1. Faculty meetings - an hour of my life listening to whiny teachers that I will never get back B. Staff development on the teacher workday - sure I would rather listen to this lady pontificate on math while I could actually be grading my social studies stack of papers ... or posting on BS III. Kids that continuely, each and every day, cannot get it through their mind that I simply refuse to write a bathroom pass. I am sure there are more but I have to go get ready for tomorrows classes.
Where to start. 1. Teaching stupid curriculum that i know 98% of the students will never use or need. 2. Content Standards 3. District or school mandated grading curves. 4. Parents that believe they know more to teaching than someone in the education field. Also parents who believe their child's BS stories over multiple teacher explanations for behavior. 6. The limited possibilities for real discipline. 7. School emphasis on sports. 8. Knowing there crappy teachers that are screwing up kids.
I curious to know what happened to 5 Exam invigilation for two hours on a Saturday when you can't do anything isn't very appealing.
Decided to change a couple things so it wasn't such a long rant. Apparently that one slipped by my lookover. But since you asked i'll add one more thing: 5. All those damn fundraisers. You know you can't turn down them all down all the time. Side note: Anyone watch 20/20 last night? A very good program on what's wrong with teaching in the US. Very good but will make many bad teachers upset.
I asked my wife if there's anything she hates about being a teacher. She thought for a couple of minutes and then said, "Not enough handsome men."
Students who cancel. Ok, so I'm a freelance ESL teacher and don't have the same headaches as you guys... but I still hate that!
I am a university reference & instructional librarian and am the liaison to our Graduate School of Education...I get to teach all their research classes. So, in essence, I get to teach the teachers. Now, most of them are great students, but the research skills/information literacy skills of some of them leave a lot to be desired. Which bohers me as they transfer their lack of skills into the classroom. In having a discussion with my fellow librarians, the teachers can be the neediest bunch of students and are absolutely horrible and returning their materials. Sounds funny, but it is really true. We had to send out bills to several people that were over $1000 each. But, oveeral, I love working with Grad Students, as opposed to some of my fellow librarians who have to (get to ) work with undergraduates. lol
I work in a small college library (not a professional librarian) and do college level adjunct teaching. 1) Having to look into that vast, yawning abyss of indifference whenever I teach a class that people take for Core credit without the least bit of interest and/or curiosity. Part of this is because of... 2) Idiot administrators who have no idea how a liberal arts college is supposed to operate. 3) Students spending about $28,000 per year who try to get as little for that huge amount of money as possible, who seem to mistake "college" for "luxury cruise" and who seem to assume that they are "customers" and not students (see number two for one possible origin of this state of affairs). 4) The belief among our "student"-athletes that they might some day get paid to play their game, therefore their sport is more important than their classes (the worst offenders right now are the women's basketball players) (oh, we're NAIA div. II). 5) A college president who donates books to the library. The last bag consisted entirely of well-worn paperback novels by Clive Cussler and Tom Clancy. This is related to # 2 also, since most of the inept administrators come from his now-defunct company.
I don't necessarily HATE all these things, but they all bug me: a. Kids who say, "Why did you give me an F?" My answer: "I didn't give you an F; you earned it all by yourself!" b. Kids who show up late and first thing they do is ask for a bathroom pass. No f-ing way, my friend!! c. As pething101 said, "B. Staff development on the teacher workday." d. Other teachers not consistently enforcing the rules. Makes me look like the total bitch. "But why can't we? Mr. XXXX lets us do that in his class!!" e. Sometimes having to use somebody else's lesson plan format instead of the ones that work for me. f. Not being able to wear jeans and a T-shirt to work. g. Not being able to use the occasional swear word.
I'd swear around you too Not a teacher, but the wife is and what I hear most often is overabundance of uninvolved parents. The ones who just don't care. Her other big complaint in year's past was lack of support from the principal in matters of discipline, but the hiring of a new principal has changed that.
1. The assumption by many (or most) students that I must demonstrate to them why they should not receive an A or B rather than why they should demonstrate to me they are A or B students. 2. Related to #1--the squeezing of the grade range so that most students expect an A or B on all assignments and/or classes. 3. Student evaluations--actually it's more the evaluation process, which in most schools is ineffective and useless. The questions asked of the students are usually so open to interpretation as to be meaningless (how do you define teaching ability? whose definition do we use? how do we all know we're using the same definition?). On the open-ended questions I'm alternately "the best" or "the worst" instructor "ever," as in, "John is the worst teacher. Ever." 4. I'm with pething on faculty meetings (attended them in a previous position). I sat through a series of meetings where a business item was discussed multiple times (kept coming up without a resolution or decision)--which version of the Oxford English Dictionary to buy and where to buy it. Certainly worth discussing but let's make a decision and vote for Pete's sake. 5. First day of spring semester (today!).
I don't know if you teach high school, b/c that age is just a different beast. Girls are clumsy flirters and/or very daring. But I honestly don't have this problem at all, and I'm a decent looking guy. And I've taught at UCLA (me-OW). The trick? I've learned that women absolutely hate being rejected. They cannot take it. And they'll do anything to avoid being rejected. It is absolutely obvious to my students that I'm not interested, so they know they'll be rejected. In my experience, guys that have a problem w/ forward female students tend to give off a "yeah, it's possible" vibe. Women pick up on that and act accordingly. I've never once had a problem w/ this, save my first semester of teaching and a gay guy making a suggestive remark.
I think what I dislike the most is that the job is literally never done. No matter how much work I do preparing, teaching, mentoring, grading, attending meetings, etc, there is always more to do.
Switching certification from one state to another is a bitch. I am fully certified (with three years experience) to teach in North Carolina but they want me to take a Prospective Teachers test here in Alabama? Wtf is up with that?
Well some of us have no clue what NCLB is. It's certainly ongoing though. Finding ones feet is tough.
Just a stupid question for all of the HS teachers here, but how did you guys get certified to teach? Did you take classes in your undergraduate work? Have to go to grad school? Or is there a way just to pass a state exam and off you go? I ask because I was thinking about taking some education classes in my undergrad work, but didn't know if they would be of any use in terms of getting certified. Of course, I know they would help me prepare if I decided I wanted to teach.
There are actually many different ways to get certified to teach, often varying from state to state. Some folks take a masters program (a Masters in Teaching) to get certification. Some folks go the route of alternative certification, which lets them start teaching while they take classes towards their certification. I went the more traditional route (the one you seem to be considering). I took the Education track during my undergrad work. Basically, you have two majors. You still have to do all of the requirements for your content (in my case, English), but you also have a bunch of credits to take in Education courses (and they are usually structured in a very strict order). It's not something where you can just take a class or two and use that to get certified if the bug happens to bite you down the road. As far as testing, the most common test for educators is the Praxis series. All education majors must pass the Praxis 1 (a basic skills test that any idiot should do fine on) and the Praxis 2 (a 2-part exam, with one part dealing specifically with your content (ie- you show that you know your stuff) and another part dealing with pedagogy (ie- you show that you know how to teach your stuff)). There are some states that don't require the Praxis. Also, if you don't want to go through all of that, there is always the option of applying to a parochial school. Private schools don't have the same guidelines for teacher requirements that public schools do (though they also tend to have lower pay and fewer benefits). A few education courses here and there might look good on a resume for a private school (though not nearly as good as good grades in your content and maybe a theology class here and there).