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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

#251

Post by kaitai »

kojeovo wrote: post #240
atombender wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a great life-work balance, but it also sounds like a privileged position that is unrealistic for many teachers. My girlfriend teaches art to kids aged 8-14 at an urban public school, and she has zero time during the day for lesson planning, grading, seating plans, hanging up artwork, dealing with parents, etc. On most days she has to stay behind for several hours, and she often works throughout the w…

What does the her schedule look like exactly? She's in the classroom teaching for 8 hours straight (minus lunch)? This reads a lot like people who make excuses for not having time to exercise. I get that some positions will require you to put in work outside of work hours, but to say 'has zero time' seems like a bit of an excuse.

Well, that's actually true in a lot of schools in the US -- over lunch you have cafeteria duty and right after school there's the patrolling pick-up/busses and the after school clubs...

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#252

Post by m0zg »

grecy wrote: post #67
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…

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…

It's not unique to teaching. Your employer will take from you as much as you will give. Worse, your insane hours and effort eventually become the expected minimum. To prevent this, many years ago I started setting the timer to 8 hours and 30 minutes (the latter is to account for lunch). Once the timer beeps, I get up and GTFO. No matter what. This works great.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#253

Post by cheez »

blitmap wrote: post #230

I'm going to state a couple of strong opinions and hope it doesn't backfire on me: 1) Teachers should be paid more. 2) Teachers shouldn't be pressured to work so many hours off the clock (after school). 3) Teachers may continue to make their own lesson plans, but they should always have available lesson plans available to them. 4) School administrations should protect teachers from harassing parents. 5) The number of…

I'm going to state a very strong opinion here and know that it will backfire: families should be educating their kids themselves, and society should make this financially possible (let's start off with eliminating the dual-income family). Teachers, as they are currently qualified, should be adjuncts to the family school.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#255

Post by pojzon »

blitmap wrote: post #230

I'm going to state a couple of strong opinions and hope it doesn't backfire on me: 1) Teachers should be paid more. 2) Teachers shouldn't be pressured to work so many hours off the clock (after school). 3) Teachers may continue to make their own lesson plans, but they should always have available lesson plans available to them. 4) School administrations should protect teachers from harassing parents. 5) The number of…

Masters degree is required to know "HOW" to teach different kids, not to know "what" you teach..

Some kids are hard to work with and the studies are (or should be) there to show you how to approach such mind.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#256

Post by sqldba »

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…

I’m surprised that extra credit even exists. My high school and university had no such thing.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#257

Post by erikpukinskis »

sethammons wrote: post #66
kbenson wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Especially now that she has to post everyone's grades online, instantly emails roll in when a student didn't perform as well as the parent expected. Not to take away from your point, which I think has merit, from the other side of the spectrum as a parent that has a child that struggled mightily to not fail for the first couple years of high school, the amount that teachers screw up the online grading is incredible…

When I was teaching, grading took so incredibly long that there would be periods of time (read: nearly always) where I was simply behind entering scores. I typically did 10 to 12 hour days plus a good 6hr day most Saturdays, and usually a few hours Sunday. I only caught up on student vacations.

Whenever I got into that situation, I’d use a kitchen timer. Divide the total amount of time I had for that assignment by the number of students. Set the timer for that amount. Read as much of the assignment as I could, and then just guess the right grade.

I made it clear to students that if they felt the grade was wrong, or they wanted more detailed feedback, I’d be happy to read it again. I grade quickly and mistakes do happen, I’d tell them.

I’m not gonna grade 100 papers over three days for $2/hour. I am happy to do it for two students for free.

Most of the time students don’t even look at the feedback anyway, so I’d rather let the ones who care ask proactively.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#258

Post by atombender »

kojeovo wrote: post #240
atombender wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sounds like a great life-work balance, but it also sounds like a privileged position that is unrealistic for many teachers. My girlfriend teaches art to kids aged 8-14 at an urban public school, and she has zero time during the day for lesson planning, grading, seating plans, hanging up artwork, dealing with parents, etc. On most days she has to stay behind for several hours, and she often works throughout the w…

What does the her schedule look like exactly? She's in the classroom teaching for 8 hours straight (minus lunch)? This reads a lot like people who make excuses for not having time to exercise. I get that some positions will require you to put in work outside of work hours, but to say 'has zero time' seems like a bit of an excuse.

She has a short (45min?) planning period to start her day with her co-teacher, but as I understand it, it's nowhere enough. After that, her classes run back to back, yes. She has one meager lunch break lasting something like 15 minutes -- she actually started drinking Soylent for lunch because she doesn't have time for anything more complicated than that plus an apple. She gets up at 6:30am and doesn't really take time to eat breakfast either. It all sounds unbelievably stressful to me. It's very different from my own privileged life as a software developer.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#259

Post by crankylinuxuser »

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…

Well then, perhaps its about time to pass someone on basis of competency rather than attaching some arbitrary grade at some point in time, that has poor correlation to future skills.

Allowing someone to continue trying and learning seems much better method rather than "whoops you had test anxiety or had insomnia and flunked your singular test". And if this is what's needed and is being forced on US's teachers, so be it.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#260

Post by denimnerd42 »

sqldba wrote: post #256
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…

I’m surprised that extra credit even exists. My high school and university had no such thing.

it usually doesn't. doesn't stop people from begging for it.
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