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Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

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Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#111

Post by barry-cotter »

dangerwill wrote: post #55
iambateman wrote: post #49

This shares the benefit of "looping" with homeschooling, which is sort of an extreme form of looping I guess. Homeschooled kids benefit tremendously from having a teacher who is _incredibly_ familiar with their previous experiences and learnings, which the teacher can draw upon to teach new ideas. If a teacher has an even slightly better understanding of what their children already know, they are set up to succeed at…

Gonna need some citations on homeschool effectiveness (not written by homeschool advocates) because in my experience, I knew 1 parent that actually was knowledgable and engaged enough to provide the kind of teaching you are talking about. I have known several that homeschooled for religious reasons or "scared of public school and couldn't get into private school" reasons and the kids were clearly educationally behind…

School just doesn’t do very much for learning so homeschool can’t have much of a negative effect. Unschooled children, those who receive no formal, systematic instruction whatever, are only one grade level behind their traditionally schooled peers.

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Odette-Gould/publicatio...

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#112

Post by sokoloff »

jedberg wrote: post #46
sokoloff wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The details of 3rd and 4th grade are that different now?

Yes. For one, science and social studies cover completely different topics. For two, even the math and English cover very different parts of those topics. And 3rd to 4th is also a huge transition from "learning to read" to "reading to learn". 4th grade is the first time kids are expected to learn new information on their own from reading it, so it's a very different teaching experience. Changing grades is like starti…

Thanks for the thought-provoking reply, raising several issues I hadn't considered. It does seem like an inordinately high percentage of third grade teachers are able to learn the equivalent of python microservices on k8s on linux in a single summer as I rarely hear of a teacher being unable to make the leap between 3rd and 4th grade instruction (or vice versa) while developers who are unable to rapidly switch ecosystems is quite common. It is work to be sure, but success seems fairly assured.

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#113

Post by LoveMortuus »

JimmieMcnulty wrote: post #95
LoveMortuus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's life though. Even when you get a job there are people that you don't get along with, but you still find a way to make it work. If you would just move that student to a teacher that they preferred, might instill wrong perceptions of reality in the kid. They're both humans. Humans can talk and reason, why not use that to try and solve the issues? Edit: Feel free to down vote, but I'm of the opinion that adve…

Children aren’t full humans yet, that’s the whole point of doing stuff differently for them…

That's why it's better to use such a situation for learning.

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#114

Post by LoveMortuus »

anchochilis wrote: post #96
LoveMortuus wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's life though. Even when you get a job there are people that you don't get along with, but you still find a way to make it work. If you would just move that student to a teacher that they preferred, might instill wrong perceptions of reality in the kid. They're both humans. Humans can talk and reason, why not use that to try and solve the issues? Edit: Feel free to down vote, but I'm of the opinion that adve…

People with jobs are free to seek out new jobs. Yoking a student to a bad teacher for 2+ years is the opposite of a real-life situation.

Sadly many people especially those that work in factories can't really seek out new jobs, as that could mean not being able to put the food on the table and pay for school stuff that the kids might need.

Learning to be able to tolerate and deal with people that you don't like or don't get along is an incredibly valuable thing.

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#116

Post by lokar »

beefman wrote: post #48
onemoresoop wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That one student should be able to switch to a different group. If all want to switch then there's a problem with the instructor. Let's look at the opposite end of the spectrum. Student loves an instructor but is needlessly switched to someone new. My point though is that the flexibility to change or stay in the same group should exist.

In U.S. public schools, this will not be allowed. Schools already do everything they can to discourage and deny teacher switching requests. Why? Because there is a large difference in quality between teachers, and everyone knows which teachers are best, but administrators aren't allowed to fire a teacher with low enrollment because of switching requests, and face class size limits in the case of the good teachers.

My elementary school did this in the 80s. I had the same teacher from I think 1st through 4th grade (in the US).

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#118

Post by im3w1l »

Swizec wrote: post #60
ghufran_syed wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a teacher can't "learn" the next year's curriculum faster than the children they are teaching, there is something very wrong with the selection and hiring process for teachers...

It’s one thing to learn from a teacher who knows the material and a wholly different experience to learn from someone who knows the material. My literature professor in high school knew literature. His class was amazing. He spent each period bringing the material to life and telling stories from authors’ lives, the background behind each story and poem, additional anecdotes etc, and really put the whole thing in cont…

That sounds more like he knew the subject (literature) rather than knowing the material (n'th grade literature). In my experience the people best equipped to do something like that are people that have knowledge beyond the class they teach - the high school teacher that has a phd in the subject they are teaching, the university teacher that is currently involved in research etc. Especially in physics and mathematics I think this is relevant, as there are many times where questions naturally lead into topics from a much more advanced level. Like say the teacher explains that 3 isn't divisible by 2 and someone pupil says it is in fact divisible and the answer is 1.5. A teacher with solid knowledge of abstract algebra, that knows peanos axioms, and how Q is constructed from Z will be better equipped to deal with that.

On the other hand I could see how teaching one and the same class over and over might lead to a bored teacher and a narrow perspective.

Re: Benefits of ‘looping’ kids with teachers for multiple years

#119

Post by Andaith »

I got stuck with a maths teacher in my second/third year of highschool who couldn't teach. Like, none of his students ever passed. literally NONE. it wasn't even a close thing. My grades went something like 70% year 1, 40% year 2, 32% year 3, 60% year 4, 75% year 5, something like that. I was one of the lucky ones in that my brother could help me with my maths work for those grades. I'm not joking when I say 1/3 to 1/2 the class would regularly get My parents(and many others) complained to the school. They couldn't fire him for a bunch of reasons I don't want to get into, beyond "south african public school".

When people talk about keeping a child with one teacher for a long duration, I think about that maths teacher.

It's like a democracy, rotating people in power around highlights problems, and also limits the damage of the bad ones. I don't think any teacher should ever teach any child for more than 1 subject for more than 1 year, in an ideal world.

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