<br>
<br>
<p>UCs? It our area it’s far more common for a teacher to have gone to a Cal State than a UC. Not sure about community colleges.</p>
<p>According to this, 60% of school teachers in CA graduated from Cal States, which pretty much agrees with my casual observations of our school district:</p>
<p>[California</a> State University - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia](<a href=“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_State_University]California”>California State University - Wikipedia)</p>
<p>epiphany, I am talking about the situation in public schools. I have made that very clear. I know that your kids attended a private high school, so I would assume that your experiences would be different. </p>
<p>I think that it is rather ironic that so many people who accuse me of elitism are insistent that the teacher who talks up the value of community college to students is “mean-spirited”. </p>
<p>a. The majority of kids who graduated from my kids schools were not going enroll in 4 year colleges at graduation, and the teachers would know that. </p>
<p>b. A relatively small fraction of the graduating class would get accepted directly into the UC system, and many of those couldn’t afford to go even if accepted. (Many didn’t apply in the first place because they knew it was unaffordable).</p>
<p>c. The majority of graduates who go directly to a 4-year college go to one of the local CSU’s and commute from home. The CSU’s are problematic due to budget cuts – and it’s very difficult to transfer from a CSU to a UC. </p>
<p>d. The CC => UC is probably the most common route to a 4 year degree from a UC among the students who attend the public schools. Yes, some do go directly to the UC – but MORE take the CC route. </p>
<p>So when a teacher starts talking up the benefits of a CC at a public high school in California, they are not being “petty” or “mean-spirited” – the teacher may be offering up what is perceived to be the most realistic route to the UC education. </p>
<p>But again… I really don’t expect those same teachers to be doing the happy dance and showering awards upon the handful of kids who manage to get accepted into prestige private colleges. </p>
<p>Keep in mind that in the realm of public schools – a significant number of kids are the offspring of immigrants who don’t share the cultural expectation of 18-year-olds moving away from home to attend college; and I’d note that an unknown but probably very significant percentage of these kids are undocumented and are not eligible for federal grants and loans.</p>
<p>I hate ignorance. I really do.</p>
<p>From wikipedia, your own source, coureur. Please read citations carefully next time. It is exactly as I thought:</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>That means teacher preparation programs. And they don’t enroll in those because they’re stupid, they’re low-life, they’re intellectual midgets who can’t cut it for U.C. They enroll there, as I did for my first of two sets of teaching credentials, and before I enrolled in a master’s program, supplementally. They enroll there because the CA teaching preparations in those institutions are the best. U.C. has begun getting slightly better in its teacher preparation; in fact it’s actually about twice as good in that area as it was way back when, when I was in teacher training, but the Cal States still beat the U.C.'s for quality of teacher training. Surprise! And they enroll there after a 4-year degree, usually, because in CA one needs a full 4-year degree in something before the credentialing program. Many of those degrees are from U.C.'s, some from privates, some even from prestigious U’s.</p>
<p>This is the same reason that people, including students on CC and their parents, often search for the best teacher preparation programs in other states as well, seeking which Teachers’ Colleges said students should enroll in.</p>
<p>There’s not a source that has been quoted yet with any credibility that says that most of the teachers employed in the state of CA, public and private, went to community colleges or graduated from CSU’s. In the best publics and in many privates, it is not atypical for high school teachers to have masters’ degrees. A minority even have doctorates. Some (quite a few) of the h.s. teachers in the better publics, even, have taught in community college, not attended community college. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Most teachers will tell you that real teaching, really effective teaching, is not taught at any college,be it Ivy or CC. I’ve known teachers with amazing paper and not a clue of how to really teach, and amazingly gifted teachers with very ‘meh’ credentials. Besides an understanding of the material and the teaching pedagogy involved, really good teachers have excellent social emotional skills- and you can’t teach that.</p>
<p>california public school mama here. MOST of my son’s high school teachers graduated from schools boasted about/salivated over here on college confidential (and have master’s degrees). i’m pretty sure though that this is due to the location of the school. my point about “pettiness” was that the two teachers i referenced happened to have gone to schools that some on here would see as being “lesser”. these teachers clearly felt insecure about themselves, and conveyed some of that insecurity in comments made in the classroom, which may have indicated that they had a problem with their ‘prestigious’ school alum colleagues. or it could have been that they just had a weird way of communicating with students.</p>
<br>
<br>
<p>Yeah, I hate ignorance too. I really do. Which is why I recommend that you read Cal State’s own website:</p>
<p>[The</a> Impact of the California State University](<a href=“http://www.calstate.edu/impact/workforce/service.html#teachers]The”>http://www.calstate.edu/impact/workforce/service.html#teachers)</p>
<p>“Educating Teachers: Building the Future Generation
Education is the foundation for future generations of Californians’ success and is routinely cited as one of the major drivers of economic growth. The CSU is by far the state’s primary source of teachers; more than half of California’s teachers are graduates of its campuses.” </p>
<p>“Graduates” is their word not mine. Perhaps you should squabble with the Cat State officials over their “ignorance.”</p>
<p>
Obviously that might be a factor in my experience as well. </p>
<p>I just want to emphasize that I have nothing against CSU’s. My son is a CSU graduate! The CSU he attended afforded him an awesome opportunity and I am very glad he made the choice to finish his studies there. I am very dismayed at the state budget cuts and the impacts that they are having on the CSU’s. </p>
<p>So I’m sorry that anyone would be offended by the notion that a lot of teachers come from CSU’s.</p>
<p>There is a significant cost differential between a UC education and CSU education. Up until the very recent past, it has always been very feasible for a student to work their way through a CSU, paying their own way – especially for those who opted to commute from home. When my son was at his CSU, tuition was still around $3500/year – I think the fees at the UC’s were at least double that at the time. </p>
<p>Years ago when I was at a UC, it was also possible for young people to work and pay their own way through the UC’s – most of my college friends were responsible for the bulk of their educational costs and had little to no support from their parents. But this certainly has not been true over the past decade. </p>
<p>So the point is - when you factor in costs – then it doesn’t make much sense for a person who has career goals that will be addressed well in the CSU system to opt for a UC education. The CSU’s historically have had very strong programs for teacher education and credentialing. </p>
<p>I think the misunderstanding here is that some people don’t understand that I am trying to explain my world. I happen to have a professional level education, but I live in a working glass neighborhood. The majority of the kids that my kids grew up with in elementary school did not go on to 4 year residential colleges. Of those that did, most are kids whose parents opted to send them to private rather than public high schools.</p>
<p>And coming back to awards: I feel that high school awards are one way to validate and affirm the accomplishments and contributions of the kids whose next step post-high school may be a part-time job to finance their studies at the local community college or nearby CSU. I don’t think they should be left out of the mix, as if their lives and contributions don’t matter.</p>
<p>I think that HS are a way to validate students who have succeeded academically.</p>
<p>It simply makes no sense to me when for example when there are 2 students both of whom are in the top 5 or 10 in a class of 400 students, both with rigorous schedules, GPA’s only .001 apart, one student is showered with multiple awards and the other sits empty handed. This is a “slap in the face” to one of these students. </p>
<p>Back in my own HS days (I confirmed my memory with a look at my yearbook), everyone in the top 15 got an academic award of some kind. If not a specific subject than one of the other awards for academic achievement. Our val was brilliant, probably the top in every subject, but only got 3 awards which was the most anyone did. Neither she nor her parents were unhappy. Seemed like a much better system.</p>
<p>Quote:
Originally Posted by EPTR
My advice to a student would never insinuate that they should settle for a sub par education because, after all, they were “only” going to be teachers!
I don’t think you really get how much money and finances plays into everyone’s perceptions. </p>
<p>The reason that adults would discourage a student from attending an elite college if they “only” want to be a teacher is because teacher’s salaries are not adequate to pay off the loans that middle-income people would need to attend expensive private schools. "</p>
<p>That’s exactly as I took the comment I posted about. It was well meaning but just reflected a different view of the goals of education. My friend wasn’t looking for a “return” on her investment based on her d’s eventual salary.</p>
<p>To go back to an older post, and maybe more the original topic:
I thought this was an interesting example. If there is no other information, what are people to think about this? What are the two students who didn’t get the award to think? Certainly, they must think that, for some reason, the decisionmakers thought the winners were better foreign-language students in some way, despite the objective data. If there are no clear criteria, human nature will assume either (a) the students who didn’t win did something wrong or bad or (b) the teachers just liked the winning students better. The other option, I guess, is that the winning students did something good nobody (including them) knows about.</p>
<p>^^^^IMO, there are many ways to determine who gets the department award. Certainly objective measures don’t directly measure effort, intellectual curiosity, improvement nor involvement with efforts to learn more about the culture surrounding the language. For example, my d happened to win the Spanish award. She knew that another in her class speaks the language better (both his parents are fluent) than she, as well as the native Spanish speakers and was surprised to receive it. They stated she received the award due to intellectual curiosity and work ethic. Her improvement and determination to learn the language is what impressed her teachers.</p>
<p>“Also – and I think this is important – at least in the public high school, there are a lot of teachers who do not have particularly impressive educational credentials. They went to school at mid-level public colleges and have a year or so post-grad education at a teacher’s college. I mean-- most didn’t go to prestige universities or become doctors or lawyers or Ph.D’s – if they did, they wouldn’t be teaching high school. (There are a few exceptions, fortunately – and they really do enrich the kid’s experiences- but they are not the norm in public school settings). So my point is – there is a lot of room for resentment to form. Even if a kid is very considerate and generous, a teacher who worked their way through Podunk U. may perceive the kid going off to an Ivy as being spoiled and over-privileged.”</p>
<p>Calmom: This is a direct quote from your earlier post. Do you still believe that your kid’s teachers were jealous and resentful of them? Just curious, as it is so contrary to my personal experience as a teacher. Teachers are so delighted by the achievement of their students. I can honestly say that I have never seen this type of jealously and resentment of a student…</p>
<p>Calimama’s hypothesis is more plausible to me. Perhaps the teachers are insecure or jealous and resentful of a colleague. But, how this would factor in to giving awards to an undeserving student is unclear to me.</p>
<p>Response to Hunt post:One of the great mysteries of award ceremonies. The teacher was asked and did not give a solid answer although it may have had to do with perceived effort in class.</p>
<p>The language award situation above sounds to me like a perfect example of teachers preferring to reward the students that do well but without the benefit of “brilliance”–the blood, sweat,and tears A student over the “it-comes-so-easy-to-him” A+ student. </p>
<p>Back with an update. Perhaps I am underestimating the impact that incompetence might have had in the athletic awards situation I recounted. As you may recall, there were 3 separate instances at 2 ceremonies in which D was not called forward for recognition for awards she had received previous to the event (NM and automatic recognition stuff mostly), when other students who had received the exact same honors were called forward. While I think the school needs to be careful to have award information correct in advance of a ceremony and although I was annoyed because it happened that many times, I did not take it personally because I assumed it was simply a mistake. So I contacted the school and very politely asked them to make sure that D’s awards would be listed in the graduation program, since it appeared that the lists the staff was using did not have her name on it for those 3 awards.</p>
<p>This morning I was contacted by D’s GC, who told me that by the end of the day I must give her proof of D’s awards since their offices were “not able to confirm” D had received them. How interesting! It was the GC who gave her the original application forms, and then called her to the office to give her the initial award certificates. But now they can’t confirm she received them? And they need all this by the end of today or they can’t list it in the graduation program? I told her I would try to find the certificates but my D had already left for school and I was not certain where she had put them. But since some of these things are based on PSAT cut-off scores and they do have her scores, couldn’t they verify that way?</p>
<p>So maybe their failure to recognize my D for any athletic award despite four years of high accomplishment was also the result of incompetence and inadequate record-keeping. I still doubt it because of other facts, but am more willing now to allow for that possibility.</p>
<p>The GFG, how annoying!! My idea of heaven is a place where no one is asking me, “Do you know where the [fill in the blank] is ?” I doubt that I could find documents to prove that I even exist, by the end of the day! Actually, your situation is beyond annoying, when the GC says that they “were not able to confirm” it. Maybe National Merit could supply them with the confirmation directly, at your request, or your daughter’s?</p>
<p>If you hand deliver the proof GFG, be sure to ask where they would like it placed so they don’t lose it again. Crass–sorry.</p>
<p>People are dumb. My daughter took her passport to the SAT II on Saturday (she couldn’t find her school ID–she’s a bit dumb, too, sometimes)–and the person who checked her in said that they didn’t think a passport was an acceptable ID. Finally, they did let her take the test.</p>
<p>“The language award situation above sounds to me like a perfect example of teachers preferring to reward the students that do well but without the benefit of “brilliance”–the blood, sweat,and tears A student over the “it-comes-so-easy-to-him” A+ student.”</p>
<p>One can be “brilliant” and still have a strong work ethic.</p>
<p>I suppose another possibility in the language situation is that the teacher felt the two students had “enough” recognition from the national test, and didn’t “need” the recognition from the school. I actually have some sympathy for this idea, but I think that should be communicated to the students, rather than pretending that somebody else really did achieve more.</p>
<p>^ Wow, that takes the cake, Hunt. </p>
<p>My first thought when I got the GC’s message was “Isn’t that a nice Catch-22! You want the certificates to prove she got these awards, but since you FORGOT to call her up during the ceremonies to give her the stupid certificates, how on earth would you like me to do that???” But then I calmed down and remembered that D probably had the original papers in some box somewhere. But the only reason I was able to accommodate them is that I’m at home. The message came after 8 AM and the high school staff leave at 2:30 PM, so a working parent would have had a tough time cominng up with the proof within the time period. Unbelievable. And I highly doubt the principal’s office was “unable” to verify D got the awards. They just didn’t feel like doing it.</p>