The link could be more clickbaity by adding "this": This teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns ;)
Doctors hate her.
Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
21–30 of 109 posts
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#22Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
I was a student of calculus once. But it was long ago and I no longer remember what it was like. Human memory is bad and we are prone to hyperbole when it comes to recalling struggles/good times. A reminder is not a bad idea from time to time. I suppose there are past experiences that you have forgotten what it was really like.
You might not remember a lot of the specifics. But I am sure you remember that you did a lot of sitting and a lot of listening (2 of the 3 surprising findings of the article).
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#23Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
Yeah I agree, I mean, I realized all this stuff around 8 years old. Even after reading this I don't think any other teachers actually care or will ever care. This teacher is just getting old and forgetting how much being in school sucks. Thankfully I can just work on computers and make tons of money and love it. I now learn more every single week than I probably learned in a few months of school and, I graduated. That isn't from work though as I'm over 40.
It's just because I love to read and learn. I was doing Autocad in 1988 in 8th grade. I was learning Unix/Slackware inside out in 1993 after I graduated. School barely gave me basics in 13 years and I could of learned all of that in less than a year. If my wife wasn't a stay at home mom I'd probably home school my kids. Sadly though I have to work all the time so, they go to a boring school and only learn how to take tests.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#24Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
This article is nothing more than low effort clickbait. People love hearing about "shocking" revelations.
Agreed. This is a super obvious fluff article. Not worthy of HN, except to the extent it might spark discussion on the subject.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#25As a teacher, I was hoping for a little more depth. The observations are reasonable, if a little obvious. I suppose it's good to remind teachers about things they already know, but are not regularly implementing.
I'm not sure it's the teachers' fault either. Not entirely anyway. They are beholden to school boards and parents (and ultimately all voters via funding). In fact - I suspect this was written for parents (etc) who are not involved in the day to day experience of school, but who demand certain things from schools without any concern for the real world effects (e.g. idiotic faith in standardized testing).
Those folks may not know these things. Unfortunately, they probably don't want to pause and think about it - If I showed this to some of my conservative friends and relatives they would take it as evidence that teachers are useless, not that the current teaching system needs some serious rearrangement.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#26Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
To be fair, your perspective changes when you're on the other side of the desk. Teacher training in the U.S. is pretty abysmal. The research they're exposed to is largely theoretical or specialized, because that's what your professors have to focus on in a publish or perish world.
Good training would identify the misconceptions teachers are prone to, and the practical application of adolescent psych. There's also an appalling lack of guidance through the states' regulatory framework.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#27Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
Yeah I agree, I mean, I realized all this stuff around 8 years old. Even after reading this I don't think any other teachers actually care or will ever care. This teacher is just getting old and forgetting how much being in school sucks. Thankfully I can just work on computers and make tons of money and love it. I now learn more every single week than I probably learned in a few months of school and, I graduated. Tha…
+1000
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#28Add metal detectors, wands, and barbed wire to the mix and you'll really know what it's like for some inner city high school kids (like myself once upon a time). Kids today have more time away from school than I did, I had more time away from school than my parents did, this article wasn't much of an eye opener, sorry. Personally, high school is a waste, a transition period for students to truly find what they want o…
I can agree with you partially that high school in America is really poor in general. Having spent time in an inner city high school during my academic career, I agree with you that at the majority of the time, it felt like I was in some sort of government funded baby-sitting service. Man, I could go on for hours if you asked me about my experience there.
However, when I was a junior, I was relocated, started living with my aunt and uncle, and started going to a really nice public school. The difference was night and day. In fact, it took me weeks to stop walking around the hallways looking ready to bite someone's head off simply because that's just what you did in rougher schools to keep people from picking a fight with you.
The things I found at this nice high school were teachers who cared for my success and worked with me to get there, friends who shared an interest in computer science, UIL computer science academics, robotics, and so many other options and facets that have helped me to get a head start on my career. This school has options and extra-ciriculars that help students become young adults. I remember being on my high school campus an average of 10 hours with all the clubs, extra-curriculars, and athletics I participated in.
Sure, high school is always going to be a transitional time for people. But it doesn't need to be young-adult day care or a few steps up from jail. I earned three college credits and my CCENT in high school.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#29Why does she need to shadow a student to learn what it's like to be a student? Wasn't she a student once herself? These things are pretty obvious. I always just assumed teachers didn't care.
Adults forgetting what it is like to be young has been a foible of teachers and parents for all of recorded history. People are way worse at making connections between past experiences and present ones than we like to admit.
Re: Teacher spends two days as a student (2014)
#30As a teacher, I was hoping for a little more depth. The observations are reasonable, if a little obvious. I suppose it's good to remind teachers about things they already know, but are not regularly implementing.
I'm not sure it's the teachers' fault either. Not entirely anyway. They are beholden to school boards and parents (and ultimately all voters via funding). In fact - I suspect this was written for parents (etc) who are not involved in the day to day experience of school, but who demand certain things from schools without any concern for the real world effects (e.g. idiotic faith in standardized testing). Those folks m…
The difficulty is that there is not an obvious "better way" for all schools to serve all students. The underlying goals of schools are often at odds and incompatible with each other, let alone the goals of the students/parents/communities that direct those schools. HN is full of people who hated the constraints of school but loved learning and succeeded based on that personal zeal, but I've known countless young people that wouldn't succeed in learning basic arithmetic or reasonable advanced literacy without a strong push to get them across the line. The answer is probably a larger variety of smaller schools (and cracking the nut of how to measure teacher effectiveness), but we're not economically or socially prepared to attempt that on the necessary scale.