How teachers can teach their students

[KindGrind]

I think you're very right about tenure and incompetence. While we can't deny the existence of the problem, it's not the main one here. Most teachers try hard to get the student interested and involved with their learning. Finding new angles and new techniques to teach our subject is an inherent part of the job but requires lots of effort for some. I mean, when I learned English in high school quite some time ago teachers gave us tons of grammar exercises and boring note-taking lessons. Did I learn what I had to learn? Yes. Was it fun? Wasn't too bad. Did we complain? Of course not.

Try to have 30 teenagers take out a book and write vocabulary for an hour. A rain of complaints will ensue, if not a riot. I'm exaggerating of course, but you get the idea. The job is getting more and more complex and time consuming because it's not about sharing what you know with the students anymore, but rather about making sure they don't drop out of school. I wish you guys could see some of the classes I'm giving; it's more of less giving a show. The subject I teach lends itself well to that of course. I mean to understand integral calculus you need to make note of the formulas and use them... Students expect math to be boring to some degree anyways.

how comfortable are you (especially those of you who are parents) trusting the education of your kids with teachers that make only a little more than minimum wage?

This is a very major point, actually, and I reflect on this often. I'll write about it more later, but if the job was made more appealing by say... paying the teachers more coming out of university, there may be more candidates for the job and therefore less incompetence. But you think: "Why do these future teachers even graduate if they're not fit for the job?" Because (around here anyway) a student = lots of $ given by the state to the teaching institution, which is why administrations think twice about kicking people out. Which leads of course to all sorts of abuse, i.e, keep people at all costs.

[BulletMagnet]

What do you think of D.C. Schools Chancellor Michelle Rhee? or the general idea of multiple unannounced teacher evaluations by education experts combined with student test scores?

or the general idea of multiple unannounced teacher evaluations by education experts combined with student test scores?

Going by what I know about this topic (which is probably rather limited compared to CMoon and others), I'm most wary of the recent increased emphasis on test scores: yes, standardized exams certainly have a place in the educational system, but now that states can make up their own exams rather than using a national one (who the hell thought that would be a brilliant idea?), the standards vary widely and are almost entirely useless for meaningful comparisons to different groups of students. Not to mention, of course, that when a single evaluation can make or break not only individual teachers but entire districts, desperate administrators and others tend to either push for easier tests, "teach to the test" at the expense of other subjects, or out-and-out cheat: if memory serves both New York and Virginia (maybe others too?) recently admitted wide-ranging problems with the latter, which basically puts us right back at square one.

As for "educational experts" (and Michelle Rhea), frankly, considering how eager they've been to embrace every hare-brained corporate-sponsored fad that's been thrown at them for several decades running, I'm not particularly reverent of most of them: they keep saying we need the same things (smaller class sizes, "higher-quality" teachers, more parent involvement, etc.) but almost NEVER actually offer ideas as to HOW to make these things happen in such an anti-intellectual society as we live in nowadays. Who do they demand do this instead? Those damned lazy teachers, of course! I mean, it's not like they've got anything else to do...

[CMoon]

Would love to see some big wigs in LAUSD endorsing smaller class sizes. It is a HUGE difference, but of course that directly equates $$$, so they aren't going to do it. That's why I feel like so much of this is just a scam. If they really wanted changes, they'd drop class sizes, and put kids that are below basic in core areas into 'emergency classes' that worked to ramp them up to grade level. The absence of genuine and significant change tells you the agenda is something different.

[CMoon]

Clearly this is the solution.

Bonus LOLs for watching the video.

[KindGrind]

Wow.

Seriously.