<p>What that the only jobs are at Wal-Mart?</p>
<p>India can provide all the Wal Mart clerks that the US could possibly need too.</p>
<p>India and China for that matter can supply all the engineers especially software engineers that the US could possibly need.</p>
<p>But first they need to get the elusive H-1B visa (I know, sound like a disease, doesn’t it?)</p>
<p>They do not need to do squat as a lot of things such as IT are outsourced anyways</p>
<p>I challenge you mini: become a substitute teacher. Then come back and write about that experience. Write about how cooperative the kids were. How much they learned. How much curriculum you covered. How how much they read. And how extensive their assignments were. But most importantly, write about how effective you were as their teacher.</p>
<p>“In poor and inner city areas, a lot of the kids aren’t children of divorce, they are the children of young, ill educated moms who never were married and are on the margins of society (and often have quite a few kids). This isn’t a stereotype, it is the truth.”</p>
<p>Exactly</p>
<p>OP,
The majority of Americans hate their jobs, so your feelings are normal in this regard.[Samara</a> O’Shea: Record Breaking Numbers Of Americans Hate Their Jobs](<a href=“HuffPost - Breaking News, U.S. and World News | HuffPost”>Record Breaking Numbers Of Americans Hate Their Jobs | HuffPost Life)</p>
<p>And even the majority of those of us who do not hate our jobs would still rather be doing something else.</p>
<p>The H1B visa is not ‘illusive’,in the past 20 years or so it has been so gutted of the rules governing it that what it has turned into. Despite all the claims about not being able to find enough people, etc, the reality is that the H1B program is much like sending jobs overseas, it is being able to get cheap labor (and thanks to the terms of the H1B, the people on that visa cannot easily leave a job to get a better salary). The original terms of the H1B visa were for skills not available locally, it was for positions like someone with a Phd in solid state physics or the like, and companies had to prove that. And the law was that during recessions, when unemployment was above a certain level, the H1B was supposed to be suspended…today, the only requirement for an H1B is that the person covered by it has the skills to do the job (in some way), and they look the other way during a recession (not long ago, there was an attempt in congress to up the number of visas from the current level, in the middle of a horrible job market). And harvard business school came out with a major study to show that the visa program had primarily suppressed wages…and outsourcing doesn’t always work that well for these kinds of jobs, I am in IT, and take it from me, when you outsource these kind of jobs companies pay a high price, but the beancounters only care about the bottom line…and the reality is that places like India and China are not creating new jobs much at all, so they basically are taking what was created elsewhere at this point (and I could make a long discussion about the education system in China and India and its problems, but that is another thread)</p>
<p>
So what are the solutions here? OP asks for some empathy, but what else can be done to ease the situation faced by many teachers (including me… I no longer work at the elite private school but for a public school where 73% get free breakfast/lunch/snacks)? Jonri added an important perspective, but the elephants in the room are the kids who aren’t prepared for school and where school isn’t necessarily a priority. How do you help them because it affects everyone?</p>
<p>There are no short term solutions - only those that take a generation or more to change.</p>
<p>Again, I’m not denying that kids who grow up with poor, single parents are less likely to succeed academically than others. Still, some people who grow up poor succeed. </p>
<p>One of the most famous exceptions is Albert Camus. His mother was half deaf. She had a vocabulary of about 300 words. She worked as a cleaning woman in a less than high class hotel. She brought home clothing guests left behind for her son. </p>
<p>A teacher–God Bless Him!!–noted that this young boy with a very limited vocabulary loved to learn. He didn’t seem to notice the fact that the other boys treated him as a social pariah. He also seemed to be almost ■■■■■■■■ during class discussions, but wrote well. The teacher befriended him…and learned that his mother was almost deaf. Suddenly, the teacher realized that why this young boy had such a limited spoken vocabulary. </p>
<p>Seriously, but for that teacher, it’s almost certain that Camus would not have become one of the most famous authors of modern times.But one teacher looked past the poor vocabulary, second hand clothes…and saw a fine mind. </p>
<p>At 7 or so, Camus was young enough to turn around his life. The OP says she teaches second or third grade. Her students are also young enough to turn around their lives.</p>
<p>Wishing Minnymom and all of the teachers out there a week filled with numerous reasons to be thankful, delightful surprises, and goals met in the classroom.</p>
<p>I don’t deny the effectiveness of schools in producing Wal-Mart clerks and shelvers, and I don’t blame teachers for doing what is, after all, their jobs - producing the workforce of the 21st Century. I know as well that the average teacher lasts little more than three years in the profession, which clearly means they are either not cut out for the work, or dissatisfied with it. Teachers who last 27 years (like my mother) are clearly an anomaly, and it is not surprising that at some point they become toast. </p>
<p>As for poor kids, the lesson of the Alexander study was that, in the classroom, poor kids in the first five years learn just as much as the higher income ones. It is entirely a myth that they learn less in the classroom (in grades 1-5) - the data show this simply isn’t true. The entire difference between the two is made up of what happens when they are not in school. It is unrealistic to believe that doing ANYTHING in the classroom in the aggregate is going to make up the difference, and the evidence suggests that there isn’t. So it’s easy to see why teachers would feel frustrated.</p>
<p>And what’s going on outside of school?
<a href=“http://news.yahoo.com/behind-poverty-numbers-real-lives-real-pain-151738270.html[/url]”>http://news.yahoo.com/behind-poverty-numbers-real-lives-real-pain-151738270.html</a></p>
<p>
Two thumbs up.</p>
<p>Hope my newly minted DS teacher will beat the odds and not wash out in 3 years.</p>
<p>It was a brutal battle for him to find a public school teaching job for this fall and he is very happy to have succeeded.</p>
<p>As a longtime allied health professional, I see many changes in my (hospital) workplace that make it more challenging than ever. I just keep finding ways to morph myself so that I hopefully remain relevant to my employer and yet get to keep my sanity.
Not so easy.</p>
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</p>
<p>If teaching and being an agent for postitive change in the life of a child is not a platform for service to others, I don’t know what else is as far as children are concerned.</p>
<p>When one decides to become an educator, we must realize that everyday is not going to be cake. On CC, we are always telling other parents to love the kid that you have, not the one you wish you had. This advice needs to be practiced first and foremost in the classroom. </p>
<p>I remember coming to work for the DOE and being offered a job at my daughter’s high school and turning it down. My daughter attended what could be called a “private” public school, that was chocked full of involved parents and a PTA which raised over a half million dollars a year for enrichments. I came into the profession, specifically to work in a title one low income school, because I believe in the transformative power of edcuation. I see first hand how there is a change in the family and it is the accomplishment of the family when the child gets a diploma and goes on to college.</p>
<p>Just because you are teaching in a title I school, just because students are low income, from single parent households, dysfunctional households, etc. does not mean that they don’t deserve our best work in the classroom. I beleive that these children need our best work and will benefit from it more, because it can show then that they are not defined by their situation or circumstances.</p>
<p>This is an interesting thread. My kid is in a magnet program in a middle school in a very poor area with many of these problems, along with those that come with adolescence. We’ve been getting all sorts of cheerleading notes home, lists of suggestions for the parents to undertake, and I bet this is why.</p>
<p>As a parent of a kid in a school with a similar demographic, may I offer a couple of suggestions if you want the parents to be involved? First of all, I think you should take a couple of days and truly observe the kids. Just see what they do, what their days are like. One of the biggest problems my son’s class had last year was solved when one of the teachers, who had always required the textbook to come back and forth every day, realized that the kids don’t have a locker and so have to carry it all day, up and down stairs, with their coats and backpacks which is a huge pain and a real risk of losing it. When she allowed the kids to leave the books at home, there was much improvement. So I urge you to look at what their days are actually like in case there’s something important that you hadn’t noticed. As DMD said, when both parents work, time is of the essence, so bear that in mind. Among the best things my kid’s teachers do is send home either a weekly calendar or a monthly calendar with homework, tests, assignments. Maybe send home a weekly calendar with a week’s worth of homework due on Monday, so families can structure their weeks as they individually need to. Also, make extra copies of things readily available. It’s always driven me nuts when teachers are punitive about that. Sometimes things get lost. If your goal is to have the assignments learned and completed, made them available, and don’t be spiteful. You should do a little survey about which families have access to computers. If it’s most, then you might consider joining engrade so that the information is readily available. It posts the child’s current earned grade, which is a powerful incentive, because you can actually see it go up and down. Also, use the classroom to teach the priorities you want to impart. Be very clear about those priorities, enforce specific rules, praise compliance often. I can’t tell you how much of an impact my son’s fourth grade teacher had on him because she had a list of about ten priorities/rules that she enforced constantly, and her students left her class with those values deeply ingrained. Good luck! You are doing a great thing.</p>
<p>Whatever you are teaching, there is a way to make material exciting. Look back at what made you love some subject and hate another when you were a kid. Besides, there are new schools are openning in poor areas that teach differently than others, there are waiting lines and lotteries to get into these schools (they are public schools). So, there is a great interest in kids’ education in urban areas also, different approach to teaching apparently ignites communities. I do not know how much power one teacher has in old establish school. I am not a teacher, however, I am very dissapointed with k-12 education in general. Too much busy/boring/mandane work, too little excitement/challenge. If parents are no help, then the only thing to improve situation is to make class a desirable place to be, something kids themselves are looking forward to, something that they will not miss to participate.<br>
In regard to 2 parent working, I believe that it is a great advantage, not disadvantage. We have always both worked full time. Working parents make kids more adjusting, flexible. My kid was in 5 - 3 EC’s all thru graduating thru HS, just drove her around after work every day until she had her license. She graduated #1 in her HS class. Working parents can afford so much more, kids of working parents benefit greatly.</p>