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Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

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Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#81

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

djrobstep wrote: post #54
allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

What's sad is that all this desperate competition by parents to improve their kid's grades is zero-sum: A noisy but pointless rearrangement of positions on the socio-economic ladder. One kid getting into Princeton means another misses out. Very little of it results in actual useful learning or eventual public benefit.

Uh, welcome to life?

> A noisy but pointless rearrangement of positions on the socio-economic ladder.

Not pointless to the people on that ladder.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#82

Post by shados »

baddox wrote: post #55
shados wrote: post #11

Articles like these, while only loosely related, always make me think that the software engineering bubble has to pop. You have people with ton of education busting their behind dealing with little brats all day to try to make sure they have a future... During that time, some bro who read a couple of books and hammered on his keyboard, and MAYBE did a 3 months bootcamp gets bummed if he can't pull in 100k in one of t…

I won’t make any predictions about the future of software engineering opportunities, but your line of reasoning will never have any inherent connection to job opportunities. As the cliche goes, life’s not fair, and working harder preparing yourself for your career has never meant that you will make more money than someone who didn’t work as hard.

Absolutely, there's no full correlation between how hard you work and how successful you are, there are situations where the contrast is totally out of wack. We're (unfortunately) used to execs taking home insane pays for dubious reasons, but right now we're seeing something similar with every day people.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#83

Post by mnl »

gammateam wrote: post #6

Thats because teaching was the fallback plan and all the students they work with daily already realize it. Every teacher that brags about their prior dream in their specialized trade is immediately shot down by middle schoolers asking "so why are you a teacher" "Well Jimbo, as you suspect, it's because something went horribly wrong and I've rationalized my acceptance of this low wage life teaching this nation's futur…

Of course, but that doesn't mean that they aren't more than capable of performing an stellar job. Talking from experience I'd rather have professionals worried about what works and what doesn't than naive twenty-somethings who earnestly believe in this year's trending pedagogical BS (and no, not everything is BS, but it takes a lot of ability to tell).

BTW, who's not paying their bills with some fallback plan? Everyone dreams of being a star but there's only so much sky really. Using your relatives' money and/or influence is also a fallback plan, the one that keeps the wheels turning everywhere actually. I can't hear anyone complaining about that.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#84

Post by esturk »

djrobstep wrote: post #54
allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

What's sad is that all this desperate competition by parents to improve their kid's grades is zero-sum: A noisy but pointless rearrangement of positions on the socio-economic ladder. One kid getting into Princeton means another misses out. Very little of it results in actual useful learning or eventual public benefit.

But that's how most of society works. Only one elected official is selected. Only one co-worker is promoted. Etc.

I don't think society cares who fills the position but said individuals care.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#85

Post by jpatokal »

e1g wrote: post #77
grecy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My entire family are teachers (Mum, Dad, Sister, Brother), and have all had to deal with this to varying degrees, and have had it consume their lives at various times. My brother has the best work-life balance of any teacher I have ever met, and I think his approach is brilliant. Teaching is one of those careers where the expectation is on the teacher to endlessly do more and work harder, "For the kids", and if you k…

Presumably the backpresure of requests does not go away - when parents email for information, they do not stop just because they didn’t get a response. They will reach out through other methods. Do you know how that irreducible workload gets resolved, other than getting passed to colleagues who do put in extra effort/hours?

Non-American here: what happens if the teacher just flatly says no/doesn't answer the emails/calls etc? Are lawsuits against teachers over grades an actual thing in the US now? (In Europe or Australia you'd be laughed out of court for even trying.)

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#86

Post by joe_the_user »

allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

She told me of an email she received that said "X is trying to get into Princeton - an A- isn't going to get her in. What extra credit can she do to make this an A?"

That's a horrible thing to say ... except I could even say from bitter experience that Princeton vs whatever-public-college is indeed a jump in *perceived( quality of education (there has been discussion of 150K vs 80K programming here and while they shouldn't revolve around Princeton or not, often they do. Appearances matter, sadly).

And that's the thing right, when everyone is pushing to get to those small number of nice jobs, nice houses for rent or buy, nice etc., sure the nastiness is terrible but it's part of the fabric of it all. Hate the fabric, not the player, so to speak.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#87

Post by snarf21 »

tranced wrote: post #68

Haha, I just finished quitting my job teaching high school computer science today. I went from private tutoring CS to teaching in an afterschool program to this because I really enjoyed helping students break through conceptual blocks and mental ones. The work is emotionally exhausting but satisfying. Only recently have I wondered whether or not this was the right thing to do instead of going to industry(maybe it's b…

Even worse is the whole 'no child left behind' structure where schools lose funding if they don't meet certain numbers. The administrators live in fear so the kids spend half the semester taking practice tests so the school district doesn't lose funding. It is such a shame and there seems to be no appetite to expend political capital on these issues.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#88

Post by danbolt »

rayiner wrote: post #42
neom wrote: post #25

One of my favourite hypotheticals to play out is what would be like if we somehow paid public school teachers and emergency services/law enforcement professionals an extreme of today, a million usd a year, and increased the difficulty to attain this work. I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious what others think/why this couldn't work?

> I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious why this could not work? It would be fantastically expensive. Chicago has 21,000 teachers. Paying them $1 million per year would cost $21 billion, dwarfing the city's current $3.8 billion budget. Even paying them $100,000 per year on average would cost half the city's budget. And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results. American teac…

I’m not an expert in the matter, but I can imagine it could attract individuals that desire high wages or high-status work. Regardless of how genuinely invested or enthusiastic they are about the impact of being a teacher.

Not that we shouldn’t compensate teachers well (as they deserve it) but I can imagine that a high compensation with strict requirements could introduce a “measure becoming a target and no longer a measure” situation.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#89

Post by sonnyblarney »

gammateam wrote: post #6

Thats because teaching was the fallback plan and all the students they work with daily already realize it. Every teacher that brags about their prior dream in their specialized trade is immediately shot down by middle schoolers asking "so why are you a teacher" "Well Jimbo, as you suspect, it's because something went horribly wrong and I've rationalized my acceptance of this low wage life teaching this nation's futur…

In some countries, teaching is seen as a 'staple, respectable profession'. Like Nurse, or Mayor, a little bit like Doctor (without quite as much education), Policeman, Fireman etc. etc...

Most of the teachers I know in Canada chose the profession, they are pretty good.

We are far less competitive, and according to PISA (standardized testing), we totally outclass American students by quite a lot. That said - 'the best' American students (along with 'the best' from UK) etc. are quite amazing. But the average here in Canada is quite high.

You don't need to pay teachers a fortune, or have some complicated organization theory, or have 'competition' or whatever.

Simply having society respect teaching as a profession, pay them well enough, protect them from BS, and get kids into a room who are not abused at home, with parents that care just a little bit ... and you're good to go.

It's not rocket science and I truly believe there are very few huge educational breakthroughs to come. The basics have been in place for quite a while.

(FYI It starts with the communitarian understanding that not everyone does everything just for the money ...)

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#90

Post by alistairSH »

My anecdote... My mother recently retired after teaching ESOL (English for non-native speakers) at the elementary/primary school level for decades. She was getting burned out and was at retirement age, so no real need to keep working. Now, she happily goes back to volunteer several days/week. She still enjoys teaching; it was the administrative tasks that wore her out.
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