Teaching
What these Teachers’ must go through to reach a level of pay less then worthy of a Janitor, is insulting at best ! This guy never even mentions what a posative effect on CSAP results might occur, should the parents of their children spend more time aiding in the educational process. Have you ever taken the time to equate that $200 dollars a day ,divided by 8 hours a day, divided by 25 kids, equals $1 per kid an hour. Too bad we can’t get that rate on friday nights ! And as corporate executives issue themselves one hundred million dollars annually, and athletes,and actors earn the equivelent. You may want to take a moment to right your priorities with this. Even if you’re just a college grad with a BA in liberal arts, and you’re making 100K. Then you’re earning two times that of a 20 year Teacher, whose probibly within 3 credits of a Doctorate, and you only have to deal with your kid maybe twice a day !
This letter has not been edited.
Maybe you ought to run your writing through a word spell check before posting it, especially since the topic you have chosen for discussion is education.
Otherwise, I am trying to get into teaching (and I have an M.A. and a B.A., both in liberal arts, and I don't make more than I would as a teacher) because I'll get a quarter of the year off. Maybe they are educated, but believe me, indoctrinating children with liberal values is much easier than the white-collar job I am doing now. Summers off + large supply combined with small demand = low rate of pay.
Posted by on September 14, 2007 02:13 PM"indoctrinating children with liberal values..."
So, you and your conservative friends find 2+2 equaling four to be liberal? When did the definition of a verb become liberal OR conservative? Save your right-wing robot responses for your weekly "He-Man Liberal Haters Club." In real society, it only weakens your argument and makes you look sad, and little. Which is true, but you shouldn't be so obvious about it.
Posted by shaupeen on September 14, 2007 03:34 PMI hope your white collar job does not involve having to know what you're talking about. It could be that the teachers are not the ones to blame for the chip on your shoulder. I hope that as you mature it will get smaller.
Posted by Truth on September 14, 2007 03:45 PMTo paraphrase: Values have a liberal bias.
Posted by Sharon B. on September 14, 2007 11:58 PMSharon B.
What does "Values have a liberal bias"
mean? Truth has no bias, I don't get it. Did some teacher tell you taht?
How many full time, 20 year teachers, 3 credits short of a doctorate make only $50,000?
Most teaching MA's and PhD's are obtained by regurgitating a professors words and accounting for credit hours( you usually don't even need to attend class!) Compare to a BS, MS or PhD in a science or even (shudder) a law degree.
These so-called post graduate degrees are equivalent to Union seniority and most are just a tangible representation of time put in. The NEA somehow has bambooled the public into associating merit pay and ability to them. An Argument could be made for the opposite, since most post-grad ed. courses consist of psycho-babble and cut and paste research.
AF
Posted by on September 15, 2007 08:13 AMProblem is the spokesmen for the teachers and the union, usually the same person in a local area, is going to represent the "position" of the union leaders which, now, is more liberal than conservative. Don't mistake their words or opinions for what teachers believe. Politics have been involved in education since the beginning. Only recently has there been such a disconnect between the leaders of the teacher's unions and the teachers.
I blame the social turmoils of the sixties and seventies which changed so many things in such a short period of time including families and education.
Short version is that we wanted to improve education. Some improvements were to be more and better courses. One improvement was to be the concentration of effort on the "lost" kids who didn't learn to read or much of anything in school. We wanted to include handicapped children in day to day things like school. What didn't happen was enough consultation with teachers. Planning was confined to "experts" most of whom had never taught in an average (does such a thing exist?) classroom. The materials, the buildings and, most important, the administrators weren't ready. What works in a limited scope may work in a wider context but will require someone with experience with the material, and the context, and the students. Most of the projects had some success. Most also had some failures. Administration wasn't going to admit failure nor give up any authority. The solution, in a corporation or a business is to study the problem and test solutions. The only thing at risk is profit. That may mean the business is also in danger of failure. Business failure means the business no longer exists. Other businesses may offer the service or, it may disappear. In education failure means you try again because the purpose is progress, not profit. That said, education needs to make use of more tools from business. Perhaps the most useful tool is a willingness to admit failure and scale back expectations.
No, we don't stop trying to educate all children. We don't stop improving teaching methods and rules because the failure of the education system to learn and change in the early 70's left a void filled by those with an activist view. They got there first. That doesn't mean we have to leave them in charge. Neither do we discard decades of experience and practice in favor of the new.
We need to reward good teachers and find a way to improve education. Accountability must have a simple definition. Complex platitudes came in with the politics. We can lose them and gain.
I left the most important difference between business and education for last. Business failure hurts people. Usually adults. Education failure hurts children. Children don't have time to wait. The time we assign to children's learning is 12 years. Even one year of failure costs children time they can't make up. A child who remains inn one school system for the entire 12 years is rare. Families move, schools and teachers open and close and boundaries change. The school may do its best to "catch up" kids who were left behind or pushed behind by a mistaken policy or program. Assuming the best results and best intentions still leaves more of them behind as the years go on.
I liken education to building a tower of blocks. You start at the bottom and add to the different levels year by year. Kids who miss part or all of one level may never build above that level or may get more and more behind or quit trying.
While we need to solve the problems with education quickly, there is no quick fix. So we must take our best chance and keep working on it.
Most basic to any education solution will be the return to authority of the most important part of education: the teacher. Yes, hold them accountable for what they DO. Let them know what they are supposed to teach. Use their suggestions, their ideas, their experience and their energy to solve this problem. Realize that there will be parents who will try to stop this progress. There will be teachers who try to sit back and coast. I suspect the most important part of any plan for improvement is that we define what we want and how we will measure it. Allow the teachers immunity from prosecution for non-physical discipline. A teacher should be permitted to have students removed from a class if they are disruptive. A teacher who abuses this will stand out and might suffer more difficulty with fellow teachers than from anyone else. We need to decide if we are going to experiment with our children's future much longer.
Oh, my favorite part would be to require (OK no one will have enough authority make it a requirement) that one without at least five years in a classroom would be able to make any academic decisions in this matter.
make that NO ONE without at least five years teaching in a classroom would be able to make any academic decisions in this matter.
Posted by momma y on September 16, 2007 10:30 PM