LGP Education thread

[shmenguin]

Yeah, definitely. But such qualifiers are no fun in the world of generalizations.

I'll say this though...it seems like the longer you teach the better you are at efficienciently doing your job. That's a stark contrast with new teachers. From what I've seen anyways.

[MWB]

Yeah, I think the best teachers are the ones who develop that efficiency while maintaining a level of enthusiasm. If you don't develop the efficiency, it becomes very easy to work to exhaustion or cut corners.

[count2infinity]

This was a comment on reddit of someone making a post "I want to be a teacher, but I'm afraid of the environment I'll be teaching in"

Your environment will be the least of your worries if you are considering studying to be a teacher right now. When it comes to students and environments, not only do you get to love the kids in most places and EARN respect if you're actually a decent teacher, if you really don't fit in a place, you can find another job; this is not the "good ol days" where teachers never moved; right-to-work idiocy has contributed heavily to the kind of teaching where you never really get tenured or established in one place unless you really, really want to.

What you SHOULD be worrying about is the absolute annihilation of the professional nature of teaching at all, especially if it's going to be five or more years until you begin. In 2014, I ended a ten-year teaching career, and I advised my students strongly against entering the field. It was hard for my generation, yes, with the whole NCLB issue (which was ratified while I was in college) and the massive restructuring of all educational funding around quantitative data. That was our burden to carry, but the burden your generation of teachers will carry? It's almost too much to ask anyone to deal with. You will be required to become very proficient in your field, spend exorbitant amounts of money on education and training, and then, with new nationalized curricula and districts and principals desperate for money, you will be given no academic freedom to implement what you know, unless what you studied was statistics. Students are no longer individuals with individual needs; they are an aggregate of data that determine whether a school will receive operating funds or not. The past few decades have stripped away every vestige of professionalism from teaching. Your work will far more closely resemble that of a number-crunching accountant or a Wal-Mart associate working from a script than that of a Masters-degree holding professional allowed to create a unique learning environment suited to your students based on your analysis.

Moreover, the educational bubble is going to blow soon. I worked successfully for 10 years, have never bought a new car, or owned a home, but the $35,000 salaries I never exceeded were simply not enough to pay off the $40,000 of college debt I incurred. I will default on them this year. This nation has made a deliberate attempt to defund primary and secondary education over the past few decades and the business of education can be summed up as such: you're expected to be a professional, but given neither the freedom nor the compensation or authority to justify such a position; you, your school, and your district will be so desperate for money and resources that you'll feel like you're living in the third world, and the division of parents between those who have truly given up on education and those who will helicopter the **** out of their brats out of entitlement and desperation has become complete. There is no happy middle that I have seen.

Man, there are no upsides to being a teacher unless you are a St. Sebastian kind of martyr, and things are going to get WAY worse very soon before they get better. Your question is a common starting question. I have worked everywhere from the inner-city, metal-detector school in northern PA to the podunk, 300-person middle school in rural Florida. Forget your superficial concerns, the whole discipline you're considering is on fire, collapsing and destroying the lives of a huge number of people involved in it. Pay and respect have never been lower, and the sheer amount of sidework has never been higher. Only martyrs teach now in America.

[MWB]

Pretty spot on.

[dodint]

This was a comment on reddit of someone making a post "I want to be a teacher, but I'm afraid of the environment I'll be teaching in"

Nice, e-mailed this to my wife. She got her teaching degree from SVC in 2005 or so, so right about when this guy got his degree. She abandoned the profession and went a completely different way because of the teaching climate and NCLB. Great read, thanks for sharing.

[MWB]

"Report: Requiring kindergartners to read — as Common Core does — may harm some"

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ans ... harm-some/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

In what is a shock to very few people, play in kindergarten is actually more important than reading. Yet kindergarteners are being assessed for reading skills more and more each year.

[Grunthy]

Common core and nclb were the final nails in America's school systems. Politicians and the department of Ed have destroyed our system.

[MWB]

NCLB and Race to the Top are both awful. Common Core, overall, I don't have as much of a complaint with. The thing with kindergarteners reading is the belief that everything needs to be assessed repeatedly, which goes far beyond Common Core.

[count2infinity]

NCLB really began the data based way of looking at education, and that's what has lead to what we see now. It's all about the data and it's all about test scores. It's not about learning anymore. I really think that attitude has even carried over to the students as well. "I just want the answer, don't care how or why that's the answer" sort of attitude.

[dodint]

I'm surprised at how little actual thought has gone into my Masters. I really thought it would be more interesting but it's still just read/remember/write instead of applying learned concepts to a problem. I might've been more challenged by my bachelors in History simply because of the amount of 'read' in the process. I should have gotten a CS degree from the beginning and learned something practical, I think.

Hoping the Doctorate is better. It's a practical Doctorate, not a research Ph.D, so I hope so.

[count2infinity]

[youtube][/youtube]

I'm curious as to what the multisensory intervention involves. When I was growing up, my dyslexia help was mostly just double check your math and don't worry so much about catching up with others when it comes to reading speed. Focus and strive for comprehension rather than speed as well as practice, practice, practice for spelling. It's cool to see that studies are starting to understand this issue better and develop better methods of helping kids that struggle from dyslexia. When I was teaching, I had a ton of kids that were dyslexic. They were always surprised when I understood what they were going through and was able to help them through it. Many told me of stories where teachers just brush them off as dumb and don't bother. I'm glad it's getting better with more knowledge and research on the subject.

[MWB]

Interesting. There's so much we still have to learn about the brain. THAT should be the next big thing in education, instead of whatever fun idea the politicians come up with.

[count2infinity]

I agree. I like the idea of treating the "disease" rather than treating the "symptoms". Seems to be the way things are heading which is a good thing.

[MWB]

He month of January is basically a waste, teaching wise. Practice state tests and assessments to verify things we already know. What a joke.

[count2infinity]

May was always a joke the two years I taught. My students were mostly 11th graders and just finished their PSSAs and looking forward to being seniors. They were checked out.

[MWB]

Yeah, may is a joke too. Test taking strategies and prep, then the test.

[MWB]

Diane Ravitch gets it right again:

"Just say no to annual testing. No high-performing nation does it, and neither should we. We are the most over-tested nation in the world, and it’s time to encourage children to sing, dance, play instruments, write poetry, imagine stories, create videos, make science projects, write history papers, and discover the joy of learning.

As I learned from you, the U.S. Department of Education should not act as a National School Board. The Secretary of Education is not the National Superintendent of Schools. The past dozen years of centralizing control of education in Washington, D.C., has not been good for education or for democracy."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ans ... lb-advice/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[count2infinity]

But if we don't test students how can we keep those lazy, overpaid, non-fireable, no good teachers accountable?

[MWB]

Schools in NC were given their grades today, ranging from A to F. Those grades are solely based on test scores - 80% from the scores, 20% from improvement of scores. Not surprisingly, the A/B schools are mostly the schools in higher income areas and the D/F schools are in lower income areas. Even if a school has shown good improvement it can still be failing.

[count2infinity]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ans ... ized-test/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

might be what it takes to get the ball rolling to show how terrible standardized testing is.

[Grunthy]

Hopefully a national movement happens, so this stupid testing thought up by the a-holes, sorry I mean leaders, in DC, go away.

[MWB]

That's what it will take. Parents have all the leverage, and they need to use it. I think teachers can do it to an extent, but they have a lot less say and a lot more to lose.

[count2infinity]

BTW, the Seattle teachers that refused to give their students standardized tests got 10 days unpaid leave. Compare that to some cops who assault and even kill people in the line of duty who get paid leave for their actions. I know it's not the same thing, but still.

[pittsoccer33]

This is something I've been thinking about recently:

Kids, as in young kids, really like to learn. I think its part of their survival instincts. Learning about dinosaurs, or bugs, or trucks, whatever interests them, they like learning.

At what age does that stop? Approximately junior high age, like 12? And why?

I actively love learning. I spend more time at night reading about things than I do watching television. But I don't get the sense that most other adults like to do that.

[count2infinity]

I think for a majority of kids it's puberty where the love for learning stops. Now, let me preface that by saying there are a number of students who never lose the love for learning. I know I was one of them, and likely many scientists/engineers never really lose that love for learning. By that same token, not all children have that love for traditional learning, so they lose the love for school very early in their educational careers. But for the most part, it's puberty. It's no longer cool to be smart at that age, it's cool to be athletic, it's cool to be stylish, it's cool to know about pop culture, it's not cool to be smart anymore. Maybe people who taught that age could back that up, but that's where I think it happens.