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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

#391

Post by grecy »

atombender wrote: post #366
grecy wrote: post #335

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> sounds like a privileged position that is unrealistic for many teachers Well sure, he lives in Australia which has much, much better working conditions than the USA. It sounds like your girlfriend is being taken advantage of and working in a situation that is not to her benefit. In which case she needs to start looking for a new job!

I wouldn't say she's being taken advantage of. This is a city school in a depressed area, everyone is overwhelmed (she has several hundred students across her classes), and working with near-zero budgets. There just isn't work available within a reasonable commute distance. She'd have to move if she wanted better conditions.

> She'd have to move if she wanted better conditions

There you go. Do what it takes to improve your work-life. I moved from one perfectly good First World country to another, because I wanted a different life. It was difficult and took a long time, but it was absolutely worth it.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#392

Post by sethammons »

crankylinuxuser wrote: post #382
sethammons wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, to give an amount of work for students as to not extend my week beyond 40 hours would have meant no more than 45 minutes of non-instruction time per day. Lesson planning for one day typically took longer than that, aided by the fact as I taught three courses. So, out the gate, there is no time for homework, assessments, projects, student help outside class time, tracking grades, reaching out to parents when k…

Wow, things have changed since I got out of school (HS grad 2000). I remember being drowned in homework. And after getting out, I heard my former teachers complain just how much work they had to put in to keep up. (I did a stint substituting not long after.) My question fell on deaf ears: why assign so much homework, if it reflects back on you x $number_of_students ? And homework also tends to select for families tha…

Just realized the way I worded it was unclear. I did not give out 45 minutes of homework for them per day, it was that I had 45 minutes to do everything I needed to do per day outside of classroom instruction if I wanted a 40 hr work week. Homework is the easiest to get rid of, and more and more schools are doing just that, even though independent practice is critical for learning.

I'd love to see a shift to top rated lectures viewed at home, and classroom time as a time for "homework" where students work to practice the topics of the lecture with the assistance of the teacher to patch up holes in understanding. Leveraging this methodology with some automatic grading, and I think teaching would be a better experience. Granted, this requires the students to do the lectures at home which has a whole slew of problems.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#393

Post by fjsolwmv »

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…

Time alloted? Why does earning calculus have a 4 month expiration date?

Why are we blaming the victims for the oppressive irrational grading system?

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#394

Post by [deleted] »

paulcole wrote: post #372
Aeolun wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

An honors degree from Harvard (or another Ivy) is still rare (with respect to the general public) and has value even if everyone who graduates gets one.

[deleted]

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#395

Post by fjsolwmv »

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…

Don't be afraid of teaching at a poverty school. Those families need your help and won't be the ones threatening law suits over As. You'll be thankful for the few parents with the energy, knowledge, and interest to make at involvement in education at all.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#396

Post by grecy »

dan-robertson wrote: post #374
plankers wrote: post #355

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In which case nobody would be teaching the kids art. Of course she's being taken advantage of, she's a teacher in 21st century western civilization.

The comment you are replying to mentions a teacher who doesn’t seem to be being taken advantage of. Your comment seems to imply that all teachers in 21st century western civilisation are taken advantage of. Do you mean that the Australian teacher mentioned is still being taken advantage of, or that Australia is not western civilisation (or that they are not working in the 21st century)?

Americans like to deny the outside world exists, and that in many ways it's much better than America. It's a strange way to behave, rather than learning what they can improve in their own society.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#397

Post by shados »

xamuel wrote: post #312
iheartpotatoes wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hell, software dev is so, so very overloaded with underskilled programmers with fragile egos. They come out of college knowing a little python and javascript and can't do jack shit for at least a year, and just come to a screeching halt with every tough issue they encounter. I'm a project manager box in an org-chart to help un-flatten the management hierarchy (I manage 20+), I am constantly having to re-assign tic…

Unless your shop literally hires every warm body that walks in the door, you're still seeing things through survivor bias lenses. Even those inept kids are better than what you'd get if you opened the floodgates.

A lot of companies in tech hotbeds have a hire rate of 25 to 50% of the people who make it in person. It's not "hiring every warm body", but it's pretty damn close in my book, if you consider that resume screening and phone screens might as well be random considering how poorly it's done in the industry.

Yeah, the person who barely has the skill to pump gas probably won't make it (they probably have some bigger problems, too), but...

Compared to the post dotcom crash (where it was a buyer's market) where you could pick the best and brightest and make super teams, there's a stark contrast in 2018, and it shows in the quality of the products.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#398

Post by shados »

sizzle wrote: post #334
iheartpotatoes wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh hell, software dev is so, so very overloaded with underskilled programmers with fragile egos. They come out of college knowing a little python and javascript and can't do jack shit for at least a year, and just come to a screeching halt with every tough issue they encounter. I'm a project manager box in an org-chart to help un-flatten the management hierarchy (I manage 20+), I am constantly having to re-assign tic…

If this a symptom of bad hiring practices in your organization of representative across the tech industry? How do you know your org isn't to blame?

Can't talk for the person you're replying to, but in my case at least I worked for a LOT of companies (did consulting for a while, and switched jobs probably more than I should have had), AND so did my SO, so while it's anecdotal, it's a LOT of orgs, including some of the big names everyone have heard of, as well as some smaller ones, and my friends have the same experiences. It might just be insanely bad luck since that's not a significant sample, but it makes us think.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#399

Post by shados »

zanny wrote: post #169
xamuel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people wouldn't be able to cut it in software dev, whether they did the 3 month bootcamp or even if they managed to pass a 4-year university program. 99% of the time, Little Jimmy's 4th grade English teacher would have a snowball's chance in hell as a professional developer.

This might have been true 20 years ago when software development meant everything from a fundamental understanding of hardware (including how pixels are laid out, how to manage gamma, etc for the front end) to knowing a lot of theory (because you had to implement your collections in house, manage the code base by hand, etc) but nowadays I'm pretty sure at least half of everyone could be pointed at a web framework and…

Very true. The most important thing you mentioned is this one IMO:

> even if they pay for them without realizing that

In health care, you have doctors, physician assistants, nurses, administrators, etc. They have very different background, schooling and certifications as well as salaries.

In software, you have some differences (individual contributors, tech leads, managers, etc), but it's not granular at all within the categories. While the self taught html dev is making 90-100k, the MIT graduate builting complex systems with 5 years of experience is making 150k (Using round numbers here, don't read too much into it), when the difference is significantly bigger.

People are quick to point out at flukes: there's totally exceptions, the CMU grad who can't code themselves out of paper bag, and the random highschool dropout who has been coding since they were 7 who are now world famous geniuses...but they're exceptions yet treated as the rule.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#400

Post by shados »

erikpukinskis wrote: post #311
zanny wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This might have been true 20 years ago when software development meant everything from a fundamental understanding of hardware (including how pixels are laid out, how to manage gamma, etc for the front end) to knowing a lot of theory (because you had to implement your collections in house, manage the code base by hand, etc) but nowadays I'm pretty sure at least half of everyone could be pointed at a web framework and…

Anyone can build an app, just as anyone can build a house. But if you want a roof that won’t rot for 20 years, you need to pay someone who knows how to build a proper house. By the same token, if you want an app that will still be maintainable in 5 years, you need a professional. An amateur can build most requirements, but the architecture will seize up if it’s just layers of hacks. It’s sort of an interesting situat…

> if you want an app that will still be maintainable in 5 years

That's part of the issue. People have been making teams who CANT build apps still maintainable in 5 years. Everyone has and only a select few remember/know that it's possible.

At a previous job, I was in a meeting where we pointed out an app had become unmaintainable to the point of requiring a rewrite. One of the engineers who built it pointed out "Well, we built this app a year and a half ago, of course it's unmaintainable, what do you expect?". I choked on my drink.

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