<p>I think it just boils down to practicality. If you go to a school in which everyone cheats, then it would be in your disavantage not to. This isn’t true in most cases however.</p>
<p>I know a 9th grader taking hon alg II whose math teacher viewed mom to be a helicopter parent. The kid was getting a C, and the teacher was peeved. He suggested, “Really he should be taking geometry. He’s a 9th grader”</p>
<p>Excuse me? ACT math winter of 8th grade 27. On 9th grade PSAT (8th grade plus 2 months) nailed every geometry question and scored 66. </p>
<p>But he can’t be qualified for Alg II? That reveals a fictitious “mathematics teacher”. Who abound, having been selected and trained under the machinations of anti-math / anti-science ed school administrators. </p>
<p>Teachers who are being “stressed” by the first time they have ever encountered parents who are better educated than they are, and want their kids to go to flagship, real universities, and study real-university stuff, as opposed to attending regional (within a state) “universities” that started out as normal schools training 14-15 year old girls to be teachers. </p>
<p>You’re problem is a mismatch: you don’t want to attend (or your children to attend) a teachers college. But who is teaching you (or your children)? </p>
<p>Seriously, go to your school’s website and find out where the teachers went to “university”. Oh, they don’t post this information for a “public” school site. That’s a take-home lesson. If you’re on the ball. </p>
<p>Why did I home-school? Because even though I loved my grandma, a graduate of the San Jose State Normal School, I didn’t want my kids to be taught by San Jose State University grads. My wife and I were Berkeley grads, she being a University Medal nominee, my ranking 2-3 in most of my undergrad classes. We learned things that schoolteachers could not understand. </p>
<p>I feel for kids who are subjected to regimens devised by people who THINK they are smart and well-educated, but who have no clue what the very competitive and highly competitive universities and LACs want.</p>
<p>Josh, old son, my daughter goes to boarding school where in addition to doing a work job of 8 hrs a week, homework, EC’s, doing her laundry, and athletics, she’s pulling darn good grades. And she’s 14. I think she’s darn mature and more importantly so do her teachers and advisor. But I didn’t want her to go to the local H.S. for some reasons you may have missed in your haste to be anecdotal.<br>
I’m glad you’re doing so well…I hope your folks are as proud of you as I am of my girl.</p>
<p>Homeschool Dad – There was an article a couple of months ago in the Washington Post Magazine about rookie teachers and how they are essentially dropped into a class room of ‘trouble’ and expected to sink or swim. Most of them have only books and theory to help them, even though they are allegedly given a senior teacher to guide them. I forget what they said the ratio of newbie teacher who stay past their second year is, but it was frighteningly low.</p>
<p>Josh, what sport does your calc classmate play?! It’s that or a combination of top high school/legacy whose parents donate major bucks/underrepresented MI community/etc. that adds up enough to negate the 24. Wow. But don’t worry about being at UM with him … it’s a huge place, and chances are you won’t even bump into him.</p>
<p>As for cheating … a group of teachers I know complained about kids cheating in their class & I asked them why they didn’t flunk them. They gave me reasons like the ones ejr cites. Years of this has just pushed them to the point of letting it go. I will say that cheating is not exactly rampant around my area, though. I wonder if instances of cheating go up when the educational background/income level of families increases? Just a thought.</p>
<p>My parents must have been the opposite of helicopter parents… even when I had crappy teachers, their response was generally a variation of “Great! You get something extra out of school - learning the life skills to deal with a crappy authority figure whose behavior you can’t change and who you can’t remove.”</p>
<p>Now, I didn’t have any ridiculous issues (the worst thing I had to deal with was a very close-minded administrator who decided that I should get slapped with a detention for bringing a foil to school because it was a weapon, but recanted when, after some back-and-forth, I eventually told him that he was welcome to have a foil and do his best damage to me if I could have my choice of the other sporting goods common around the locker room), so that approach worked pretty well. I’m sure they would’ve stepped in had anything absurd happened.</p>
<p>Nope, no sports. He’s actually probably the farthest thing from athletic. This year, he tried out for the Varsity soccer team. The day of cuts, he got cut. He knew that it’d look good on a resume, so he went and talked to the coach about the situation. After some begging, the coach decided to keep him.</p>
<p>Long story short, he skipped practices and eventually quit the team. Only sport he ever did during high school, and didn’t even get a varsity letter for it. I honestly was very surprised on how he made it into Michigan like that, also. I know his parents are Arabic, so I’m guessing that had something to do with it. We do not live in a poor underrepresented city, either.</p>
<p>He told me that he would email the admissions officer daily when he was applying. Honestly I wouldn’t doubt it either, he is the kind of kid that will do everything in his power to sway someone’s decision, hence why I do not want to go to college with him because I’ll be the one helping him cheat his way through college.</p>
<p>It ****es me off when kids do that. There are a select few kids out there that have an incredible worth ethic like the parents on this thread have mentioned earlier, but the majority of kids are lazy and just ruin it for those select few.</p>
<p>HomeschoolDad - I liked your comments. My math teacher for two years in high school (public) was an older teacher who had graduated from Harvard. The beauty of his teaching, the insight he had, and the love he had for his subject led me to undergraduate work in math, and graduate school in statistics. Forty years later I still hear his voice when I do math.</p>
<p>My daughters struggle with teachers who lack his ability, and who think that there is only a single way to do a problem. These teachers don’t have the joy and appreciation for diversity that I think comes from a true love for the subject, and a good education. I tell my daughters that it will be better in a good college. Probably. (Some of the highly educated don’t teach all that well, either, do they?)</p>
<p>I worry about the envy that teachers have for students who are aiming high. I base that on my own experience, as well as observation. I was a substitute teacher before I decided to try other careers. I remember a student who was vastly smarter than I, and enjoyed challenging his teachers. I remember the eager look of the rest of the class - how is <em>this</em> sub going to deal with Genius? It was an intimidating moment. My control was in jeopardy! I’m glad that I struggled with emotions for only a moment, and I think I became that old math teacher of mine for the answer: I explained what a good question he had, what the implications were in mathematics, that research had in fact been done in that area, and that investigating exactly the kind of question he asked and seeing where it went was a great joy to mathematicians. It was an honest and professional answer, and he was grateful for it. The class was happy with the interchange, and we made good progress. I enjoyed subbing there.</p>
<p>I don’t know the solution to finding enough good teachers. But they <em>are</em> a joy. I am grateful to a teacher in my daughter’s high school who just led a large group on a 5-day trip to DC. He changed a moderate interest she had in government and politics into an inferno. And to be fair, I don’t know if he graduated from Harvard, or San Jose.</p>
<p>Well said, emag. The best teachers are those who get satisfaction and pride from seeing their students make progress and achieve, and support them along the way. These teachers are unselfish; they treat the students with respect, value their opinions, and teach them to think for themselves.</p>
<p>The worst teachers are those who let their egos show, expect the students to do the problems or interpret the literature the same way they do, and punish/discourage those who question. IMHO, this is rooted in insecurity, perhaps a fear that students might achieve more than they or challenge their authority.</p>
<p>Self-confidence and true competence empower a teacher not to be insecure. After all, the real goal of teaching is to get students to think for themselves, not simply parrot back what they’ve been told.</p>
<p>We all have stories about teachers who affected our lives in positive ways. You teachers out there, don’t think you’re not having an impact!</p>
<p>Really its somewhat naive to assume that you’re going to get some teacher thats a top tier grad. Most people that graduated from top schools want their return on investment and thus go for more prestigious jobs. So why would a Harvard grad teach at highschool if he could go into investment banking? They wouldn’t. And conversely, teachers would do the same if given the chance. Now of course, not everyone wants to be an investment banker. Some actually want to teach. But really, if a top student wants to teach, then why do it at highschoo l if they can go on to teach as a professor at an university? These are important questions you have to ask yourself before expecting an “extremely educated” teacher.</p>
<p>student: I agree it’s rare for top-tier grads to end up teaching at secondary school. emag was fortunate to have a Harvard-educated teacher who made an impact on him, but also acknowledged he didn’t know (or care) where his daughter’s teacher went to college. Good teachers can come from anywhere–academic preparation may be helpful, but attitude is much more important.</p>
<p>True, I had a physics teacher who was a San Francisco State grad that actually turned out to be the best teacher I ever had. He was so good, I never had to use the textbook. However, I had a teacher from Berkeley(which is quite rare) that knows all his stuff but simply just can’t teach. So its much more important to be able to convey simple ideas than to convey hard ones. No one in highschool needs to know quantum physics. If the teacher has a PhD in physics, well good for him. More then half the stuff he knows would be useless for teaching(Unless he teaches advanced undergrads or grad students).</p>
<p>I remember having a U. Penn educated teacher back in high school. He must have been one of the worst teachers I ever had while in school. He had a very poor attitude and felt that everyone’s ideas should exactly conform to his (not exact great for an economics/international relations teacher that’s a self-confessed communist).</p>
<p>Also, for all these people saying highly educated people make the best teachers. Please think back to your undergraduate days in college where you were learning from some of the most educated people in their fields and how poor many of their lectures were. I have no problem saying that many of my local/state schooled teachers in high school were leagues ahead of most of my professors in college for actual teaching ability.</p>
<p>What can we all do to refocus the attention of our children on the real goal?</p>
<p>to Geomom:
I suppose it is due to limited resources (only so many really desirable colleges in the eyes of some parents) that motivates these parents to tell their children to cheat (which is what the mom of my niece’s cousin told her son to do one morning when he worried about his geometry test that day). Your ‘real goal’ of learning for the sake of broadening your understanding differs from the goal of these parents who want to make their children competitive in the work force by attendance at a ‘prestigious’ university with high admissions standards. I guess these parents, if they think about it at all, figure that once their children get the best jobs, they can then take the time to ‘smell the roses’ or ponder life’s complexities.
I personally encouraged my own children to read lots of fiction. They have spent many pleasant hours in other times and other lands, caught up in the story line. They will spend their adult years in the ‘real world’ and I wanted that particular kind of childhood for them. I’m sure it slowed them down a bit in terms of learning early how to cope with problems, but immersion in fiction for a time teaches them a healthy way to de-stress later on in life as well as being entertaining. Another benefit derived is improvement in reading comprehension, etc. etc.<br>
I likewise deplore the narrowmindedness of parents who focus on college admission and future careers instead of dialoguing with their children about how the universe works. All that stress and cheating is counterproductive and doesn’t produce a person who is all that worthwhile or ethical.</p>
<p>As a student, I want to add my side of the story.</p>
<p>I know lots of teachers are overworked, but sometimes you need to speak out. It may be whining, but I don’t want to sit idly when I get an 80 on an assignment that the teacher said was the best he had ever seen and better than what he could do, when I get marks taken off of tests for multiple-choice answers that were right and marked right on other peoples’ papers, or when I get kicked out of a class for a week for not working when I’ve done all the work and there is no work left to do.</p>
<p>I may come off as nitpicking over grades, but I don’t want to be penalized 15% because the teacher marked mine last and for some reason ignored entire pages of answers. I can accept low marks if they’re my own fault, but the few minutes and tiny amount of pride it takes to accept a correction hurts my teachers a lot less than losing my future chances of college hurts me. Most of my teachers are willing to change the mark or explain why they gave me it. However, when a teacher draws a big zero on the essay worth a fifth of the year mark I slaved over, writes “this is not a essay” on the front, and tells the entire class I got a zero but won’t tell me why, I think asking my mother to talk to him is completely justified.</p>
<p>Me, too, zsg!</p>
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<p>Nice. I guess this attitude explains why I had to work so hard to get my late bloomer’s placement improved. She got a B in the first honors course and an A in the 2nd. I was NOT a thorn in anyone’s side; she did NOT slow down the class. Teacher for class number 2 admitted she was helping the other kids.</p>
<p>I really worry about our nation’s future if the only kids getting a challenging education are the ones who show promise early. ADD, creative, and other late-to-show-promise kids are being sidelined and it is, in my opinion, a real shame.</p>
<p>I wonder if the solution is to track high school outcomes more - to really track who achieves what after HS graduation. Forget about who goes where for 1st semester of freshman year. How many kids go on to graduate with 4-year degrees after 4, 5 and 6 years post-HS? Being on the hook for good outcomes might encourage schools to seek out everyone who could benefit from added rigor, no matter when they become ready for it.</p>
<p>"In Carroll County, parents of children with special needs are among the worst offenders, said Barry Potts, president of the Carroll County Education Association, which represents more than 2,200 teachers, guidance counselors and registered nurses.</p>
<p>“A teacher is a pretty prime target when the child is not meeting their potential,” Potts said."</p>
<p>Parents who get upset about the education of their special needs child are not being perfectionists. These children are the most difficult to educate and they are at the greatest risk of becoming failures. </p>
<p>In some special ed programs, the teachers are authorized to restrain students, and they will do so every time the student disagrees with the teacher, even if the disagree in a civil manner. The teachers bully the student into obeying. Special needs schools are also unusually irresponsible, they will do things like abandon young children in the parking lot out of forgetfulness. This is because most of the people who work with special needs kids are people who couldn’t get any other job, or who are fresh out of grad school and they really wanted a job at another school. They will leave a year later when they get the job they wanted.</p>
<p>Society is a big part of the problem. They don’t provide enough money, training, staff, and the right laws for special needs students. Parents have every right to be ****ed off.</p>
<p>Wow, Linzoy. Have you had some bad experiences with special needs teachers? If so, I am sorry to hear that. However, I have to disagree with your generalizations. I am NOT a teacher. I do have a college degree, and I do substitute teach. I have met good teachers and bad, just as I worked with good and bad workers in my previous jobs. Frankly, I have been impressed with many special needs teachers. They care very much about their students. My friend is a special needs parapro, and I think she cares almost as much as her students’ parents. If your experiences have not been so good, I am sorry … but there are plenty of excellent teachers in the field. Please don’t damn an entire profession.</p>
<p>I’m not damning an entire profession. I’ve met plenty of good special ed teachers. But there is no doubt in my mind that it is much more difficult to get a special ed student a decent education than it is for a regular student. Parents have to get involved because sometimes these students can’t even speak for themselves. Getting involved isn’t bullying. It might be annoying for the teachers, but it is within the parent’s rights to visit the school, and ask what is going on.</p>
<p>Caring is not enough. People who care can still have bad judgement, and they can still be self righteous enough to disobey the law or twist the rules in favor of whatever they think is a good idea instead of what is written on the IEP.</p>