Comments on: Ten Pieces of Inspiration #10

By: Kate

Kate — Wed, 16 Mar 2011 00:55:54 +0000

Michael: Aah…so it is only US teachers who rate poorly as a group? My problem with the way we now educate children is that we expect them to progress lockstep in a linear manner with the federally mandated expectation that every child in the United States is supposed to test “proficient” on state-mandated tests by 2014. Which means that teachers are finding it incredibly difficult to take time to get to know children in their classroom and to build community within the classroom, etc., etc. It is the relationships with teachers and in the classroom that often “fixes” kids.
By putting kids on a treadmill so early on and expecting them to stay on that treadmill lockstep from kindergarten to graduation is appalling. Anyone who studies child development knows that a child’s development is rarely linear and to expect proficiency every year of ALL children (learning disabled, autistic, emotionally disabled, etc.–ALL children) is asking for failure. Some of my most successful, bright, innovative friends did very poorly in school and several of them really struggled learning to read. Btw…the very worst teachers that I had in my high school career were science teachers who came to the classroom from industry and I had several because of the teacher shortage. A good teacher can teach almost anything, given the time to master the subject matter, especially in elementary school.

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 12:23:10 +0000

A couple clarifications:
I do think method matters, but the opportunity cost of subject mastery is too high. My wife is a teacher and effective materials and discussions are frequently discussed at our dinner table. Unfortunately, in addition to the opportunity cost of an education major, there is the good chance that the pedagogy has net negative benefit when applied!

Secondly, I agree with the comments about teachers expected to be social workers too, and I want to make clear that our national and state education departments are breaking teachers much more than teachers are breaking the departments. This is the worst problem, in my opinion. Perhaps concentrating on this is the best way to “hate the sin and love the sinner.”

By: Michael

Michael — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 11:57:46 +0000

Kate, I realize TSD has an international audience, but I meant US teachers as a group.

If you believe teachers can’t fix broken children, then what good is a teacher? I believe that teachers can make a difference, so I expect them to!

The comparison to medical professionals is a good one. One major concern I have is teachers getting education/pedagogy degrees instead of degrees in the fields they teach (and relying on solid liberal arts for elementary teaching of all subjects.) It is like seeing a doctor with a degree in bedside manner.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 09:58:00 +0000

Agree with what you are saying, VickiB. In my state there was concern about obesity in kids so the legislators passed a law that said that kids needed PE twice a week instead of two. No extra funds were allocated for this extra PE (PE teachers must grow on trees and work for nothing?). There is still concern about obesity in children so legislators are proposing that MORE PE time be added. Character education is also a requirement, but most guidance counselors (if schools even have them) are so tied up with mandated testing and now, keeping up with record transfers for the flow of children from one school to another, because of financial situations (i.e. eviction) or the parent’s ability to choose a school for a child. There should be a statute that parents are allowed to choose their child’s school at the beginning of the year and they have to stick with that choice–we have kids who have moved in and out of our school four and five times in a school year because the grass is always greener on the other side–if they get mad at a teacher or are under scrutiny for attendance problems, the kids are gone for awhile until the heat gets too bad at the new school.
Unfortunately, though, when the system is broken the people who catch the blame are the ones in the trenches…the teachers.

By: VickiB

VickiB — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:58:02 +0000

Good teachers work hard, and I can think of a handful who will always be an influence on my life, even 25 years after leaving public school. But as many have commented here, I do believe the system is broken. The families are broken, and the teachers and schools are too bogged down dealing with problems created by this. Schools are now defacto baby sitters. I work with many parents, and they get very ANGRY when there’s a school delay or inservice day, etc. The attitude is” Stupid school – now I have to scramble”. And schools are also expected to provide 2 meals a day (I was a headstart volunteer for several years and I can tell you it often starts in preschool), provide conseling, provide afterschool for the kids who can’t keep up, etc. Now even COMMUNITY COLLEGES (those are for legal adults BTW) are criticized for not picking out the “Jared Lochners” in the group??? Schools are for knowledge and teaching. They are stretched too thin, and have taken on too many parenting functions. Private and parochial schools, though the pay is less than the public schools, see success because they are about ACADEMICS. I can see the downside, but I don’t blame parents who homeschool ONE BIT.

By: Jordan

Jordan — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 07:31:16 +0000

I second your comments on teachers. As a child of two teachers, I saw how hard they worked. Good teachers are critical to the development of the next generation and the future of the world. They should be paid far far more than they receive.

By: Nick

Nick — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 03:54:13 +0000

Laundry Lady- As a recent college grad from a Wisconsin college, many (probably the majority) of my friends and classmates majored in education, or are currently in a post-degree program for teaching. Every single one of them is in it because they truly want to teach, not because they get summers off, or because of the benefits, etc. In fact, most of them have been discouraged from becoming a teacher by their family or someone else, because of the terrible climate they would be entering into.

Due to the events here in WI in the last few weeks several of them are now reconsidering becoming teachers. My brother has worked at an afterschool program the last year while going back to school to teach. Now he’s deciding what else he could do with an English degree and a partial one in Elementary Ed.

By: STL Mom

STL Mom — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 01:49:46 +0000

If my school district’s referendum doesn’t pass, my son’s fantastic teacher who is six months short of tenure will be fired. In her place will be some mediocre teacher who has been passed from school to school in the district because she has tenure, and can’t be fired. No one wants her, but no one can get rid of her.
I’d be happy to pay teachers more, if we can get rid of tenure. Doing a decent job for five years shouldn’t get you a job for life.
Without tenure, there’s no guarantee that all teachers will be good teachers, or that principals will make good decisions. But it irks me to hear parent after parent talk about the teacher that no one wants to get, but that we are stuck with. And if he or she has been there long enough, that teacher no one wants makes $105,000/year plus fabulous benefits.

By: Kate

Kate — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 23:04:44 +0000

Beg to disagree, Michael. You are lumping all teachers together and saying that they are not effective as a group. Do you mean all teachers in the United States? All teachers in the Western Hemisphere? All teachers in the world? Any group lumped together likely will come out on the bad end, especially when we, as a society, neither value our teachers or education in general.
Doctors? They should be able to cure all patients, no matter what their ailment or the patients history. They went to school, after all, to study medicine. If they don’t get 100% effectiveness…they aren’t doing their job.
Dentists? No person in this nation should have a cavity in their head. Dentists went to school, after all, to study dentistry and how to prevent cavities. Why aren’t they doing their job?
Sound stupid? That’s how teachers feel. We get kids when they are five years old. Five years old! How much of a child’s life is already set by then. Read some of the studies that indicate how much impact a parent has on a child’s future learning. We get kids who come to school who have never opened a book. Never been talked to except for being yelled at or cussed at. We have kids who come to school who have taken care of themselves since they were three and four years old because their parents are trying to make ends meet and working two jobs. But if children don’t learn, it is because a teacher isn’t doing their job.

By: Michael

Michael — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 22:22:26 +0000

Excellent analogy, Rose.

Somehow, we have to find a way to commend teachers for their effort while recognizing that as a group, they are not as effective as they should be.

This unqualified praise of teachers *and their results* is like using “support the troops” to defend any war.

By: spaces

spaces — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 05:36:54 +0000

My spouse is a professor. Like K-12 teachers, they do not “get summers off”. Yet an administrator had the nerve to say that they do at a university function. The administrator was called out on this — He should have and probably did know that professors spend the summer often teaching, doing research, writing, preparing for the long semesters by developing new classes, class preps, etc. All tasks above and beyond the classroom that are demanded by the profession. It’s was disheartening to have the ‘summers off’ myth repeated by someone who did know better.

I, too, wish I could pay more tax dollars into education. Instead of taxing, my state is proposing to raise class sizes to 28 for K-5, somewhat higher for 6-12, possibly get rid of K altogether, and get rid of 12th grade. And of course salary freezes (but no freezes on summer expectations, including paying for your own graduate studies).

By: Paula

Paula — Sun, 13 Mar 2011 01:32:59 +0000

Well, I have to say that my son’s special ed teachers are some of the most dedicated that I have seen! He has autism and some days his behavior gets in the way of his learning despite being on meds. It is because of them, that he is learning to read, does basic math, and is having conversations with his peers. This is the first year that he has been able to be mainstreamed into the regular classroom for a portion of his day (and he is in the second grade).

Oh, and my son LOVES school. He has discovered the solar system and loves to draw. His teachers have never given up on him, even when we wondered if the public school could handle him. They have given us hope for his future and that, to me, is priceless…in my opinion they don’t get paid enough for all they do!

By: Kate

Kate — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 23:37:30 +0000

Thanks, Trent, for the pat on the back for teachers. Because you have intimate knowledge of what a teacher does, you can see that what is happening to teachers is horrendous. The myths surrounding the teaching profession are just that…myths. They say that you shouldn’t judge someone until you have spent time in that person’s shoes. I would love to see some of the people who insist that teachers are overpaid and overcompensated to spend one year in a classroom and then see if they still think that.
Teachers in my state start out at around $31,000 and, because of furloughs and no step raises, have had a pay decrease their first year. As much as I love and support public education, I wonder why any young person would choose it as a career…luckily there are still some young idealists (I refuse to believe that they are all lazy and looking for an easy ride as Laundry Lady suggests).

By: Rose

Rose — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 22:45:58 +0000

Trent, this statement sounds incredibly uninformed and knee-jerk reactionary:

“I am extremely happy with every tax dollar of mine that goes into the public school system, and I wish a larger percentage of my tax dollars went there.”

Let’s pretend that your food budget was out of control because you didn’t know about healthy foods, and you didn’t know where to begin with cooking. You were dismayed at the situation and longed for improvement, yet you believed that food was an important part of your budget and shouldn’t be short-changed. Would you say, “I am extremely happy with every dollar of my income that goes into the food budget, and I wish a larger percentage of my income went there”? Would you continue with your bad habits, splurging on expensive foods and letting them rot in your fridge because you didn’t know how to properly prepare them, pleased with yourself that you’re spending more money so things must be getting better? Of course not. You need to figure out your weak points and solve your efficiency problems.

I know it’s a weak analogy, but the point is that throwing more money at any problem won’t necessarily solve it. You have to look at the deeper issues.

As other commenters have said, I too fully support teachers and want them to receive a reasonable compensation package. The problem is with a broken system that, through tenure, rewards incompetents and ignoramuses, and wastes incredible amount of taxpayer money on bureaucratic tangles, administrative overhead, etc. We need to solve the deeper problems with our education system before anything can improve much.

By: kristine

kristine — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:57:48 +0000

Andrea,
If your BIL did not have medical at all, and went on Medicaid- we all pay for it anyway. In the end, unaffordable medical care is shouldered by the taxpayers. Or not, and then contagious diseases rise.

Food for thought:
Only five states do not allow collective bargaining for educators,
effectively banning teachers unions. Those states and their SAT/ACT rankings are as follows:
South Carolina – 50th
North Carolina – 49th
Georgia – 48th
Texas – 47th
Virginia – 44th

By: Mel

Mel — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 20:17:58 +0000

I’d like to add my voice to those supporting teachers. I am outside US so I’m not quite sure exactly what the current issues are, but my feeling is that in almost every developed country, teachers are undervalued and underpaid.

Teachers can make or break a child’s love for learning, which can affect their entire future. I know I went from loving maths to *hating* it in one year, because of one awful, terrible teacher (I’m now a computer programmer and live in a house with 2 Maths professors – I guess I eventually got over that!). I also actually enjoyed learning Latin and studying English and Classics because of incredible teachers.

Along with more money and more respect, I think teachers deserve to see the bad ones marched out – they’re worse than a waste of space and money, they can destroy confidence and futures.

By: Stephan F-

Stephan F- — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:27:06 +0000

The problem generally isn’t the teachers, its the system they are forced to work in that is completely dysfunctional.
Rubber rooms, insane rules making it almost impossible to fire anyone but the molesters and it still takes years to get them out, union bosses who are in it for political reasons and not for the children, the active suppression of dissident teaching techniques.

We used to have a 95+% literacy rate, now the schools system doesn’t believe we can get it over 80% even if we wanted too. It is like parts of education are entering a dark age. There are bad teachers and bad parents, but they are a tiny minority so ignore them for now even if they do make the most noise, and realize the problem is bigger then that.

By: Mary

Mary — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 18:15:43 +0000

I’m a teacher as well, and I’ve been really horrified at how much people have been vilifying my profession–one “friend” even wrote an “aren’t teachers awful” type comment on my facebook page. Thanks for sticking up for us!

By: Amy

Amy — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 17:38:04 +0000

This series reminds me of CBS Sunday Morning in blog form. Random interesting bits of information that make you think. Love it!

By: Laundry Lady

Laundry Lady — Sat, 12 Mar 2011 15:51:37 +0000

I don’t think anyone argues that good teachers are overpaid. I think the issue is that there aren’t nearly as many teachers approaching the profession for the right reasons as there used to be. I can’t tell you the number of friends from college who pursued teaching for the summers off, virtually guaranteed raises (at least in this state) and future possibility of tenure. Many of them don’t put in the extra hours, just as many other younger workers don’t in any profession. Their jobs as teachers are just jobs, not callings, and they put in the minimum required. But since in our state, seniority is all that matters, a few years of good work can result in job security for years of mediocre efforts. I don’t begrudge good teachers their salaries or benefits. I get irritated with administrators for not being willing to deal with teachers who don’t deserve to be the profession. These teachers diminish the rest and it isn’t fair to keep them around even if they have “seniority.” I have seen tenured teachers behave so selfishly. In our district there was a choice between negotiating a smaller yearly raise (3 to 5% instead of the 7% guaranteed by the contract) rather than cut programs or layoff teachers. The union refused to discuss it. They wouldn’t even negotiate. So in the end a lot of teachers lost their jobs. Considering no one in the private sector even got a raise last year I thought the decision of the teacher’s union was short sited. Those are the kind of things that make the public believe teachers are only interested in money, even if it isn’t true.