Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nobody wants to teach anymore

jessicalexicus.medium.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 1001 posts

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#251

Post by civilized »

yonaguska wrote: post #241

> States banned math books for being too woke. > being asked to breathe children’s germs Ok. This article is basically a long rant, and this kind of teacher is exactly what contributed to the burning out of my wife as a teacher. She wanted to teach math, but was being asked to teach social justice math. > I mean, they’re letting anyone in the classroom now. I’m surprised they haven’t started recruiting the homeless.…

And there's no evidence that these graduate degree requirements are needed or beneficial for quality teaching. They're just as baseless as requiring people - many of them poor and marginalized - to spend tens of thousands of dollars and do months of coursework before they're "licensed" to cut hair.

Well-intentioned rank-and-file teachers must realize that their union superiors advocate for some of the reasons their profession burns them out.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#254

Post by jensensbutton »

pnf wrote: post #105
vostok wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Salaries in large urban districts are often well above area median Is the median the correct benchmark? The median household income in NYC was $67k in 2021 [0]. Why would someone choose to be a teacher making around the median [1] when you could be a software engineer and make 3x as much? It's not just a matter of trinkets and baubles. That difference allows you to comfortably afford a nice family sized apartment […

That assumes someone qualified to be a teacher is also qualified to be a software engineer. Have you met a lot of urban public school teachers?

Yes. And most wouldn't make a statement this dumb.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#255

Post by rayiner »

atoav wrote: post #249
yonaguska wrote: post #241

> States banned math books for being too woke. > being asked to breathe children’s germs Ok. This article is basically a long rant, and this kind of teacher is exactly what contributed to the burning out of my wife as a teacher. She wanted to teach math, but was being asked to teach social justice math. > I mean, they’re letting anyone in the classroom now. I’m surprised they haven’t started recruiting the homeless.…

What would "social justice math" look like? Serious question, I can't even imagine. Here in Europe math education hasn't changed a ton in the past decades at all.

It’s an effort by teachers unions to use their presence in schools to socialize minority children into viewing themselves as victims of pervasive racism and to cultivate activist leanings that will lead them to vote democrat (the party tightly aligned with teachers unions): https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teaching-math-throu...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#256

Post by MerelyMortal »

candiddevmike wrote: post #121
_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

1. Parasitic administration salaries 2. Depending on the state you may not even need one 3. It's the parents, not the kids that make them feel this way. Kids typically love their teachers 4. 100% 5. Building a new school is 10-100s of millions typically. Why it costs so much is worthy of debate, but plunking down new schools these days is far more costly than in the past.

Large schools (which is the problem) cost 10s(?) of millions of dollars. (Do some schools really cost 100s of millions of dollars?)

You lose some efficiency of scale with smaller schools, but they'll be cheaper individually.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#257

Post by treis »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #201
treis wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Average teacher salary in California is $84,000. Official working days total out to about 12 weeks of vacation. Realistically less than that but still much more than your typical worker.

Why are they being compared to typical workers? The question of if teachers are sufficiently paid is answered by asking if current classroom sizes are sufficiently small and staffed by sufficient quality teachers. Whatever price that makes that happen is the appropriate price, regardless of what people in other jobs are earning.

>Why are they being compared to typical workers?

Who do you want to compare them to?

>The question of if teachers are sufficiently paid is answered by asking if current classroom sizes are sufficiently small and staffed by sufficient quality teachers. Whatever price that makes that happen is the appropriate price, regardless of what people in other jobs are earning

Like I said before the solution is to cut the bullshit. Not pay more for people to tolerate it.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#258

Post by mattkrause »

prirun wrote: post #123
mattkrause wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup. $13k/year works out to about $10 per pupil-hour, and even less once you include costs like the building and work done out-of-hours (grading, lesson planning). I’m pretty sure I made something like that babysitting in junior high!

"Pupil-hour" makes no sense in a classroom environment. When you were babysitting, they didn't pay you $10/hr per kid.

Many people did, actually.

The amount of work/responsibility definitely scales with the number of kids, and it's not exactly linear either: one will color quietly, two might play together--or fight, and three or more...yikes.

I mentioned the rate because it surprised me it was so close. I'd expect that it costs more to actually educate a kid, and of course, the parents provided the house (and often ice cream and HBO), whereas that rate includes everything.

Post reply on HN