The Random (Post-Modern???) Thoughts on Education Thread

I've been meaning to start this thread for awhile, but this would be a cool thread to share random stuff on education that don't warrant a separate thread.

Like... my department chair kicks ass and smacks around deans and their budget slashing ways!!!

Or like the time I saw a student of mine taking notes with her right hand and texting with the left. Impressive.

And then when I told that story to my night class (older students, but a significant # of ppl in their early 30's), I thought they would scoff at "this generation"...

... but they were markedly jealous.

My random thought for today is that this forum, from past experience, really needs a sticky disclaimer saying that we won't do your homework for you.

Avoid gossipers like the plague, especially if you are junior faculty.

Gossipers are on a need-to-know basis.

The education system in the USA is frankly broken. While individual teachers do want the kids to learn there is much wrong.......

- unlimited sick days for teachers
- the system is geared to placate the militant unions and not the client (ie students)
-teachers pension plans......get rid of them. The are too burdensome to the taxpayer. We need a 403b for teachers to be their retirement.
- budgets. The idea that if you get $1.00 this year and only spend $0.90 cents of it (as an example) they will reduce your budget next year is wrong. Schools should be rewarded for coming in underbudget not wildly spending money on anything to keep the budget.
- too much dead weight. All these administrators, directors, co-ordinators and other hangers on who just complicate the whole she-bang.
- Longer hours. This show up at 9am and waltz out at 3pm is wrong, Should be 8-4.
-Finances. Nobody is teaching the kids finances. We wonder why the economy is so wreaked, nobody taught kids how to budget. Should be the parents but its not. Needs to be the schools.
- lazy teachers. Not all but every school has 2 or 3 people just going through the motions. Fire 'em

finally..........performance based pay. Reward the good teachers and stop overpaying for the dead-enders who will happily tell you "they have ____(insert any number here) years until retirement".

The whole system is a joke. It rewards the work-adverse, lazy teacher and makes a good teacher afraid to rock the boat.

You should start a separate thread so you can get pummeled. You're harshing the mellow, man.

By the way, education is NOT the only industry that is affected by the whole "spend $1 or else your budget will get reduced next year" phenomenon. It happens in private industry as well.

I agree................. don't want to harsh out the mellow. You are right on about these and other issues effect private industry too.

It's Tuesday, and i'm half-way through the work week.

I love being a college prof.

Gave an exam that I thought was going to be hard, so I let the class go after finishing, thinking that they'd take 40 minutes. Nope. Took 20. But I'm enjoying the extra time!!!

FWIW (I'm not a teacher, but am in college planning to try to be one) but my mother is, and I've never seen her work 9-3. She usually leaves around 7:15-7:30 and is back around 4-4:30

I also personally know teachers who would work the school day+whatever after school, then work 2-3 hours after school at Target or whatever. They'd also work half a day or so on Saturdays at those places.

I thought he was joking on a few of those points.

Unlimited sick days? Not where I am. You have a set number, and even those are deducted from your pay.

9-3? Schools are in session from 8-4 where I am and teachers are required to arrive at 7:30 and leave at 4:30.

We have some schools going to a 4-day week next year and those kids have a day that is too long IMO.

My rant for the day: How is it that "school A" can be short of classrooms and in need of space, and "school B" (which is 15 miles down the road) have tons of extra classrooms that go unused? It works out for my district, but it just doesn't make sense that the people cant figure this out. Move some of the "school A" kids that live closest to "school B" to the other school. Come on people; It shouldn't be this complicated.

Wowzers. A point-by-point:

I have NEVER, seen this. Anywhere. Teachers have paid sick days, and they do accumulate. That said, most teachers I know have so many accumulated sick days that they could never conceivably use them. In all honesty, being out is more work than being there, so most teachers just go in sick, which brings us to the next issue: Kids carry germs. Getting sick happens more often for teachers. That's why they bathe in Purell.

Again, not anywhere I've seen. In all honesty, the students are placated FAR too much. They aren't "the client." They are the beneficiaries of a free public education. They have the right to an education, but they now think that they have the right to act like jackasses and receive good grades for no work. That placating of the students is part of the PROBLEM.

Question for you- Do you feel the same way about police officers and firefighters? Also, why would you want to make the job even more unsavory than it currently is? There's a reason most of the top potential students don't look twice at a career in teaching. They can use that ability to get a job paying much more for far less work.

Agreed on both of these points.

This one made me laugh out loud. I report to work at 7am. I teach until 2pm. I'm in the building until 3pm, tutoring students, filling out special education forms, meeting with parents, etc. I coach from 3pm until 5pm. I usually get home around 6pm. I grade and plan from 8pm until 11pm, and I STILL usually need the weekends to get caught up on the grading. In fairness, I understand that my schedule doesn't represent all teachers. I'm an English teacher (grading takes more time than, say, phys ed). Also in fairness, you need to admit that you just can't make a blanket statement like the one you posted above.

Why? We already are expected to teach them everything from how to spell cat to how to wipe their asses. If you expect the schools to make up for EVERYTHING parents neglect to teach their children, you are making education an impossible task. It's too much. Get businesses involved. Organize a teen budgeting activity at the community/neighborhood level. I get sick of the attitude of "well we didn't do it right. The schools should take care of it." Guess what? That "it isn't my fault and someone else should clean up my mess" attitude is why our economy is so "wreaked."

How? Who decides that? Granted, this is nothing more than anecdotal, but I have two co-workers in my department. One is the picture of the bad teacher that you described here. She assigns little and grades less. She has a reputation for putting on a film and texting all period. She also has a reputation for dressing far more risque than she should. The other co-worker busts his ass and takes on plenty of extra responsibilities. He works to implement new teaching strategies (he offered to work with me on a performance-based unit this year), and he coaches. He also runs a very tight classroom in terms of discipline. Last year, Teacher A was given tenure. Teacher B was denied tenure. Why? Simple. Teacher A has nice ta-ta's and keeps them on display. Teacher B confiscated a magazine from a girl during class, and she had her mother call in to complain. Students running the school? Check. Evaluation handled without checks and balances? Check.

Our school system isn't perfect, but people who think there are easy fixes are usually the same people who haven't set foot in a classroom since 12th grade.

I can think of all sorts of reasons why that might be the case,most of them involving de facto segregation based on race,ethnicity,social class,wealth disparity,and/or all of the above.

Don't know if that's true in your area,of course.

[rant]Why is it that when I tell an administrator that I am looking for a secondary Social Studies position at their school that they almost always reply, "Do you coach?"

Nothing irritates me more when they ask me that question. "No. I do not coach." It is no wonder that our students have such a lack of historical perspective. They are sitting in history classes with coaches who just hand out worksheets every day so they can read the newspaper and get that fat paycheck.[/rant]

While I can understand and relate to the sentiment to a certain extent, you are overgeneralizing a LOT. I coach all three seasons while also busting my ass to provide top notch instruction in return for a stipend that is anything but "fat."

I guess it depends on the district. Our assistant coaches make over double what a teacher makes. Granted, some of those coaches do put effort into their classes, but most do not. Again, I can only refer to the districts in my region, and we all know that football is more important than education in the South.

Wow. Definitely. I'm the head soccer coach, head tennis coach and assistant wrestling coach and those three combined only add about $3,500 to my annual salary. I guess Maryland isn't the best place to coach!

Well, there are plenty of reasons why schools in the Northeast have better test scores than schools in the South. This is just one of them.

According to the "Smartest State Award," Texas is the highest ranked Southern state at #25.

I know teachers who work the 2nd job as well, thats a fair point. I'm not anti-teacher, more anti-teacher union. I'm sure some teachers do put in the hours your mom does, however some though...............simply don't

I think you need to learn about the history of academic unions and legal issues surrounding large numbers of firings back in the late '60s and early '70s:

B/c of the politics of the time, admins were firing opponents left and right for "causing trouble"... meaning "I'm left wing, you're not. You're fired." or "I'm right wing. You're not. You're fired."

This happened in higher and lower education.

Unions began taking the issue to court, and districts and universities got clocked by the courts and had to pay hefty fines.

In order to prevent that from happening, admins AND unions worked together to make it more difficult to fire teachers.


Now. There was still a culture of firing incompetent/disastrous teachers. But when these would happen, precedent had already been set and it was easy to show that admins "colluded" w/ department chairs w/ prejudice to certain teachers, even though they simply SUCKED.

The result?

A series of class action lawsuits throughout the country that gave young, incompetent professors and teachers tenure for life. At my grad program, one lecturer was still teaching there after getting fired in 1974 and he finally retired in 2007. At another school, a lecturer in his 90's was still teaching after being fired in 1975. He would fall asleep during lecture for 30+ minutes. His classes had miniscule enrollment. They tried to pay him NOT to teach but he refused b/c he "loved teaching".

And the union was powerless b/c these guys won class action lawsuits.

And given how little teachers make, especially compared to what we used to make in '60s and '70s relative to the population, I'd say you've got little grasp of the issues at play.

We used to make more than cops. Now, a cop w/ a high school education makes $56,532/yr., whereas a teacher w/ two advanced degrees (credential + MA/MS) PLUS 4 years experience makes less.

http://www.joinlapd.com/salary.html

http://www.teachinla.com/Research/documents/salarytables/ttableannual.pdf

If you're going to bitch about unions... seriously... bitch about how they've been ineffective against attacks from politicians and talk radio zealots that demonize us, convinced that we're the culprit of all social ills and hence not worthy of making a decent living.

Talk about their inability to alter universities relying more and more and more on cheap labor of lecturers and grad students.

You should be paid less than cops.

Cops work 40 hours a week plus some OT.

Cops deal with peoples real world situations.

Cops help people.


Are Cops perfect? No but......

Teachers work from 8am to 2.30ish

Teachers work with children.

Teachers get all holidays off + Christmas 'break' + spring 'break'

Teachers get all summers off.

You are paid far more an hour in terms of real work than a cop on a normal beat.

Cops first year on the job.........50 weeks of 40 hours = 2000 hours. Teachers first year on the job............35 weeks of 28 hours = 980 hours.
(throw in unlimited sick time and its actually possible to work no hours).

Cops get shot at and by your own admission some teachers sleep on the job.

Don't grumble and groan about the 60's frankly back then teachers were respected.

Now look at this.............12,13, 14, 15,16 17 and 18 year old kids in Denmark, Quebec, Norway and Holland all score better in the English language than kids in America. Did you read that? or were you too busy pouring over the teacher union contract to see if they added another day off the books for you guys. KIDS in countries (and one province) that don't speak English as a mother tongue are scoring better average scores than American kids.

We already are smoked by kids in other English mother tongue countries of Canada, UK, Australia, NZ and Ireland. We are so far behind in science, math, computer ed and history across the board its laughable.

So it might not be your fault, and it might not be your unions fault, but the teachers unions have created a culture of fighting for whats best for the teachers (workers) instead of the children (clients).

and we wonder why we are so far behind the rest of the world. You guys are still living in the 60's with your teaching methods whilst places like South Korea, Germany and Holland have truly enriched teaching.


Your point about tenure is true and I've grumbled about this for a long time. Thank God President Obama at least recognizes these morons and wants better pay for better teachers.

Something the union is petrified over.

I think I might agree with your point (and I also agree that cops deserve better pay), but a lot of that post seems quite ignorant.

Most of that post is completely ignorant.

I can honestly say that I despise you. I took a break from studying for a national board certification assessment to log onto BS for a few minutes and see what's happening. It's 11:50 PM, and I'm working. Your ignorance is complete, and your spewed rhetoric sounds like the same regurgitated talking points that ignoramuses of your ilk blather ad nauseam.

Even when people who know better tore down your arguments systematically, you still repeat them as if no one even responded.

It's late, but, when I have more time, I will respond. But this is truly sick. You know nothing about education or the teaching profession -- so little, in fact, that you should actually lose your right to an opinion on the subject.

It's really unbelievable.