Quote:
Originally Posted by Neal Stevens
(Post 1950767)
Welcome to the world of socialism :)
Dredging up the last "school/teaching" topic I can find. I have been teaching for 2 months now, and it has been a real interesting experience. Some observations:
I've heard for years how the solution to the education problem in America is the quality of teachers. At this juncture, I have to point out that you get what you pay for, and most of the teachers I have met and worked with are smart, motivated, patient, and by all means, capable. For $45,000 a year (yes, with 2 months off in the summer, that's the only reason anyone would do this job :haha:), it's not bad pay, but it's still pretty limited.
The real issue is the quality of students--you cannot teach very much if the kids will not stop talking and sit in their seats. It's a constant battle to keep them on task, hit the sweet spot of holding their severely limited attention span and interest, and get them to do their work. Yes, I know kids have always resisted school and education, long since before I was a kid, and that it's our job to drag them into the light. But in the past -- correct me if I am wrong -- the parents actually did their job and raised a kid who would respect their elders enough to shut up and sit down...and allow some teaching to take place.
And the school system is at fault, probably because society/voters/legislators are outlining what they must/can and cannot do with regards to classroom management, by enabling kids to get away with bad behavior, and by forcing teachers to deal with disruptive kids mixed in with kids who will actually do their part and receive instruction. Honestly, I feel horrible for the 40% of the class who are quiet and trying, while I spend most of my time trying to keep the other 60% in line. And the teacher has few real options to make a disruptive kid feel real consequences.
I think private schools do work, like you said, for several reasons--higher teacher pay, definitely attracts better teachers, but also the people who value education and send their kids to private schools probably have their stuff together more and their kids are less disruptive. And, if Johnny is in trouble for his behavior, mom and dad will address that with real concern because they are paying directly for his education. Sort of like college.
My respect for teachers, which was considerable before this (based on the quality, caring work they did with my children), has increased.
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Well, there are certain teaching techniques to keep the class quiet:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uhiCFdWeQfA :D
What would interest me, how the other teachers in your age are, some could be there for 25 years and already burned out. This is what kids notice too. Having been one of the disruptive kids, I can tell you that motivation is the key factor and this is a two-way-street. Though I must say that a quota of 60% disruptive kids sounds awfully high - we were maybe 10% during my school days.
Motivating is easy said, especially with so many you have to motivate, where individual promotion is neccessary, but undeemable in big classes. Motivation through fear for repercussion does not work, hell we collected letter to the parents and reprimands (word?) as a sport. The fact that you might cut your later career chances is also not really a menace, as the age of 16 is lightyears away when you're in middle school.
I wish that we would get one value back, that we used to have, even among the evil, noisy kids like me: being educated is cool, staying dumb not. This is the mindset that is worth achieving. In contrast to limiting your words to an amount of maybe a dozen words, cause da cool gangstas talk like dis. Or the google mindset: "why should I learn something, when I can get all the infos within a few clicks?" :dead:
This is what makes it harder being a teacher today - also the limited attention span that you mentioned. This really has changed in the information age, you directly compete against all the big, colorful world of social media, iphones, etc, etc.
If I had a creative idea how to fix this, I would be a rich man.
You have the advantage that you're fresh on the job, so you are not as much in patterns as a person might be who is there since 1872. This is an advantage: breaking teaching patterns could work, use the new media, use the things you find out that keep the students occupied in their spare time. For a limited attention span the cure might be to drop an attention bomb every several minutes - as I don't know if you teach chemistry, please don't take the last tip literally :03:.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Takeda Shingen
(Post 1950809)
I was making $25k per year and the benefits were terrible. That was masters scale too. And that was the tradeoff for the better teaching environment.
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Ay caramba, I stand corrected about my crazy assumption that some of the money parents pay for private education would go to the ones who actuallywork there...:-?
