how the public school system is going to land their darlings a job flipping burgers at best, and all i can think is, 'what happened to you? i went to school with you so i know that your summers off didn't keep you from college, or that your teachers made you stupid!'

oh well. :ohwell:

VegesaurusRex

Okay, this board is a mere shaddow of the former one. What topic can I start talking about to get things moving?

1. Homeschooling?

2. The Teacher Unions?

3. What to do with kids who don't want to be in school?

4. Ability grouping?

5. Gifted Education?

Surely we can liven things up a bit.

VegesaurusRex

Okay, I guess that went over like a lead balloon. How about discussing year round school?

VegesaurusRex

Okay, looks like this board is dead. I guess the majority of teachers here do not want to discuss important contemporary issues, but would rather talk about how awful parents are and how hard their jobs are.

One parting thought. We are in a new world and a new paradigm. There are limited resouces to go around. Manufacturing jobs and other jobs for people who are not well educated are disappearing. The days of unlimited resources for public schools are at an end. Wisconsin is the way of the future. You teachers and parents have to start learning to do more with less. This means for the teachers working harder and getting less money. This is what happens in the private schools now. There will be no Unions to protect you. They will be gone. You cannot expect those who are barely making it themselves to protect your pampered life style.

There are no resources to waste on kids who do not want to be in school. If they are not interested kick them out. There will be no more jobs for those who got into teaching to help those who don't want to be helped.

The role of the parents in this new paradigm is changing. Some will, like we did, take control of our own kids' education and homeschool. Others will take control of their local systems and institute massive local changes, such as vouchers, tax refunds for those who homeschool or send their kids to private school. They will fight for the right to fire teachers, and for eliminating tenure. The present school system is only helping those who run it, not those who go through it.

The public schools are dysfunctional and have been for a long time. The new mantra will be "Change or die." The only people in the system that actually do any good are those who fight the system, the John Taylor Gottos, and the Jaime Escalentes. In Connecticut, we have the highest paid teachers of any state in the country. Our schools are, at best mediocre. At worst, pathetic. When the system fails or disappoints, it is not the parents who are at fault, it is the teachers. Yes, I do believe that the parents are the single biggest influence in their kids lives, and have primary responsibility for their kids' education. Some parents exercise that responsibility by trusting the system. These are the saddest cases. And when the system fails, the teachers blame the parents for trusting them, the teachers.

Things are changing. Since the days of Civil Rights, the pie has been getting divided by more and more people into smaller and smaller pieces. This current recession is not a recession, but the way it is going to be from now on. Get used to it. There just isn't enough to go around.

castadiva

I have immense respect for teachers - there is not enough money in existence to get me to do that job - but respect does not equal unqualified admiration or a free pass from criticism. I had some great teachers, many barely-adequate teachers, and some who were truly abysmal. To the former, I am eternally grateful, of the latter, and even more so of the barely-adequate, whose impact could have been so much greater with just a little more effort or interest, I am uniformly critical. Doing a job that is perceived as 'worthy' does not make that group immune to criticism. I criticise nurses who fail their patients as well, and I'd have harsh words for firemen who failed to put out fires. Why should teachers be exempt?

castadiva

Okay, this board is a mere shaddow of the former one. What topic can I start talking about to get things moving?

1. Homeschooling?

2. The Teacher Unions?

3. What to do with kids who don't want to be in school?

4. Ability grouping?

5. Gifted Education?

Surely we can liven things up a bit.

Yes, let's talk about Ability Grouping and Gifted Education, and the fact that, in many cases, children of all ranges of ability are failed by the ideological insistence that no-one is treated or taught any 'differently', to the bewilderment of those who are behind the 'norm', and the boredom and frustration of those whose inherent intellectual gifts make 'normal' insultingly simple. Can anyone explain the logic behind that to me?

As for Gifted Education, where is the investment in this? I have no problem with Special Needs education, and indeed see clearly the need for it, but why is this prioritised so heavily over approriate education for those whose equally special needs are at the other end of the intellectual spectrum, which are often ignored completely?!

VegesaurusRex

Okay, this board is a mere shaddow of the former one. What topic can I start talking about to get things moving?

1. Homeschooling?

2. The Teacher Unions?

3. What to do with kids who don't want to be in school?

4. Ability grouping?

5. Gifted Education?

Surely we can liven things up a bit.

Yes, let's talk about Ability Grouping and Gifted Education, and the fact that, in many cases, children of all ranges of ability are failed by the ideological insistence that no-one is treated or taught any 'differently', to the bewilderment of those who are behind the 'norm', and the boredom and frustration of those whose inherent intellectual gifts make 'normal' insultingly simple. Can anyone explain the logic behind that to me?

As for Gifted Education, where is the investment in this? I have no problem with Special Needs education, and indeed see clearly the need for it, but why is this prioritised so heavily over approriate education for those whose equally special needs are at the other end of the intellectual spectrum, which are often ignored completely?!

I can explain it to you. If you put kids of differing abilities in one classroom, you absolutely need smaller classrooms, and hence more teachers. This has been the strategy of the Teacher Unions since the late '60s, and it has worked. The total myth that kids learn better in a smaller class has be the Teacher Union Mantra for a half a century. And they are right - unless you do ability grouping.

With ability grouping you can have huge classes, fewer teachers, and more effective teaching. When I went to high school we had tracking. People were neatly sorted into ability groups, In my group, Accelerated College, we had kids at the same ability level, and in some cases we got credit for one and a half courses where the "normal" course in that subject of course only got 1 course credit. The kids in my group were accepted at Yale, Penn, Carnegie Tech, Smith, Mt Holyoke, and other really good schools. Tracking worked just fine. The kids in the lowest track learned skills like plumbing, and were spared having to suffer through English literature and Shakespeare. The kids in the upper track, on the other hand, loved the academic courses. The teacher needed one lesson plan for the class, and there were no wisea@@ jerks making stupid comments.

Ability grouping worked well, and is used by just about every country on the planet except us. That is because of the Teacher Unions, the most evil group of people in the educational establishment. They want more jobs, more vacation, more money, tenuire and more benefits. That is what teaching is about for them. They couldn't give a damn about the results.

annemckee

I am a teacher in Scotland. Last year the school I had been teaching in for 22 years was closed. I held a promoted post in my previous school and had in fact been acting head teacher in a job share (doing my own principal teacher post as well and teaching pupils) for six months until closure. I was redeployed to another school where I am now an "ordinary" teacher. I did not choose this job. Neither did I choose the drop in income which will come into play when my 3 year conservation of salary is at an end. Neither did I choose the pay freeze we are currently in tthe middle of, nor the changes to pension conditions being discussed at government level, nor the reduction in per capita allowance for buying resources needed for me to do my job. What I did choose was a job which is worthwhile and rewarding and which I am attempting - in straitened circumstances - to keep that way. I love my job but at the moment I feel my job does not love me.

botography

I am a retired teacher who started out doing something I dearly loved and was allowed to teach in a creative way based on the needs of the students in MY class. I could reach them because I started where THEY were and tried to bring them "up and beyond."

At the end of my career I ended up in a straight jacket teaching TO THE TEST and teaching and not teaching whatever I was commanded to do or not do. We are trying to put everyone in the same box...treat them the same way in education. We ought to be promoting WHAT A STUDENT CAN DO, not what they CANNOT. Sorry Advanced Algebra is not for everyone. And my students who dared to be electricians, or plumbers instead of engineers are doing quite well around now.



And society changed .... and respect for me and all those like me hit an all time low. When I could no longer do what I thought was right for my students I got out... It was 40 years of downhill, one year worst than the other kinda GOT OUT.

I am up early and caught this thread and responding seemed the right thing to do. What I was paid somehow never made a difference to me although it does indicate what we as a society value. In my book teachers are not paid enough because they truly hold the key to the future by what they do and do not do.

castadiva

Anne, I applaud your dedication and admire your commitment to an inevitably challenging job. I empathise to an extent with the concerns of teachers, particularly those of long-standing, but I have to say that I can't sympathise with what amounts to demands by a particular group for special treatment that ignores the realities of the current economic climate. In every sector, public or private, people are facing the same issues. The difference seems to be that if you work within the private sector, and are unhappy with the conditions or changes to your job/remuneration package, the onus is on you to find an alternative job, or even to leave the sector entirely and retrain at your own cost for another. Within the public sector, it seems unreasonable to me that this should be reversed so that the onus is on the employer to meet employee's demands. It's not realistic.

Like any company's, the public purse is limited, and making changes is inevitable when times are hard. I have never understood why there seems to be a perception within the public sector that jobs and remuneration should be immune to change, simply because the government of the day is the employer. Governments, and economies, change. In choosing to work in the public sector, one ties ones' own fortunes to those of the country. Right at the moment, those fortunes are significantly decreased.

Please don't take this as a personal attack - I feel the same way about nurses etc! - I understand the pain, but the lack of logic that often seems to occur in these debates disturbs me.

castadiva

We are trying to put everyone in the same box...treat them the same way in education. We ought to be promoting WHAT A STUDENT CAN DO, not what they CANNOT. Sorry Advanced Algebra is not for everyone. And my students who dared to be electricians, or plumbers instead of engineers are doing quite well around now.

THIS!!!! It quite clearly does not, and cannot, work to treat everyone exactly the same within education. All brains are NOT created the same, and those differences should be recognised, celebrated in fact. I sailed through Advanced Algebra, but heaven help me if my fuses all blow or my plumbing breaks down! I don't understand why so many ideologues seem so committed to pretending that these differences don't exist. Being the best you, as an individual, can be should be the aim, surely, not putting everyone, suited to it or not, through the same, inevitably mediocre, system?

TheRoadDog

I'm going to choose my words carefully, because there are people in here that I respect and admire. The teachers I had in my life made a huge difference. I saw and dealt with educators in my daughters lives. They made a difference. Some good; some bad.

The National Average Wage in 2011 for teachers ranged from $40,112 (Grade School) to $43,593 (HS). I don't know what a Private College Professor makes.

The National Average Wage over all for 2011 was $41,673.

I don't see that there is the wage disparity that you speak of. As far as Vacations and Sick Leave is concerned, most people get 2 weeks paid vacation to start. By 20 years in, they might get 4 to 5 weeks. Not Summer vacations, Spring Breaks and 2 Weeks for Christmas.

I have been working 41 years. I don't have a union to go to bat for me. I don't have tenure. I don't have a bunch of talking heads in Washington touting how necessary my position is in our society. I mess up today, they fire me tomorrow and hire a college grad at half the price.

I realize how important a good teacher is. I know what an impact my own teachers have had on my life. Thank you, Mr. Condon. Gracias, Senora Bustamante.

If you feel underappreciated and underpaid, look around at the rest of us. We don't have public support. We're struggling too.

chanstriste13

Okay, looks like this board is dead. I guess the majority of teachers here do not want to discuss important contemporary issues, but would rather talk about how awful parents are and how hard their jobs are.

smirk. this is silly, but congrats on getting a good enough insult out there to kick the board up again.

You cannot expect those who are barely making it themselves to protect your pampered life style.

this was pretty funny too. thanks for the chuckles. pampered? right.

There are no resources to waste on kids who do not want to be in school. If they are not interested kick them out.

you have yet to suggest where to place these hundreds of thousands of students. again, this is not an educational problem. this is a societal problem, and you will have to go to the root of this, which is most likely the homelife/situation/parents of the child.

The public schools are dysfunctional and have been for a long time. The new mantra will be "Change or die." The only people in the system that actually do any good are those who fight the system, the John Taylor Gottos, and the Jaime Escalentes.

grotto and escalentes: irrelevant.

When the system fails or disappoints, it is not the parents who are at fault, it is the teachers. Yes, I do believe that the parents are the single biggest influence in their kids lives, and have primary responsibility for their kids' education. Some parents exercise that responsibility by trusting the system. These are the saddest cases. And when the system fails, the teachers blame the parents for trusting them, the teachers.

this is absurd. talk about wanting to have your cake and eat it too...!

chanstriste13

I'm going to choose my words carefully, because there are people in here that I respect and admire. The teachers I had in my life made a huge difference. I saw and dealt with educators in my daughters lives. They made a difference. Some good; some bad.

The National Average Wage in 2011 for teachers ranged from $40,112 (Grade School) to $43,593 (HS). I don't know what a Private College Professor makes.

The National Average Wage over all for 2011 was $41,673.

I don't see that there is the wage disparity that you speak of. As far as Vacations and Sick Leave is concerned, most people get 2 weeks paid vacation to start. By 20 years in, they might get 4 to 5 weeks. Not Summer vacations, Spring Breaks and 2 Weeks for Christmas.

I have been working 41 years. I don't have a union to go to bat for me. I don't have tenure. I don't have a bunch of talking heads in Washington touting how necessary my position is in our society. I mess up today, they fire me tomorrow and hire a college grad at half the price.

I realize how important a good teacher is. I know what an impact my own teachers have had on my life. Thank you, Mr. Condon. Gracias, Senora Bustamante.

If you feel underappreciated and underpaid, look around at the rest of us. We don't have public support. We're struggling too.

don't worry about hurting my feelings - i'm tough!

the pay thing really wasn't the point of all this - people keep bringing it up. we're in one of the lowest paid states, and i think we get a pretty sweet deal as far as pay goes.

but you generally don't catch conversations at the grocery store starting with, 'those damn mechanics,' or 'those damn lawyers', or 'those damn car salesmen'. but a lot of people are just hating on teachers like crazy, and i don't feel that it is deserved. people can hate unions. they can hate no child left behind. they can hate the directives that come down from washington. but placing all of that negativity on actual *teachers* is just misguided and sad.

not all teachers are wonderful, sure. but we're not all satan by a long shot!

iuangina

Veg - I hate to tell you but everyone learns better in smaller environments. Yeah, it's possible to get the basic information that you need, but to get an in-depth study of any subject - smaller is better. That's why colleges have first year classes (100+) (general classes that are basic) that are huge and the more advanced classes are smaller seminars (no more than 30). That's why some people option for a small liberal art colleges over the big state university. You are insane if you think that size doesn't matter. Also, even within ability grouping you still have varying levels of kids. No child is in exactly the same place as another. I also think you need to get a clue about class sizes because our classes are huge. I have classes of 30 kindergartners (that's too many 5 year olds for any one person to handle). Education has been described to me as the only factory that is expected to produce the same results with a different set of parts for every model. Class size is not something that is made up by teacher's unions to keep more teachers employed. That's very jaded. Who in the educational system hurt you so much?

That being said, I have a serious problem with tracking as it was done in the past. There are children who get placed on a non-college track because of test scores and racial/economic bias. Well, tests are not always an accurate assessment of what a child knows. I remember being placed in a non-college track in high school and my parents had to fight it. I have issues with standardized tests and I also had a guidance counselor who believed that minorities didn't belong in college (BTW, I went to college graduated with honors and went to law school so eff that piece of sh*& that said I wouldn't be able to - he's still at my high school). I'm thankful that my parents were there to fight for me, but a lot kids at my school didn't have parents who were involved. Ability grouping has been used to keep minorities (both racial and economic) out of certain professions - such as law, medicine, etc. A lot of times it is used as a way to keep the rich rich and the poor poor. I know that not everyone has this experience but historically that's how it's been used.

I completely agree that education will not be fixed until the way we fund education is fixed. Poor districts stay poor and rich districts stay rich because property values determine how much money a school gets, not the acheivement levels.

I also would like to know what teachers are pampered? I've never met any.