Well, actually, it was mainly the crazy teacher she fired that worried me, but there were also some doozies of parents.
My wife is currently a middle school math teacher. She reprimanded a student yesterday for deliberately not following directions (wife had provided kids with vis-a-vis non-permanent markers to mark on a laminated page, kid decided to use a permanent marker instead). On talking with the parent, the parent claimed that it must be a personality conflict between the teacher (my wife) and her son. She wants her son moved from my wife's classroom. My wife agrees, but the other teacher is even more of a stickler than my wife. Should be interesting to see.
I don't know if there is a correct way to implement Common Core. My problem with such initiatives is that they are a top-down one-size-fits-all sort of thing. In the sense that it's a broad generalized curriculum, it's not terrible, but I think schools need more flexibility and autonomy at the local level. Teachers also need more flexibility to adapt their curriculum to the needs of the students. A student who is planning to go to college but has pathetic writing skills needs to work on those skills, and that takes time away from the prescribed curriculum. When I taught college bound seniors, I told them on day one that all tests would be essay tests. Parents did not like this, and eventually the administration told me to stop. Same with grammar. Common Core required such skills to be learned in middle school, but by the time I got those students, they had long since forgotten those skills. A couple of years after I was told to lay off the essays, a parent wanted to file a complaint against the district because her son had to take a remedial writing course in college.
And that's why teachers should have tenure protection. So they can tell an administration to butt out. Kids need to be writing essays all the time. Locally, they do, but that's because they are required to pass writing tests by the state.
My wife taught for around 10 yrs, 4-5th gifted before staying home with the kids. Now she’s directing. Although she loved teaching, admin fits her better at this stage. She couldn’t go back, especially now. She deals with parents lot more. Still keeps in touch with her teacher friends.
False. It only protects bad teachers. Being paid based on performance would protect good, effective teachers. Tenure is why many teachers spend their day in the rubber room.
I have a sister who is a high school counselor. She has a master's. She makes $100K per year and when she retires after 30 years of work, she'll get paid 80% of her pay the rest of her life. Not bad work if you can get it.
Not if I was committed to education. The system needs changing badly....teachers are having to choose between doing their jobs to the best of their abilities and covering their financial butts.
some parents also feel guilty for having screwed up their marriage and home and try to make up for it by spoiling the child with extra gifts and privileges. Instead, they should rather spend more quality time with their kid(s) and pay attention to the kind of company the kid is hanging out with. One of the worse scenarios I have observed is when the mother, primary caregiver, gets herself a boyfriend and hands him the disciplining, while he has his own kids somewhere floating around. The mother has to work, the boyfriend has to work and the kid comes home from school to an empty house!!!!! What do we expect?
Oh, yes, mention the word multicultural and right away you can envision a teacher trying to understand a kid who speaks no English or only broken English!!! Are there any facilities that help immigrant children with the English language? As a grown-up immigrant I went to night school to improve my English and was much surprised to have lots of regular citizens as class mates.
I will chide in here and make four points. 1. The economy is moving more and more to gig work and this shift seems to be accelerating so is the education meeting this reality? 2. By and large children are doing okay academically since even our students are in between on the top of the nation pool so are doing good enough under the facts we have a huge number of issues a diverse population, pockets of poverty and the like. 3. I think we can agree not all students are able to or should go to college and our schools seem to have issues with students not going to college in preparing them to be employable, please not my first point applies to.bu 4. I think students need a reasonably good education in a broad area of knowledge and try things out by the time they get to High School and look into careers and have parents and schools work together to see where the child turning young adult should fit in an education plan this requires work on every ones part. So here is what I would do restructure education and this is lifelong options to learn a career or trade under existing kinds of models where a high level of skill and education practical hands on or academic and otherwise push each young person to a goal as early as possible. A High School Student might not know a career early but might want to work with his or her hands in a trade or might want to study music and art having talent and a passion or like the idea of going to college so might look at careers in that level of education. But what about another option micro-certifications with a bank of sorts keeping track of them say Jane wants to learn accounting instead of a degree why not have four tiers each one taking a year part-time and these recorded in her 'bank' for employers to look up and each one would have more advanced work until she has the highest level she could get without a degree. Maybe Jane wants to gig work doing the accounts for small businesses and most want Tier 2 she could work up to that and advertise that for those gigs. It could cover many areas of work artistic, blue collar, white collar and people could constantly gain new skills perhaps even get Tier equivalencies for work experience if done carefully. I just think the system we depend on isn't going to help in the next several decades skills will be what matters the more skills you know in more kinds of work the better off you will be so making this a part of education now might pay off when in the end be more valuable and would create new businesses banks to handle the banking of education, new gig businesses, new jobs for corporations in gig divisions for them and other options. And would offer corporations and businesses new employees educated in areas they want with a way to show them you have the skills.
You are assuming half get the low range and half get the high range. Sorry, but that's not how it work.
Bunch of ****ing bullshit that ignores facts. My wife is an educator. She is paid 0 overtime for the extra hours grading. She is paid 0 in return for the hundreds we pay out of pocket for YOUR KIDS TO HAVE **** TO LEARN WITH. unbelievable. The right wing is so ****ing sickening on this issue.
Trying to improve education by improving teachers is like trying to mitigate the effects of a drought by buying a new tractor. Sure the tractor might help in some ways on the margins but only rain will end the drought. Better teachers will help. Some. But better teachers will never compensate for piss poor students.
Note. The four most hated words in every teachers contract (always buried but always there) is "Other duties as required". In short it means school officials can pretty much make you do whatever the hell they want, whenever they want, for no extra pay.
What could that be? Lunchroom supervisor? Hallway patrol? I'm not a teacher, I have no idea what else.
Hmm... not sure if I could agree on the subservient part, that's stretching it. Kids don't care about politics. To be subservient to the elite class, where the money is, that has been the way of life since my great-great-grandparents lived and slaved for pennies. And they usually had ten kids or more!! Teaching off curriculum in this day and age would get the teacher in trouble in no time. There would always be parents and others who would complain.
lol... in a broader sense you could also say, education does not even require a school, just a competent teacher!
