5 things teachers want parents to know (CNN)

[cromette]

That's nice, BCEagle - and some like you with your contributions, actually BECOME the change and run for school board or volunteer resources or time or both to the school as well.

Start a literacy program. Learn to speak a foreign language and help ELS students learn English. DO something instead of complain about the system, about teachers, about administrators.

[BCEagle91]

I have had several co-workers or their spouses on the Town Council or School Board. These are serious responsibilities and consume a lot of time and the people on these boards usually run when their kids are teenagers or a little younger to improve things from the inside. This exposes their families to all kinds of attacks from parents, teachers, and political opponents. I think that some find out that making large changes can be pretty difficult - especially in a divided town.

Folks usually leave elected office when their kids leave the school system.

If I had a magic wand, I'd make sure that parents were educated first so that they'd be able to help educate their kids. Fixing education without parental support is very, very, very hard. The countries that do very well in education have to set the stage where you have a well-educated populace that can then contribute to helping educating their own children - even with just setting good examples. This becomes a virtuous cycle. We don't have that here generally. Where we do have it usually results in districts that price out the vast majority.

[cromette]

Those personal attacks are EXACTLY why I would consider running AFTER my kids were graduated!

But yes, agreed, the trick is to change the culture and engage the parents.

[xiggi]

Fixing education without parental support is very, very, very hard. The countries that do very well in education have to set the stage where you have a well-educated populace that can then contribute to helping educating their own children - even with just setting good examples.

Really? Do you have a short list of countries that do well and rely on parental involvement? Which are those? Asian countries a la Korea? Cities like Shangai? European countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, or Belgium?

I can give you plenty of examples of countries that are doing much better than we do and have very little parental involvement. At least not the parental involvement that is often suggested by the academic lobbies.

The reality is that the countries that have successfully maintained or created a system of excellence have done it through a number of factors such as maintaining a level of competition between private and government schools (all are public schools) and maintaining a high standard for the access to the teaching profession. Being a teacher in some countries is just as respected as being a doctor or attorney, but there are reasons behind this, starting with a similar level of required education and specialization.

[BCEagle91]

My usual educational example is Singapore.

[xiggi]

So, you have Singapore on your short list of countries. As far as I know Singapore is a very wealthy but small country that can afford to spend a smaller portion of its GDP for education than most other countries. Isn't the budget for education in Singapore about 7bn Dollars for about half a million students, and the National GDP around 260 bn?

Do you have evidence that Singapore's success can be tracked to parental involvement? Is that country known for its openness in government affairs?

Since you wrote "The countries that do very well in education ..." I assumed you had a few more examples, but that is OK!

[nwcrazy]

@LoremIpsum-- Anybody can teach 1 kid algebra. But the reality is that I sincerely doubt your 6 year old really understands it. It's more likely that you've taught him the mechanics of it without your kid really knowing how to apply it in a situation that is not just replicating what you've done.

I know so many parents that think their kids can do things that are amazing. But the reality is that MOST of the kids are just regurgitating patterns that they've been introduced to...

nothing more.

[Pizzagirl]

"Controlling a class of 20-30 kids may be an acquired skill, but teaching is something that almost everyone does at some point in life: with children, siblings, spouses and co-workers. "

That strikes me as nonsensical, because in the work world, some people are great teachers/coaches and others aren't and need to develop that skill.

I hope that teaching a 6 yo algebra didn't preclude said 6 yo from biking, climbing trees, being silly and just being a kid. Glad my kids weren't such geniuses that they needed algebra at age 6 to stop being soooo bored. Doesn't seem like any kind of blessing to me.

[collegealum314]

@LoremIpsum-- Anybody can teach 1 kid algebra. But the reality is that I sincerely doubt your 6 year old really understands it. It's more likely that you've taught him the mechanics of it without your kid really knowing how to apply it in a situation that is not just replicating what you've done.

I know so many parents that think their kids can do things that are amazing. But the reality is that MOST of the kids are just regurgitating patterns that they've been introduced to...

nothing more.

ugh

*flashback*

I hope that teaching a 6 yo algebra didn't preclude said 6 yo from biking, climbing trees, being silly and just being a kid. Glad my kids weren't such geniuses that they needed algebra at age 6 to stop being soooo bored. Doesn't seem like any kind of blessing to me.

It's not a blessing, and mostly because of people like you and nwcrazy who freak out whenever a kid does something "too advanced."

[Pizzagirl]

Why would I freak out over what YOUR kid does that's so far advanced? That's an odd statement.

[BCEagle91]

> So, you have Singapore on your short list of countries. As far as I
> know Singapore is a very wealthy but small country that can afford
> to spend a smaller portion of its GDP for education than most other
> countries.

Singapore was a third-world country back in the 1960s. How do you go
from being a third-world country to being one of the wealthiest
countries in the world with no natural resources in forty years?

> Isn't the budget for education in Singapore about 7bn Dollars for
> about half a million students, and the National GDP around 260 bn?

I haven't looked at their educational spending numbers recently but
the last time I looked (which is within the last year), they spent
more than we did.

> Do you have evidence that Singapore's success can be tracked to
> parental involvement? Is that country known for its openness in
> government affairs?

Outside of my wife having grown up there, me living there for a few
months, talking to my relatives that live there, my kids spending
about five months there and visiting their schools and playgrounds?

> Since you wrote "The countries that do very well in education ..." I
> assumed you had a few more examples, but that is OK!

You could add South Korea, Taiwan and Japan if you wish.

> Anybody can teach 1 kid algebra. But the reality is that I sincerely
> doubt your 6 year old really understands it. It's more likely that
> you've taught him the mechanics of it without your kid really
> knowing how to apply it in a situation that is not just replicating
> what you've done.

Teaching a kid algebra at 6 implies that you taught all of arithmetic,
including fractions, long division, word problems, geometry, number
sense, ratios, proportions, etc. when they were younger.

> I know so many parents that think their kids can do things that are
> amazing. But the reality is that MOST of the kids are just
> regurgitating patterns that they've been introduced to...

> nothing more.

Our son taught himself algebra at 6. We used Jacob's Algebra which
would be considered an old-school book. It's a wonderful book in that
it does a nice job explaining concepts and relationships in multiple
ways. The book is outstanding for self-study. We also used some
materials from the New Math back in the 1960s that covered
non-standard topics.

The exercise sections had brain teasers and included word problems.
I think that it would be hard to answer the brain teasers and word
problems with only a plug-and-chug approach.

I do know what you are talking about though. I once sat in on a
university calculus course. This was in the evening program where the
standards for admission are a lot lower than the regular full-time day
school. The professor was teaching plug-and-chug. I was astonished at
how little was taught. The textbook wasn't used at all. It was all about
remembering patterns.

I spoke to the professor for an hour after class and he explained why
they do it this way - it's the only way to get these students through
to a degree. I understand why the interview process is so tough at a
lot of employers now. A degree may mean very little depeneding on
where it comes from. This guy is a tenured professor with significant
research. I got the feeling that he was as sick at what he was doing
as I felt about the approach.

> That strikes me as nonsensical, because in the work world, some people
> are great teachers/coaches and others aren't and need to develop that
> skill.

Universities with Schools of Education typically have dedicated
libraries for these schools. Boston College and Boston University
certainly do. The Boston College SOE library was open to the public
when we were raising our kids and I used their resources (along with
those at BU) to learn what teachers learn, at least from the
perspective of textbooks and curricular materials. These libraries
typically have lots of sample curriculum sets - I assume that the
textbook providers send them free samples. We have another SOE library
that I had access to at a local college and our school district made
their curriculum library available to us (we didn't use their
materials).

This was all back in the stone ages before the internet. It would be
considerably easier to get access to curricular materials today with
lots of free materials now.

> I hope that teaching a 6 yo algebra didn't preclude said 6 yo from
> biking, climbing trees, being silly and just being a kid. Glad my
> kids weren't such geniuses that they needed algebra at age 6 to stop
> being soooo bored. Doesn't seem like any kind of blessing to me.

Unschooling is a range of educational philosophies and practices
centered on allowing children to learn through their natural life
experiences, including play, game play, household responsibilities,
work experience, and social interaction, rather than through a more
traditional school curriculum. Unschooling encourages exploration of
activities, often initiated by the children themselves, facilitated by
the adults. Unschooling differs from conventional schooling
principally in the thesis that standard curricula and conventional
grading methods, as well as other features of traditional schooling,
are counterproductive to the goal of maximizing the education of each
child.

The term "unschooling" was coined in the 1970s and used by educator
John Holt, widely regarded as the "father" of unschooling.[1] While
often considered a subset of homeschooling, unschoolers may be as
philosophically separate from other homeschoolers as they are from
advocates of conventional schooling. While homeschooling has been
subject to widespread public debate, little media attention has been
given to unschooling in particular. Popular critics of unschooling
tend to view it as an extreme educational philosophy, with concerns
that unschooled children lack the social skills, structure, and
motivation of their peers, especially in the job market, while
proponents of unschooling say exactly the opposite is true:
self-directed education in a natural environment makes a child more
equipped to handle the "real world."[2]

-- Wikipedia

If your child showed strong interest in doing algebra at 6-years,
would you provide the means for them to study it? If they showed
strong interest in playing the violin at 6-years, would you provide
the private lessons for them to pursue it?

[SteveMA]

We went to parent/teacher conferences last night, for probably our last time in 20+ years of attending these things. In those 20 years and through 4 kids I can pick out exactly 2 teachers that had no business teaching. One was our oldest's 3rd grade teacher and one was a high school math teacher 2 of our kids had as freshmen (who retired last year and that was more the issue than anything--still knew his stuff for math, just in the "senior" slide mode). Sure, some teachers are better than others, that is just life, but I can honestly say that other than these 2 teachers, all of their teachers have been very good to excellent. You can see that they love their jobs, they do a great job teaching the kids and the results show. I'm just glad we don't live where some of you live that the schools are full of such incompetent people, wow.

I also STRONGLY disagree that "everyone can teach". The vast majority of people can NOT teach. Sure, they know how to do their jobs and know their fields well, but teaching OTHER people what they know is VERY different. Most people cannot pass along their knowledge to others in a way that everyone will understand what they are talking about or in a sequential fashion so one topic builds on another, keeping in mind that most people need significant repetition to learn something well. If you think teaching is so easy, I challenge you to volunteer at your district middle school for 2 weeks to teach a class of your choice then come back and report to us how easy that was and how well you were able to connect with those kids and how much they learned and retained.

[alh]

I hope that teaching a 6 yo algebra didn't preclude said 6 yo from biking, climbing trees, being silly and just being a kid. Glad my kids weren't such geniuses that they needed algebra at age 6 to stop being soooo bored. Doesn't seem like any kind of blessing to me.

Typically 6 year olds, doing advanced mathematics, are doing those lessons in the same space of time that other 6 year olds are learning addition/subtraction/etc. They have just as much time for "typical" 6 year old activities. Some of these children may spend more time on math than the average 6 year old because they think math is more fun than TV or computer games. If young children are strongly supported in following their own intellectual interests they will probably accelerate academically beyond their peers in those areas of interest. For elementary aged children there is really no reason most learning can't be "fun" and not a chore. The stereotype that accelerated children have been pushed by parents is just that. They are generally children whose parents just answer their questions and provide materials that address their interests. The children take it from there.

Loremipsum asked in an earlier thread about what a parent does with a toddler who really wants to read. My parents would tell you their biggest mistake was thwarting my efforts to learn to read. Their circle (lots of psychiatrists) had the idea children shouldn't be taught reading or math before going to school - so they wouldn't be bored. When they discovered I was memorizing words from my bedtime stories (I was tattled on after making the mistake of sharing this rather inspired idea with my friend next door) in an effort to teach myself, they began paraphrasing anything they read to me. Also I wasn't allowed to see the page. I can still remember how angry and frustrated that made me. At age four. At age three I had already given up on ever learning to write after bringing my own paper and pencil to the table where my mother was writing her letters and asking her to tell me how to spell various words... and being told I wasn't allowed to write till I went to school. And I couldn't go to school for a few more years. And a year was much longer than the time from summer to Christmas. So probably forever. It really sucked being three. They did get me a puppy. And a pony. I would rather have been able to read and write!

Long, long ago, I was a homeschooling mom and have a lot of years to think about early education. It is not clear to me that even in a classroom of 20 or 30 students, children couldn't be self-directed learners if they were given the proper materials. NOT the standard one-size-fits-all worksheets. I am thinking there really can be a one-on-one kind of experience in a classroom. It would also seem to me a much more efficient use of a child's time.

edit: cross posted with BCEagle #41 - Excellent Post!

[mathmom]

My son was programming computers in second grade. You can't do that without being capable of algebraic thinking. My mother relates a story of understanding algebra at an early age when her grandfather did the parlor trick where you take your age add, subtract and multiply a bunch of numbers and end up back where you started no matter what your age is.

As for teachers, except for a very few exceptions, even my kids bad teachers were willing to talk to me, and brainstorm for ways to make school work better for my kids. (One of whom was miles ahead of the curriculum in both reading and math at an early age, the other who, because of mild LDs was always about six months behind.)

Shoot4Moon is making me feel guilty I didn't do enough for the really good teachers! I did write a thank you to my older son's third grade teacher (cc copies to principal and superintendent). She was the one who let him work on math on his own and also do a lot of computer programming.

PG, my kids spent plenty of time outside, but my older son in particular, came home asking for more math. I wasn't pushing it. He wasn't happy if he didn't learn new things every day.

[BCEagle91]

> My mother relates a story of understanding algebra at an early age when her
> grandfather did the parlor trick where you take your age add, subtract and
> multiply a bunch of numbers and end up back where you started no matter
> what your age is.

I first saw this in a math puzzles book back in jr high school.

I believe that this is the approach used in the first lesson in Jacobs Algebra. If not the first lesson, then definitely in the first chapter. I looked for my copy but couldn't find it. I may have loaned out the first copy and the second copy is in a box of textbooks somewhere. It's definitely something that can provoke curiosity in children.

Another approach is to play around with proofs as seen in the first chapter of Spivak. Formally describe the rules without using numbers. There are all sorts of other ways to play around with rule-based systems that use everyday things.