Pa. teacher strikes nerve with 'lazy whiners' blog

Parents Forum
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<p>kity4,</p>

<p>Good link. Hopefully this teacher didn’t post at work, blogged anonymously (she was dumb to have her pic up) and made sure it was a PERSONAL blog. </p>

<p>No one disputes that T’s have ethical duties. </p>

<p>But there are far too many parents who think T’s wave a magic wand in front of their darling children’s heads to make learning happen. There are far too many parents who just want to drop their kids off at school and expect the T’s to work miracles. </p>

<p>T’s are not parents. </p>

<p>If the parents were doing THEIR jobs this T wouldn’t have had much to blog about.</p>

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<p>I don’t disagree that parents have a responsibility to insure their kids are prepared to learn. They should be rested, well fed & have time & a place at home to work on schoolwork, & have parents who are interested & involved in their education.</p>

<p>However, as this teacher illustrates, that is not always the case even in middle class suburban schools.</p>

<p>I wouldn’t disagree that it is probably more difficult to teach now than it was 50 years ago. Classrooms are very diverse, full of students with varying level of preparation & even point of reference.
Schools are ranked according to test scores & the tests are always changing, while budgets get tighter.
[What</a> It’s Like on the Inside: No…not exactly](<a href=“http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2011/02/nonot-exactly.html]What”>http://blog.whatitslikeontheinside.com/2011/02/nonot-exactly.html)</p>

<p>Expectations are higher but teacher education hasn’t necessarily changed to prepare new teachers for the classroom.</p>

<p>I think it is up to the public & to potential educators to demand more from the schools of education.</p>

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<p>The rest of the world doesn’t put up with a bunch of whiny and/or dispruptive behavior in their classrooms and that is the rest of the world seems to educate their kids pretty well for far less money being spent than the USA spends. </p>

<p>You can demand all you want from T’s but until the public applies those same standards to the students … it is like pushing on a string. It is just rhetoric. It sounds good. It doesn’t accomplish much but it does sound good. </p>

<p>It isn’t even about money either.</p>

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<p>While I’ll reiterate that there’s no excuse for her unprofessional behavior, I did consider the possibility that she was feeling fatigue and malaise due to her pregnancy, and that that might be making it harder than usual to handle the frustrations of her job. Seeing the actual content of her comments does point to a need for a leave of absence, rest, and counseling at the least, if not dismissal. The degree of virtriol is abnormal and unhealthy.</p>

<p>That said, like MisterK, I can count my own great, motivating teachers on one hand. Unfortunately, my kids don’t even need a full hand to count. Long gone are the days when teaching was a noble and selfless vocation. And having taught in my former life, I can attest to the fact that while I can make a class as exciting and interesting as possible, that will successfully engage the students who come in ready to learn, or at least come a little open-minded. But it is nearly impossible to motivate a kid who’s decided before he walks in the door that he doesn’t want to be there and has no intention of doing anything. When I was teaching abroad, I remember one boy announce to me that he was the son of the Vice President of the country and frankly, didn’t have to do a damn thing. No matter what, his future would still be assured.</p>

<p>It’s true that too many parents don’t know how to do their job or are unwilling to make the sacrifices to do it right. Kids come to school looking like a Jersey Shore character en route to a seedy night club. It’s true that many are rude, belligerant, and lazy, but yet their parents see nothing wrong with them. They text under their desks for the duration of each class, and then complain that that tests are too hard. The ones with a little bit of desire to succeed, would rather try to brown nose their way to success instead of putting in real effort and work. And don’t think honors students are immune from obnoxiousness. One of my S’s teachers admitted to S privately that there were a couple of kids he (the teacher) found so extremely annoying that he refused to allow them in his AP class because he wasn’t sure he could control himself. Now that’s pretty darn annoying! Knowing the kids in question, I can see why he said that. </p>

<p>CC parents are involved and generally level-headed. Our kids are above average and pretty together, and so are their friends. We tend to envision this woman’s classes filled with kids like ours. That’s probably not the case, however.</p>

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<p>What struck me the most wasn’t so much the hostility so much as the apparent conviction that her students were completely stupid. And I don’t mean like lazy and unwilling to work stupid, I mean literally too dumb to function stupid. It’s no surprise to me that someone who feels that way would be impossibly burdened by the stresses of teaching, but then I wonder why she’s still doing it. How can a teacher BE a teacher if they can’t see the potential to learn in their students? I am not saying her stresses are entirely her fault, just that this is obviously the wrong situation for her if she has to act out so much to cope. If she isn’t able to see potential in her students, then of course she feels this way. But that just means this is the wrong job for her, and unfortunately she chose a way to demonstrate that which reflects very poorly on her. </p>

<p>And if her behavior really does have so much to do with “teenagers today…,” then why the hostility towards her colleagues, too? She wrote as though the entire school was just entirely beneath her. And like those who know the district have said, it isn’t as though this is some vastly underperforming inner city kind of school here, so what on earth put such a chip on her shoulder that she hates the entire school faculty and all?</p>

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<p>PS–We met a student from that district on a recruiting trip. The kid was really irritated that the Harvard coach expected him to take SAT II’s in order to be admitted. Entitlement much?</p>

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<p>On an admitted students day at umich I met a student who whined and complained and made her father take her home within the first five minutes after flying all the way here from FL for the event just because she was too cold. I thought she was a spoiled brat, but I didn’t judge her entire school district for it.</p>

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<p>I think about these issues often, as a retired public schoolteacher who still teaches 8th graders once weekly in an afterschool program, just to stay connected. Love the kids.</p>

<p>These are not excuses for my students, but realities: I tell them I know they have been up since 6:30 a.m., that I’m the 9th teacher they’ve seen all day, not to mention a few coaches, before they land in front of me at 6:30 p.m. for a 45-minute session. </p>

<p>I had better motivate them! I couldn’t keep the schedules they keep. Do they whine? Absolutely. That’s why we went to Teachers College, to get a starter kit of “bag of tricks” to keep it lively. Basically there is a two-minute window students allow the teacher to take a measure of how she’s feeling. If she doesn’t stay strong, the class is done before it started. Humor, good plans, warmth, commitment, organization…if she doesn’t show it in the first two minutes, she’ll spend the next 45 dealing with junky behaviors among teens. That goes with the territory.</p>

<p>The other thing I remember: when I was in 11th grade, there was one teacher who could not stand her students. I just knew it. It was clear, and I could feel her distaste for us - and her life - every time I entered her room. I learned nothing from her, although I was an A student. Today as a teacher I tap into this thought starting each class: If I am in ANY way cranky, I’d best leave it at the door before class begins…for my own sake as well as the students. Leave your war at the door, and teach. Teach hard for shifts. Teach each student. Teach.</p>

<p>This is not too much to ask of a teacher. </p>

<p>On top of that, if she can’t figure out appropriate boundaries for blogging in this Internet age, she’s too out-of-touch and frankly, stupid, to teach this high school generation. Last week, my own congressman resigned because he cellphoned a hunky photo of himself to someone from a Craigslist ad. Around here, the conclusion is, regardless of his politics or training, he’s too STUPID to hold that job if he doesn’t get the media realities of what he did.</p>

<p>But I’d rather see her sent to some kind of mentoring or shadowing of a master teacher than fired, which seems like overkill for what she did here.</p>

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<p>Doesn’t it seem as though this teacher was asking to be caught? A blog with her first name & initial, her photo, and a link to a site with her actual name on it? Too bad she didn’t just resign and save herself the media hoorah. Or maybe that is waht she wanted?</p>

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<p>I only read to page two, so idk what you’re discussing right before this post, but please stop defending the students. I’m a senior in high school, in all AP/ Honors courses, and I know exactly what this teacher is talking about. </p>

<p>She shouldn’t have put this on a public blog, but this should bring scrutiny to the root of the problem; poor parenting and the lack of motivation of students in my generation. Parents don’t discipline their children as much as they should, and students in my generation, for the most part, are pieces of shi t. They have no respect for education and shouldn’t even be allowed in school. </p>

<p>Anyone that disagrees either has an exceptional class, a delusional view of the situation, or hasn’t been in a classroom in a long time.</p>

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<p>Good post mathmagician1. It’s good students such as yourself with accountable parents that are just as sick of the coddling and excuse making as the T’s trying to teach the class. </p>

<p>It’s easy to blame the teacher. </p>

<p>Most of the folks that demand she be fired have never taught a class in their lives. </p>

<p>Why do we force people to go to any school unless they are under 16? If they don’t want to be there let them go work in the fields or in the mines or in fast food for min wage until they figure out what an education can do for them. Don’t force them to go. Allow them to go if they want to be there. </p>

<p>Big difference.</p>

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<p>^^Or read the rest of the thread and knows what the discussion is really about.</p>

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<p>The point that I feel Mathmagican1 missed is you would be painted with the same brush if you were in her district or one of the teachers classes. Just because you may not view yourself as she described does not mean that she would view you that way.</p>

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<p>As a high school teacher I have heard many motivated students voice the same sentiment that mathmagician1 shared. The students see it because they live with each other more than anyone else. I know there are still strong and motivated students, but there are still too many who aren’t and they create nothing but problems for everyone one else in the classroom.</p>

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<p>I’m pretty sure if a student derided a teacher like she did the students, the student would get suspended…</p>

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<p>Idon’t see that this is a question of “defending” the students or not. There are problematic students everywhere, and wonderful students everywhere. </p>

<p>Same with teachers.</p>

<p>This one is obviously not up to the job, does not want to be, and hates it.</p>

<p>She should not be teaching.</p>

<p>It’s not an either/or situation. It’s just plain unsuitability.</p>

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<p>Yenmor, I feel I wouldn’t be labeled in the same way as those students, simply because I’m not one of those students. If for some reason she did label me as “stupid,” it wouldn’t really bother me. First, teachers don’t know me that well. Second, it wouldn’t matter to me if a teacher labeled me as such. I would learn the material required for the class, and continue with my life.</p>

<p>And powerbomb, of course the student would get suspended lol. High school students don’t have unions to hide behind when they do something wrong.</p>

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<p>mathemagician - so are you saying that the existence of teacher unions justifies her attitude and language towards her students?</p>

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<p>

</p>

<p>Really?</p>

<p>[After</a> a Facebook Scandal, Horace Mann Is Forced to Ask What Values It Should Teach – New York Magazine](<a href=“http://nymag.com/news/features/45592/]After”>Testing Horace Mann)</p>

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<p>Horace Mann is different.</p>

<ol>
<li>It’s not a public school.</li>
<li>

</li>
</ol>

<p>I’m not saying this justifies the students’ activity - it’s just that it’s a lot less controversial for a student to get suspended for this sort of stuff than it is for a teacher to be terminated.</p>