“The small ignorant minds of those that teach our brilliant kids is disgusting and needs to be stopped” - Do not waste your precious mental energy, it will never ever happen in this country. Teachers here are NOT for teaching, but rather for having a secure position that produces the income. They are allowed to brainwash their students and completely disregard the parents’ wishes, they do not have to listen to anybody!. Even the worst of the worst of the worst could not be fired…and, I am sorry, but I never heard of the useless MDs, ever! They work like hell, in residency they may work up to 80 hours / week, week after week with frequent 30 hrs shifts while earning in low 50k which is not even called a salary, it is called a stipend and while making a life/death decisions on the fly . I would like to see any teacher walking in these shoes! No, they only know “sick outs”, any MD who decides to “sick out” would loose their license immediately
. After saying that, I have to admit that my younger kid had awesome teachers who were paid much less than average and who did not have any job security…why? Because, the kid was attending the most expensive private k - 12 in our area…Her teachers would not “sick out”, they knew that they will loose their job if they did.
Wow, this thread has really turned into a teacher bashing thread.
Oh.My. (thought in a George Takei voice)
Impotent rage is a waste of time. All the people (and I’m not going to say teachers because I think this is more about people than teachers) who stand in your way are an opportunity to learn.
Some we learned how to bow down to. Some we learned how to liquify. Most were a compromise in the middle. I’m fiercely a believer of never letting someone stand in your way or take away your power-it’s up to you to figure out how to neutralize them.
We don’t take it personally when they suck. We just work on making the best of it, whether it’s by avoidance, accommodation, or full-on Hulk Out Dragon Obliteration (trademark pending).
Hmmm…Maybe the teachers on this board (and those of us who are married to one), can start a parent bashing thread…I’m sure we could come up with some great stories… 
Really, folks, as with any group of people there are good and bad. I realize most here are just sharing that one or two they’ve known over the years on the bad side (and yes I know some too) and I can appreciate that. However, some posters are just going over the top! 
The OP hasn’t come back…maybe it’s time to close this thread!
I know I shouldn’t take the bait…but I have to say something. Of COURSE there are MD’s who are ineffective and even bad at what they do. There are in EVERY occupation, because there are PEOPLE in those jobs, and people vary in what they can and are willing to do at their jobs.
I had a useless MD. He literally shrugged his shoulders and said, “I dunno” when he did not see anything obviously wrong when I went to him. Only after I pointed out my family history and insisted on a certain test did he agree to consider anything other than just sending me home. My daughter saw another MD at urgent care once who suggested that our family “pushing” her to read was causing her asthma (what ELSE were we supposed to be doing while waiting at 2 a.m.?). Oh, and my SIL’s doc missed a very obvious sign of a stroke, and it wasn’t until a second, more serious stroke that anything was done. I have more stories if you’d like.
As for teachers, I have 3 kids who have grown up in three different school districts across 2 states, as well as a couple of stints in private school. Guess what? Nearly all the teachers have been excellent, no matter where they were. The best have been in-gasp-PUBLIC school. The worst, at a private.
I HATE these threads, because I can’t think of another profession where it’s open season on the people who practice it. It makes perfect sense, reading the bashing to understand why so many teachers leave the profession. I worry for my daughter, who’s decided to become a teacher-facing parents day in and day out who think she’s slow-witted and in the job for the vacation time and are “disgusting”. And to think that teachers used to be revered.
Yes those parents exist, but there are many more parents and students out there that will adore her and appreciate her as well. I’m always blown away each Christmas and end of the school year by the wonderful notes of appreciation my H gets. As with any job, there is good and bad…hopefully, your D will experience more of the good.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of myths about teachers and teaching out there, some of it is the usual bash anything that is a public institution, the teacher as a dimwitted bureaucrat simply putting in their time and so forth. There are legitimate beefs with teachers and some of the rules, it is very, very hard to remove bad teachers from the classroom, at least in public schools, the process to remove a teacher is so long and convoluted, no one bothers, but it isn’t as bad as some will make it to be, either, it is very different in big city districts than it is in more suburban ones. And yes, my take on the teacher’s unions is they often do seem more concerned about the teachers than the students and yes, will protect mediocrity (doesn’t just apply to teacher’s unions, my problem with almost every union is that they totally forgot what union founders like Reuther said and did, I generally am not anti union, but I am anti stupidity and protecting it).
It is okay to talk about individual bad teachers, but it is also wrong to say all are bad. My experience with public school music teachers (excuse me, ‘music educators’ ) has not been all that positive, many of them have outsize egos and are frustrated performers who ‘settled’ into being a music teacher in the schools, but there are some really good ones that I can only applaud. I had some good teachers in school, who appreciated kids with minds of their own, I also had a lot who were IMO timeservers and we angry with anything that threw a monkey wrench into their carefully laid plans, but I remember the good ones a lot more, and did go back and thank them. To me bashing is the counterpart to the NEA commercials where all teachers are these smiling, wonderful people encouraging their kids, both are complete fictions, the truth lies in between. And it also doesn’t let parents off the hook, either, the same taxpaying parents who will complain about teachers, are the same people who will pressure the school to cut G and T programs, get rid of experienced teachers to save money, and will then want to float a 20 million dollar bond issue to redo the athletic facilities and build a state of the art field house, or the parents who either are the helicopter parent wanting everything for their class of 2025 Harvard graduate to be, or the parent of a kid who is slacking off who blame the teacher when the kid doesn’t do his homework, doesn’t study, causes problems in school, but they live in the river denial…
Mental illness does not skip over certain professions, including teachers. Both of my kids had a few experiences with seriously damaged individuals who should not be teaching. There is a much larger number to whom I am forever grateful for the ways in which they helped my children.
By the way, thank goodness some students choose a “worthless” major like performing arts, which are an important driver of our economy and quality of life. Once we defund the arts completely, we’ll all have the pleasure of watching untrained, out-of-work STEM majors (yes, they exist) tread the boards.
Hey, we don’t even need to wait for the complete defunding of the arts as it has already happened historically.
Two examples:
Dotcom crash in 2001 which left scores of recent CS/engineering graduates and majors about to graduate severely underemployed or even unemployed for long stretches. One friend with a CS Masters from a respectable institution ended up working as a floor rep at a big box store for a while along with many others and others were unemployed for long stretches. One car rental rep I met in 2011 while a friend was looking to rent cars turned out to have been a CS major who graduated into the crash and after long stretch of un/underemployment ended up never working in the CS field.
ChemE in the '70s/early '80s. Countless accounts from family, family friends, and older colleagues/supervisors about how ChemE grads ended up driving taxis, waiting tables, or doing long stretches as SAHPs or unemployed because there were far too few jobs for the ChemE grads/majors out there. Things were so bad some who were HS students in the period clearly remembered being told by older relatives and adults who were/knew about the engineering job markets to avoid ChemE as the odds of getting a job were worse than a fresh inexperienced actor successfully landing a leading role in a high profile Hollywood film.
Wow. Just wow.
I think I need to find a new forum. College Confidential is obviously not for me.
Oh please, my son’s nasty 3rd grade public school teacher was making 150K per year. It’s not like Finland is the only country overpaying teachers. I would be interested in how many hours per year those teachers in Finland work. Most of my children’s teachers either have a side business or work all summer in another job.
Some teachers are horrible, but when it comes to sports and performing arts, it’s really hard to tell without outside corroboration of your child’s talent. That happened with my son, so although HS sports should have been a huge opportunity for him, he had to find opportunities elsewhere. And everything worked out fine for his sports career.
There were two teachers who I was happy to see the obituaries for. Pedophilia for one (and moved to our district after knocking up a student in the adjoining town’s HS) and daily verbal abuse of many people, including me and my brother, for another.
There were many teachers especially at the K - 8 level who were very good, and a few were great. It seemed like HS was more pot luck, both of the evil teachers were HS teachers, coincidentally both science.
I know there would have been a few other teachers who weren’t evil but just weren’t good for kids. Like the guy who threw chalk at kids, and sometimes didn’t miss. Or the guy who wouldn’t allow any athletes into the National Honor Society.
@bkjmom
Nooo. Stick around. We need you! Just make good use of the ignore button!
My D has dealt with not the greatest arts teachers in her high school. They are prone to negativity and withhold praise. I hope she doesn’t encounter much more of that in her future endeavors.
“Oh please, my son’s nasty 3rd grade public school teacher was making 150K per year.”
Where the heck do you live?
Please @bkjmom, don’t go. We need the voice of reason here.
“My D has dealt with not the greatest arts teachers in her high school. They are prone to negativity and withhold praise. I hope she doesn’t encounter much more of that in her future endeavors.”
For the love of all that is holy please don’t tell me she wants to be an opera singer. Because I promise you it is only going to get “worse”.
But back to the task at hand. It’s a performing arts teacher’s job to teach not to praise. D has been through about 8 different voice teachers and countless coaches and directors from the time she was a kid until now as a professional. For her, (when she is looking for a new teacher or a coach) the biggest red flag is praise. Tell her what she needs to fix and how to fix it. The rest is useless. Praise is something mommies and daddies give you. Teachers teach. Her favorite teacher is someone who would be politely called “a screamer”. Needless to say D came to her lesson prepared.
I have to jump in - I just don’t understand teacher bashing. My children have have had amazing teachers who have changed their lives. Many on CC like to jump on GCs too – we have had outstanding GCs, especially in the high school. Have we had some challenging teachers -sure. My oldest has learned the biggest lessons from some of her hardest teachers – lessons that will treat her well in college and life. Other parents rushed in to save their little precious flowers and attack the teacher – by the end of the year they all felt foolish, their kids loves the tough teacher and did fabulous on the AP exam. We had a disaster of a math teacher in the middle school that destroyed my daughter for math for a while but he was fired the following year.
When I realize that from K-12 there have been dozens and dozens of teachers – and only one or two disappointments – no teacher bashing here. Same experience can be reported for my nieces and nephews in other towns and states. I just asked on facebook for friends to share the # of amazing teachers that they or their children have had and the # of horrible teachers - no stories or names just numbers, although plenty recounted stories and most were positive. The outstanding teachers outnumbered the bad ones significantly – and I never asked about the neutral ones. I have found the arts teachers have been the most accepting, inclusive, and supportive teachers. Some people mentioned a teacher that was not right for one child but a life changer for their next child --go figure. A few friends mentioned thinking that a teacher was horrible while in HS but in hindsight realizing how good the teacher actually was. Most rational people realize that the best and worst stick out but there are thousands of outstanding teachers working a very difficult job every day.
I think every single poster on this board thinks that the good teachers outweigh the bad by a very significant margin, and most have expressly stated that. I don’t understand why there is so much sensitivity around calling out the few bad ones. Honestly, it is not meant as any criticism whatsoever toward the truly excellent, the very good, or pretty-good-to-just-mediocre ones. Doesn’t every profession have a range of talent and dedication?
No I’m not talking about that kind of praise, @musicamusica — I’m talking about praise for accomplishments like being the only person in the school who made all-state and many more high level accomplishments. It’s like they don’t want to even acknowledge it at all and instead ignore it. The highest praise she got for her performance in the musical this year was from an elementary school teacher who took the time to email and tell her how impressed she was. She got no acknowledgment from her theatre or music director. And I don’t mean they need to be praising her all the time. Just something. Some good feedback like wow --great job I’m so impressed–whatever. After she toiled and worked so hard on that friggin musical that caused her to miss out on two very important college auditions it would be nice to get some appreciation. It can be a private comment … It doesn’t need to take away from anyone else’s performance.
" It’s a performing arts teacher’s job to teach not to praise. For her, (when she is looking for a new teacher or a coach) the biggest red flag is praise. Tell her what she needs to fix and how to fix it. The rest is useless. Praise is something mommies and daddies give you. Teachers teach."
What @musicamusica outlined above is also true in the ballet world. Any dancer worth their salt knows that the instructor who is criticizing you is helping you and if you are not getting that correction and criticism, it is not a good thing. Instead, it is a sign that they see limited potential in you. Not saying it should be a “Whiplash”-like situation but they aren’t there to stroke your ego. It’s 90% critique and, at most, 10% compliments.