<p>
What does it matter how good a teacher has been trained if the state or district mandates what will be taught, when it will be taught and how it will be taught? I have read that Direct Instruction, a pedagogical method promoted by the Bush DOE, was designed to be teacher-proof. The idea is that, however incompetent a teacher, it would not matter. The teacher is not supposed to deviate by even a hair’s breadth from the lesson plan.</p>
<p>
The best teachers I ever had were the ones who strayed furthest from the lesson plan because they knew they had a captivated audience. I guess they didn’t know how to be victims of bad administration. </p>
<p>Teachers have to get out of that helpless mindset and stop being victims, if they want to be part of the solution and not part of the problem.</p>
<p>
If you make something foolproof, they just come up with a better fool. No teacher wants to work off of somebody else’s lesson plan verbatim. They do want to make it work for their batch of kids. But with that kind of environment, only the ones who truly are clueless (or intent upon being a victim) will want to stick with that plan (the better fool).</p>
<p>[Blame Oregon](<a href=“http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=152”>http://susanohanian.org/show_nclb_stories.html?id=152</a>)</p>
<p>Epiphany, post # 95: “I’m actually very much for the full privatization of public schooling, supported governmentally by across-the-board taxes. That’s essentially what the charter movement is trying to do: in its own way, to “privatize,” which is not a dirty word. In this context it means “own” or “reclaim,” but doing so with public funding which provides access to all, regardless of ability to pay. The current public school system actually provides very unequal access, which is very much dependent on one’s ability to pay (rent or mortgage in a good zipcode, or tuition).”</p>
<p>AMEN! I’ve been lurking, waiting for someone else to say this. I usually find myself alone when I vocalize this position. Most people confuse government–or common–obligation to finance education for all children with government obligation to be the provider of education.</p>
<p>What would all of the cc posters who oppose K-12 school choice say if their children were assigned to a college based on their place of residence, with freedom to choose a college available only to those who could afford to pay the full cost? </p>
<p>Goaliedad: you are following this food fight because this is the most important topic in the public sphere today. The uneven quality of education underlies most of the problems this country is dealing with. </p>
<p>“A culture of regular involvement by ALL parents must be established as a norm in our society.”</p>
<p>So true. The first step is to require all parents to actively choose the school that will work best for their own children. No doubt many will just “choose” the nearest school, but those who research their options and make a choice will have a vested interest in following their school’s performance. And if they don’t like what they see, they can change schools. That is involvement.</p>
<p>Goaliedad:</p>
<p>A teacher in a DI school would be fired for deviating not only from the lesson plan, as you advocate, but from the one and only way of teaching it. </p>
<p>You want teacher accountability? DI teachers have it, in spades.</p>
<h2>
<a href=“http://www.nifdi.org/[/url]”>http://www.nifdi.org/</a></p>
<p>goaliedad,
I’m siding with marite on this one. She has her facts in place. I hear a lot of generalizations from you about “most teachers, most K-3 teachers,” etc. Not to mention your own fingerpointing. I have not found your generalizations to be true, among my peers – while I do find the occasional, yes, ill-prepared or detached teacher. (As one can find such a professor or two at even some very top Universities.)</p>
<p>As to parents, that is in fact one of the strengths of charter schools. Parental initiative, responsibility, & accountability is built into the structure – not as a substitute for the teacher’s role, either. In this system parents are invited, encouraged to learn about the teaching process & how they might reinforce it within the home. They are offered workshops & other opportunities. Not everyone takes advantage of them, however. Some parents are more conscientious than others, some more capable than others. The public school model --whether traditional or charter --will not work without some parental initiative & follow-through. It was never designed to do so, even at its founding & its flowering. There is not enough man/woman power for that. Therefore, there is a limit to how much handholding, stroking, etc. teachers can do when it comes to encouraging parental involvement. </p>
<p>And any teacher worth his or her salt does not conform to the rigid stereotypes you seem to have of them.</p>
<p>“Did you ever stop to think it’s to get to an evening class for their masters? or a doctor/dentist appointment so not to lose time with the kids? Or even they have children of their own that need some attiention and they work at home later?”</p>
<p>Teachers actually get to see their young kids before these kids are ready for bed</p>
<p>I tend to defend teachers primarily for one reason: starting by middle school they are in effect competing for their students attention against a tidal wave of (often destructive) cultural factors -that have a direct impact on the motivation of their students, and therefore (unjustifiably) are being blamed for poor student peformance. In addition although many teachers support self-esteem based child-centric teaching methods - they were not the one’s that caused schools to incorporate these (now provably disasterous) teaching methods such as whole learning reading and the newer fuzzy/feel good math/caculator-dependent techniques among other methods </p>
<p>That said, teachers do in fact has a huge advantage over other professions in terms of the time factor. The reality is for many commuting professional women today - many barely have time to see their kids, particularly young children - as its very common for their total time away from home each day often can be in the range of 12 hours. Many love to have 12 weeks of vacation time each year and to get home each day by 5.00 pm or earlier</p>
<p>For example in these the case of of women with MBA degrees for certain schools shows opt-out rates as high as 50% within one decade, either completely dropping out of full-time work or going part-time</p>
<p>Time has value and teachers need to understand they do in fact have a very valuable commodity in that regard</p>
<p>Citation,
Regarding the comments about teachers seeing their kids before 5 p.m., or before bedtime, etc., that would not be always true about full-time classroom teachers. That’s because they often have:
– mandatory teacher meetings after school
– meetings with parents after school
– long commutes after those late meetings, to areas with more affordable housing (unless the teacher is supported by a lucrative spouse’s salary)
– mandated extracurricular teacher participation (school events, including those in the evening; doubling as an athletic coach in many of the privates, etc)</p>
<p>Part-timers or flex schedule teachers have more freedom in this regard, but only if they are not taking second jobs to support themselves. (And unless sharing a spouse’s salary, they almost always are.)</p>
<p>Also, I don’t think it’s teachers that need to understand their time value to society. I think it’s the public & taxpayers that need to understand it. Teachers understand it well & can do little about it. Lawyers & other profesionals who bill by the hour, understand it well & can do something about it.</p>
<p>Not to mention the correction of 100 papers, as an English teacher (4 classes x 25 kids a class), 100 or more history exams, etc. Add onto that the 50 college recommendations (a History teacher friend of mine once showed me her shopping bag full of college rec requests from her students…now she has to limit them).</p>
<p>And the evening meetings, events, etc. All this adds to a very large burden on today’s teachers, on top of idiotic mandates, too much testing, too many varied needs in a classroom, etcetc.</p>
<p>I don’t in any way blame all of the ills of public education on the teachers. It’s a broken system, and most teachers are trying to do their level best, and most are succeeding. It is just an impossible tide to swim against.</p>
<p>“The few things the teacher observes about a child (what motivates him/her, what s/he struggles with) cannot be used productively over time to help the child. Institutional knowledge of a child’s strength’s weaknesses are only as good as the sharing of that information.”</p>
<p>goaliedad, this and the other paragraphs that follow in that post unfortunately reveal quite an ignorance of the sharing of information among teachers & other educators interfacing with that student. Your snapshot of the supposedly superficial knowledge & even more superficial awareness that a trained educator would have about a student is off the mark. Teachers are indeed taught & trained to identify different learning styles. However, I want to compliment you on an insight that is important:<br>
“I often think the teachers who can discern this [i.e., these subtle but important differences, you mean] just have better insight not training.”</p>
<p>Actually they have both insight & training, but the training is useless without the insight, & I’ll agree with you there.</p>
<p>To be a truly effective teacher, utilizing both training & perception, & integrating academic tasks with the needs, limitations, capabilities of the student, one virtually has to be a recognizably gifted adult. I have never met a very effective teacher who is not one of exceptional intelligence – the kind that is accompanied by insight, intuition (apprehension without explanation), and the level of intellectual creativity that comes with giftedness. However, gifted adults have to eat & pay the mortgage, too, & therefore often need to drift to other occupations. Sometimes these gifted adults start their own schools or other educational ventures. And it’s not all about the pay, by the way. It’s much more about working in a productive environment that supports the utilization of those gifts. Such folks will leave nonproductive environments.</p>
<p>I’ve defended teachers in posts above in regards to the cultural issues they face</p>
<p>However no one is making them be teachers.</p>
<p>In fact in New England in most systems -there are 50 applicants for every job</p>
<p>Teachers need to start working 52 weeks a year like everyone else, be available for tutoring year round at the school, or work in the schools during the summer preparing lesson plans, and stop complaining - or get another job</p>
<p>I am tired of (mandy of them at least) whining about correcting papers or professional education - it’s simply a joke compared to many other professions</p>
<p>Try working 90 hour weeks as somed profession require the 1st 5 years</p>
<p>Right, they are all working huge hours -and everyone else has it easy</p>
<p>I agree with Allmusic about the afterschool workload of teachers. While many professionals do take work back home with them, a lot of other people are able to call it a day when they get home. That’s not true of teachers. They have not only to correct and grade papers, but also write reports and devise or go over lesson plans. They also conduct conferences with parents. Most of the time, these conferences are scheduled on a twice yearly basis, but there are many others which focus on individual students’ particular issues.
My kids’ teachers used to meet before classes to coordinate with one another across the same grades; they met after classes to coordinate with other teachers working at different grade levels. Every time the district adopted a different pedgogy, there was a huge expenditure of time. When our high school went on the block schedule, teachers met every week for one hour for a whole year to work out the details of scheduling, how to teach in block periods, etc…</p>
<p>I also think we all exaggerate about the 3 month summer vacation. k-12 schools usually last until practically the last week of June and re-start around Labor Day. In many parts of the country, they start even earlier.</p>
<p>Citation X: a starting lawyer at a top NYC law firm does work 80-90 hours a week. But that starting lawyer earns a base salary of $130k plus bonus (last year, I was told it was $40k). A teacher at the beginning of his or her career would be lucky to earn as much as that bonus. My kids have had student teachers with undergraduate degrees from Georgetowwn, Princeton, Oberlin, working towards an M Ed from the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In other words, they would be in graduate school for one year less than a law student. You are right that no one forced them to become teachers, and they are not in the profession for the money. I don’t think it’s whining to remind critics that teachers do not work 8-3. Critics need to be reminded that teachers work longer hours than 9-5 even if they are not in front of classes as they do so.</p>
<p>“While many professionals do take work back home with them”</p>
<p>what planet are you living on?</p>
<p>In my area they work 49 weeks a year. Teachers were not whining about working long hours, merely pointing out that the long hours worked (often 65-70 per week) are no less than many other professions, despite the myths about “summer vacations” & a supposedly shorter day, etc. The hours are just less visible & more dispersed, that’s all.</p>
<p>Citation X: </p>
<p>My planet. H and I both do a lot of work at home. I know lots of others who do, too. Have you heard of people working in their pjs? I know lots of those.</p>
<p>Since the summer vacation is an “exaggeration” - why not elminate it for teachers?</p>
<p>Have them report to school each day in the summer to, prepare lesson plans and be available for summer tutoriing</p>
<p>Same thing with those one week vacations in winter and spring</p>
<p>And why is it that so many teachers seem to use all those sick days each year?</p>
<p>The teacher union perhaps?</p>
<p>“Add onto that the 50 college recommendations (a History teacher friend of mine once showed me her shopping bag full of college rec requests from her students…now she has to limit them).”</p>
<p>That’s part of the reason we went with the Latin teacher for a recommendation. Only five kids in AP Latin. :)</p>
<p>I don’t know about your area, Citation X, but in my experience with two kids in public schools, none of my kids’s teachers ever called in sick. NOT ONCE.
As for lesson plans, they need to be done the day (or at most a few days) before they are delivered not several months ahead of time. They need to build on what was actually taught earlier, not some idealized version of what might happen.</p>
<p>Suppose the school has a fire drill while the teacher is trying to explain fractions. If the teacher went rigidly by the lesson plan devised months earlier, that lesson on fractions would have to go by the board. Or suppose that the teacher devised a wonderful lesson plan during the summer, tries it out on students some time in November and finds out that what looked good in the abstract is incomprehensible to the students (whether because the lesson plan was lousy or the students have learning issues). So what’s a teacher to do? Work out a new lesson plan at home that very evening. And that’s for only one subject, that took one hour out of the 6 hours that the teacher spent in front of his/her class.</p>
<p>“Have them report to school each day in the summer to, prepare lesson plans and be available for summer tutoriing.”</p>
<p>As I said – although obviously you choose not to listen – they do mainly report to school each day in summer. Our teachers have mandatory summer hours, summer workshops, summer reporting. Tops: 3 weeks vacation, unless (& some do) they’re using part of that to prepare for the coming year. Spring break, falling as it does during an ongoing semester rather than after one, often requires them to work from home at the least. Christmas break usually involves some work hours, some non-work hours. Their salary is figured from what the minimum expected mandated work production is, and then sometimes divided out over 12 months time. Thus, they are not getting paid for “time off.” Further, few teachers get by with ONLY mandated paid time. They could try that, but chances are they would not be able to get in all the paperwork that’s required of their districts and/or their individual schools. And anything over that mandated time is nothing they would ever be able to bill for – unlike with many other professions (bookkeepers, CPAs, lawyers, physicians in private practice, technical consultants, etc.)</p>
<p>Executives, and even paraprofessionals in many occupations often receive 4-6 weeks of PAID vacation per year. Some employees get more than that, & I don’t mean CEO’s.</p>
<p><a href=“http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2003336433_princed02.html[/url]”>http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/editorialsopinion/2003336433_princed02.html</a></p>
<p>Ive given examples of teachers in my daughters district- heres an example of the leadership of principals in another</p>