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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

#301

Post by erikpukinskis »

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…

#5 is incompatible with #3 and #8. And probably #2. You’re basically saying you want a stronger support network for teachers and students while also reducing staff. That doesn’t make any sense.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#302

Post by erikpukinskis »

talltimtom wrote: post #298
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…

Number 9 and 1 are mutually exclusive. If you decrease requirements to increase availability of potential hires you decrease sallery.

Why? I don’t understand the logic.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#303

Post by sjroot »

glenneroo wrote: post #271
sjroot wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Last time I saw a paywalled article, someone commented and mentioned the idea of (1) prohibiting those sites or (2) automatically redirecting to an outlined version.

Why not just tag the titles with [Paywall] so users can avoid them? Granted, they tend to be from the same sites, but it would be one less thing to remember.

I think this is the way to go. I should have clarified that in my OP.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#304

Post by erikpukinskis »

ilitirit wrote: post #239

As a "previously disadvantaged" South African whose mother was quite "high" in the education hierarchy - she set the final year national exams for high-school students one year in one subject and moderated examiners' marks for many years before and after that - I find this quite interesting. Well, interesting is perhaps not the right word. Disgusting. Not at America, but toward my country's own education system. My m…

You are presenting a false choice. Your mother had to choose between getting paid a fair wage and teaching the kids who need it most.

In a healthy community she should get both: a fair wage for teaching kids who need her.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#305

Post by AlexCoventry »

mrep wrote: post #287
sombremesa wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people don't need to make their own solutions for that anymore either, since we have AWS, GCP, GKE, etc. However, we software engineers (as well as computer scientists and devs) tend to underestimate how much we've already learned and internalized. It becomes painfully obvious when you try to teach someone, and realize that you need to start at a much earlier point than you expected.

What's funny is that I have only worked for the big tech companies since I graduated and I know how to do all the backend stuff really well and thus I can do it in a few weeks for my side projects. However, the fronted code kills me and I keep stalling and getting confused on my new projects trying to figure out all the js/html/css to make it look really good for normal users...

Just make it functional with react/redux, then hire a designer to give you feedback on it.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#306

Post by twtw »

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…

This sounds a lot like my mom's situation. In the last decade, parents and admins have made her job terrible.

The parents make similar demands regarding grades - if their kid does poorly on an exam, it doesn't even enter into their mind that they didn't study or are super lazy, it's automatically the teacher's fault for making the test too hard or teaching the material poorly. Same goes for kids failing a class because they never turn in assignments - the teacher is failing to sufficiently motivate their student.

This would be manageable but for the fact that the administration always takes the side of the parents. If a kid cheats on a test, it's a "coping mechanism" or a "useful real world skill - there's no black and white" - this for a kid who literally broke into a filing cabinet to get the answer key. When kids fail tests, the administration or counsellors pressure the teachers to make easier versions of the test, extend the time limits, or give credit for test corrections. Several time teachers have resisted, because this totally undermines the information content of grades and takes a massive amount of extra teacher time (grading, writing, proctoring), and it's gone over poorly for the teacher.

The end result of all this is that the most entitled children or those with the most "engaged" parents get As, even if they earn a C,D, or F on the baseline system, while students who earn Bs but don't squeak get As.

I've been trying to convince her to just give the whole class As for years.

It's a pretty awful experience - I'm surprised anyone still teaches and would have quit years ago.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#307

Post by AlexCoventry »

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…

No, it's less than half who could do it with a gun to their head, less than a quarter who would choose to over pretty much anything else.

Those are very loose upper bounds, too.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#308

Post by jeklj »

reilly3000 wrote: post #155
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…

"The real crux of it is that teachers get put into this triangle of pressures between students, administration, and their parents which almost takes away all agency from the job. I got so tired of getting put into difficult situations that were almost always juggling acts." I think that is also happening today with medical doctors and it is an absolute travesty; the opposite of progress.

Yes, I can see how doctors’ struggles with students, parents, and school administrations is highly relevant to this topic.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#309

Post by twtw »

8bitsrule wrote: post #184
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 extra credit can she do to make this an A?" "She can't, because that's the grade she earned in the time alloted. The moving finger, having writ, has moved on. "However, I'm confident that, with Janie's capabilities, a little more effort from her and help from you, she can easily demonstrate a higher level of mastery and the consequent benefits from longer-term retention. "Princeton will NOT be a picnic, and dev…

Nice try. I've seen how this goes over with those types.

The parents escalate to the adminstrators, who either involve the student counsellors or talk to the teacher directly. One of these two tell the teacher how they need to better support the student because they need a "little extra help" or can't handle the stress required to turn in homework assignments.

I wish this stuff worked, but these parents typically don't want an answer that requires their student to work harder (or differently). They want the curriculum, assignments, or grading scheme to change until their child gets an A - and they don't care about mastery.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#310

Post by Aeolun »

paulcole wrote: post #226
8bitsrule wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What extra credit can she do to make this an A?" "She can't, because that's the grade she earned in the time alloted. The moving finger, having writ, has moved on. "However, I'm confident that, with Janie's capabilities, a little more effort from her and help from you, she can easily demonstrate a higher level of mastery and the consequent benefits from longer-term retention. "Princeton will NOT be a picnic, and dev…

It doesn’t stop at high school. No rich parent is paying $50k a year so their kid can get a C.

50k for the opportunity to score an A. Not for the guarantee. That would make the A utterly valueless.
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