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Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

adamcadre.ac

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Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#531

Post by smsm42 »

glitchc wrote: post #291

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-... The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. The solution is this: Ban anyone without a m…

Given that I'm reading pretty much the same articles about teaching experience for decades now, how sure we are it isn't dominated by an idiot majority yet? I mean, looking around and reading the news, I can't really name a lot of things that tell me it couldn't be the case...

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#532

Post by nhyun »

yonran wrote: post #152
adamredwoods wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am baffled why they are doing a recall? According to the site, the main reason states because their kids have not gone back to school. To me, that's not a good enough reason for a recall (recalls cost money). Public schools are under state and county health guidance.

The San Francisco Board of Education have made many displays of incompetence and malice this past year which have been covered by both local and national media. During the pandemic, the Board of Education announced that 44 schools were named after oppressors (many were justified, but the names committee also made numerous errors) and that principals and families needed to come up with new names for their schools over…

Lopez is up for recall, along with Collins and Moliga.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#533

Post by hypnoscripto »

bnj wrote: post #453
hypnoscripto wrote: post #435

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If your salary is high enough that you can save some money then you aren’t required to put up with bullshit in order to keep eating food.

Do you mean that by saving money people can leave the profession sooner or at least move to a school with more favorable working conditions? If so, maybe you’ve hit on a kernel of truth: we can’t risk paying teachers enough that they’d have the financial security to leave a bad work situation.

I mean that teachers would have a credible threat of leaving and hopefully administrations and school boards would respond to the threat by improving conditions.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#534

Post by caseysoftware »

tw04 wrote: post #468
brightball wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates. The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled…

Well right, because they can kick out students who are disruptive and make them the public school systems problem. When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education? We hope someone else has a solution? Vouchers are a great way to permanently cement the cradle to prison cycle.

> When the public school system becomes insolvent, what’s your solution for those students? They just don’t get an education?

Are they getting an education now?

According to most metrics - including this article - more and more students are passed without meeting the requirements for their grade level.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#535

Post by hypnoscripto »

throwaway894345 wrote: post #481
bnj wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you mean that by saving money people can leave the profession sooner or at least move to a school with more favorable working conditions? If so, maybe you’ve hit on a kernel of truth: we can’t risk paying teachers enough that they’d have the financial security to leave a bad work situation.

Am I the only one who thinks “we should pay teachers more so they can afford a new profession because public education is horrible” is the wrong takeaway? Like, why not fix public education (e.g., more teacher autonomy) or at least support some voucher program so more teachers can be private school teachers?

See my reply above. I didn’t think this idea would be controversial. Working conditions should improve when the workers have other options.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#536

Post by Sbuu »

Thorrez wrote: post #522

>Another thing I’ve discovered is that many students— not just a couple here and there, but several in every class— consistently use umlauts in place of quotation marks and acute accent marks in place of apostrophes. >I don’t know how this happens— I had to do some poking around on character code tables just to figure out how to replicate the effect. Look at the Spanish Mexican keyboard layout: http://kbdlayout.info/…

In my opinion, those wrong characters are probably coming from some OCR software used on badly scanned books. Those "several students" probably all used the same text database which has this particular issue.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#537

Post by pianoben »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #494
brightball wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stuff like this drives the push for things like vouchers. I’m lucky to be able to send my kids to a good private school. We chose it after a tour and discussion with the headmaster about exactly how it operates. The teachers as a group research and plan curriculum. They coordinate across grade levels and determine how to roll out changes in the most effective way possible for students and parents as well. They rolled…

Forgive my ignorance, I’m from another land. What are vouchers in this context?

"Vouchers" are effectively tuition money for a school of a parent's choice, funded by the government. They would in theory allow parents to choose the "right" kind of schooling for their child, rather than having their child attend a school based on where they live.

This system does not exist today, but there are many who would like to see it. Lots of people are fed up with what they perceive as the failings of public schools. Very few who advocate for vouchers seem to advocate for education funding in general - most seem to simply want their kids somewhere else.

Historically, the push for vouchers is a right-wing, small-government kind of effort intended to further undermine the public school systems, and also to allow government funds to support religious education which, under the current system, is not permitted.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#538

Post by yonran »

nhyun wrote: post #532
yonran wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The San Francisco Board of Education have made many displays of incompetence and malice this past year which have been covered by both local and national media. During the pandemic, the Board of Education announced that 44 schools were named after oppressors (many were justified, but the names committee also made numerous errors) and that principals and families needed to come up with new names for their schools over…

Lopez is up for recall, along with Collins and Moliga.

Thanks for the correction. Please print out and sign the petitions! https://www.recallsfschoolboard.org/

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#539

Post by __turbobrew__ »

brailsafe wrote: post #353
glitchc wrote: post #291

In North America, teachers are grossly underpaid and their ability to discipline poor performance has been entirely eviscerated. It’s not just SF, look at what’s happening in Vancouver: https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rex-murphy-cutting-honours-... The problem is the administration: The board that sets the standards and the parents and politicians who sit on those boards. The solution is this: Ban anyone without a m…

I don't even know what comfortable middle class in Vancouver is.

Comfortable Vancouver middle class is pre-2005. Middle class is now owning a condo in new westminster.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#540

Post by vl »

mindvirus wrote: post #64

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a private school because of articles like this.

And my belief is that we should have educational vouchers that cover the cost of public schools. So parents can choose to send children to public school and apply voucher there, or to spend it as private school. Public schools with low sign-up rate are closed. Trust me, all schools will be reasonably good in the few years.
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