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<p>Which part of it is untrue?</p>
<p>Dad of 3 says: I know many parents/spouses/friends of teachers who make it very clear that benefits, job security, salary, and holidays are the main reason. Haven’t heard any of these people remark that their relative/friend is in their job “for the kids”. </p>
<p>Maybe you should talk to teachers themselves instead of relying on second hand anecdotes.</p>
<p>I left a job in a health care field to teach. I took a $10,000 a year paycut to do it, so no I’m not working for the salary. I had better benefits working in a hospital. I am good at both jobs, so I’ve always had job security. And yes, the holidays are nice, but I, like many teachers, spend every summer preparing for the upcoming year - I’ll be teaching 2 new courses next year which will take a lot of preparation - and taking graduate courses for recertification that I pay for myself. Also, I work in a non-union state, so all the gripes about teachers unions don’t hold water here. A new college graduate in my state will make in the low $30,000 in their 1st teaching job. Why do I do it? I love it. I love my subject, I truly enjoy most of my students, and they come to see me years later to tell me how well I prepared them for college. I certainly don’t hate parents, as I said, I am a parent myself. But I wish those who want to bash public schools or public school teachers could spend a few weeks as a fly in our classrooms or on the phone with some of the parents. You would see where we are coming from.</p>
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<p>Then I am doing you a public service, poetgrl. You should be aware that if you are complaining about teachers, then they are more than likely also complaining about you.</p>
<p>but I don’t complain about teachers c-mom. I never have.</p>
<p>I’ve responded on this board to some things I have heard, but I’ve never complained about the teachers my kids have had. If I thought a teacher was less than stellar? I’ve simply thought that and kept it to myself and told my student that it was their job to work it out, that not everyone in the world is going to think they are as fabulous as I do.</p>
<p>But, as they say in the Italian class I am currently taking, Basta.</p>
<p>Good luck to you. You seem incredibly burnt out. I’m glad for the sake of your students that you will be retiring soon.</p>
<p>If a person cannot handle interactions with parents of all types, then that person should not be teaching. There is no way around dealing with parents, nor should there be. Coping with disgruntled <em>customers</em> is not unique to teaching. There are plenty of back office and computer programming type jobs available for those who cannot handle having their day-to-day work judged by outside observers.</p>
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<p>Sorry, don’t know any school teachers well enough that they’ll be utterly candid. The advantage of second-hand anecdotes is that a coworker I’m very close with knows a lot more on what’s going on in his school-teacher wife’s mind than I would ever find out directly.</p>
<p>If you look at the majority of people in the workforce, the primary goal for most is not to satisfy their “customers”, but as a means to put food on the table and have a roof over their heads. I don’t see teachers as being any different, and the average one, just like the average worker anywhere else is mainly driven by self-interest.</p>
<p>Dad of 3, if you don’t know any teachers very well, how can you be so quick to make judgements? Yes, we all work to meet our needs of food and shelter, but there are many ways to do that. Most people who teach for any length of time DO do it because of the kids, they feel they can make a difference, etc. I’m one of many teachers in my school who changed professions to teach. We all took a paycut. It is a hard job - not just doing the work well, but all that goes along with it. As you can witness here, we get a lot of bashing from others in the community. Also, I have to deal with things on a daily basis that others here don’t have to experience in their wildest dream (or worst nightmare!). The kid who passes out because he is high, and EMS has to be called. Listening to the “F” word being yelled from one kid to another between classes. Untangling kids who are trying to make-out in the hall. Trying to break up a girl fight without getting hurt myself. These are situations I never had to witness in a hospital, and I place myself in the midst of this willingly every day, because much more good happens than bad. Last week was teacher appreciation week, and fortunately, we have great parents who let us know we are appreciated.</p>
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<p>Sigh, more teacher bashing… This is perhaps the most ubiquitous bashing of all. Can’t you be more creative, at least? If you are indeed worried about my students, rest assured that they are getting a great education from me and that I am very well-liked. LOL</p>
<p>Poetgrl, you still have not answered my question. What is it about post #16 that is offensive to you?</p>
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<p>So, Dad of 3, you admit that you don’t know any teachers very well. Yet, you feel entirely comfortable posting (in an authoritative manner I might add) about what teachers think and feel?</p>
<p>And yes, I do have some great parents. Fortunately! If all parents were like you and Bay and perhaps even Poetgrl, no one with any talent would want to teach!</p>
<p>I know teachers, plenty of them, and quite well. I probably would like you IRL, c-mom. As for post #16, it is there where you begin the process of discussing which parents believe that teachers work for them. I believe you mention first generation parents and the parents of URMs.</p>
<p>Then, post #23 in which you claim that every parental complaint could be resolved with a higher grade.</p>
<p>I’m only posting this as a response to a question, to be polite. I really have no interest in continuing this conversation.</p>
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<p>Two reasons - I don’t believe as a breed, teachers are any more altruistic than, say, doctors, or nurses, college professors, or any number of other professionals. And I know enough of these people extremely well to know that very few of them are driven primarily for their “customer”. </p>
<p>Secondly, the people I know who are closely related to teachers are those who I know very very well. Since my kids are for the most part at a college age, I tend to chat with other parents and their kids in similar situations. And when they talk about why they or their kids are looking at education as a career, I don’t ever recall anyone ever coming close to saying “serving the child” as the primary reason. “He/I likes/gets-along-well with kids”, is about as close as I’ve heard, and it’s generally a bonus rather than the main reason.</p>
<p>I don’t see this view as “bashing” any more than saying that an average accountant is not in the profession because her primary desire is to count beans. She’s there to do better for herself, and there’s absolutely nothing wrong in not striving to be a saint as long as she’s competent in her job. </p>
<p>Anyway this has got little to what OP started in this thread, and I’ll bow out.</p>
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<p>This is so so so sad Dadof3. Personally, as a 2nd career teacher, I gave up a more comfortable income because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people. But, it is my best guess, that fewer and fewer people like me will be attracted to public school teaching in the future. As I have said before, why would anyone with other opportunities want to go into an occupation where they are bashed and treated so disrespectfully? Thou shall reap what you shall sow.</p>
<p>camathmom, so are you saying you worked as a public school teacher, but you specifically had to avoid public schools to get what you wanted for you children?
I am getting confused by what you say and what you do.</p>
<p>Well. Well. Well. I leave for a day of teaching, prepping for an arts festival, and my final grad school painting class and when I finally return, the posters are running amok. My goodness! Time outs for all of you and if your parents call me I will have to tell them just how naughty you all have been!<br>
It seems that there is frustration on all sides. Parents feel powerless (and I get this as a parent myself) to change a system that they feel is flawed. And the teachers are feeling disrespected and defensive because (and as a teacher, I get this) nobody can know how difficult our job is unless they have done it and we are living in a culture that is increasingly hostile toward teachers.
I will say that most of the teachers that I know (myself included) love our jobs because of the kids and the satisfaction that we get from teaching them things they do not know. Are there teachers out there that are in it for the benefits (really? ‘cuz ours aren’t that great) the holidays (yeah, they are awesome) and the pension (in my state, teachers’ contributions amount to 95% of their pension and it would actually cost the taxpayers more if we collected Social Security, which we don’t even though we often contribute to it). Yes, more than we care to admit.</p>
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<p>I want to respond to lots of the posts today but will start with this one. I don’t consider parents, or students for that matter, to be my customers. I’m not selling anything. This post exemplifies the reason that I started this thread. As far as handling having my work judged by outside observers, I only have a problem with the fact that most parents don’t have a degree in education or classroom experience. So how can they judge my teaching performance? Mind you, parents seem to like me and approve of my ability in the classroom. I only mention that so that everyone understands that my original post does not come from personal or professional angst.</p>
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<p>Let me give you some real life examples, and then you tell me if I need a degree in education or classroom experience to judge them:</p>
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<li> My S’s English teacher fell asleep at his desk during class.</li>
<li> My S’s History teacher, who is also the football coach, showed “Ferris Beuhler’s Day Off,” rather than teaching anything, on the day of the “big” game.</li>
<li> My D’s English teacher told the class, “You suck.”</li>
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<p>The funny thing is, I never said a word about these incidents, because I knew there would be no consequences to the teachers. The principal at our school has no authority to discipline or fire teachers unless an unlawful activity is involved. He told us parents the best he can do is try to make them want to leave by “freezing them out.”</p>
<p>I have only contacted my 3 kids’ teachers twice in 12 years: </p>
<p>Once because my D was given a “D” on an English paper that was not returned. I had read it and knew that it was not “D” quality. (My D was an outstanding student.) The teacher declined to allow me and my D to come in and look at the graded paper; instead she said she was sure D would do better next time (D did end up with an A in that class.)</p>
<p>Once because my (also good student S) was hovering at the D+ level in Geometry. The teacher did not offer anything in the way of help to my son. I emailed the teacher twice for help but received no response at all. So I hired a private tutor at $75 per hour and transferred S out of the class (where he earned an “A” the next semester). Apparently I was one of the few uninformed that this teacher was known to be TERRIBLE, which explained why there were only 15 (then 14) kids in his class. Everyone else knew not to take it.</p>
<p>Nobody said there were no bad teachers. It is exhausting when people bring up individual experiences to make a case of a group behavior. There are about 30 million students in the public school system, I would guess. 30 millions kids come in contact with 6 teachers a day, would you say? That makes 180 million contacts a day. 200 school days a year makes 36 billion contacts a year . For 12 years it is about 400 billion contacts. Do some of them go bad? Certainly. If 1% of contacts goes bad, that would make about 4 billion cases. We would certainly hear about it. But it’s only 1%. Is it a lot? Not to my mind.</p>
<p>This thread started out with a beef about parents. What did you think was going to happen? Are parents not allowed to state their case, explain how it looks from their point of view?</p>
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Well, as I read back over this thread, I do get the impression that some parents think teachers as a group are to blame for all the problems, and some teachers think that parents are to blame. It’s very hard for some people to accept that there are bad teachers and bad parents.</p>
<p>My problem is that if you encounter a bad teacher for one of your kids, it’s difficult to know what to do about it. For us, we’ve taken the approach that it doesn’t pay to do anything unless it’s bad enough to get your kid switched out of the class, and then to push and make that happen. Anything short of that puts your kid in a very undesirable position.</p>
<p>And I would like to note that there are different kinds of bad teachers. The really bad ones are those who are unreasonable, unfair, unresponsive and inconsistent, who show favoritism. No amount of complaining to that teacher is going to help, because the problems are personality or character issues–which exist in all fields, of course. The other kind of bad teacher is one who is just not very good at teaching his or her subject. In a way, this is even more difficult to deal with, because if the school has two calculus teachers, obviously not all of the kids can have the good teacher. Am I a “taker” parent if I try to get my kid into the good class?</p>
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<p>I agree. This was done on this thread with respect to parents.</p>
<p>No one said that all teachers are bad. A couple of teachers on this thread became defensive and accusatory of parents like me, poetgrl, and Dad of 3 without knowing any of the circumstances of our experiences. That is a pretty lame generalization made by self-proclaimed good teachers.</p>
<p>I will admit that the OP’s question “Do teachers work for parents” felt sort of like a setup, as if perhaps s/he expected a bunch of parent on here to say “Yes!” and open us up to being told that no, they work for the kids, etc.</p>
<p>I agree that bad teachers are not the main problem with public education today. I think the system of compensation and incentives is the main problem with public education today. Even a talented and motivated teacher, imo, is not going to perform at her or his best within the current antiquated and counter productive system of collective bargaining.</p>
<p>Also, really important is to revise and improve the curriculum, not just who is teaching it. By public middle school, it was clear to us as parents that the textbooks and the assignments were just completely unacceptable for our kids. Even with a brilliant teacher, the terrible curriculum was going to make it almost impossible for them to get a truly good education. I think we have to look to who is producing that curriculum, very often education PhDs (with tenure) at universities with more of a passion for maintaining the current education industrial complex than for educating kids.</p>