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Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

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Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#71

Post by seanmcdirmid »

bane wrote: post #63
nilkn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do sit a lot during my day job, but I can tell you that my sitting conditions are vastly more preferable than those of the typical high school student. I sit in an $800+ chair, with a desk with more space than I need, next to a huge window. I can get up anytime I want and go for a walk or break. In high school, I sat in chairs that often felt like they were going to fall apart, and my butt was numb or in pain half…

Echoing all of this plus I'm left handed and every desk in every class I ever sat in was geared for right handed students. http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/student-desk-844709.jpg

I went to high school in the south (Mississippi) and north (Washington state); I can tell you the latter was much more accommodating to lefties than the former.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#72

Post by pyre »

nilkn wrote: post #56
vacri wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People wonder why high school aged students are unruly, unpleasant, and filled with deep negative emotions (anger, disdain, need-to-rebel) They don't wonder it at all; it's not some mystery solved by sitting in a classroom. Adolescents, as a demographic, have always been known to be raging pits of hormones with mood swings and strong passions. Items 1 and 3 are common in the working world, and there's a few jobs out…

I do sit a lot during my day job, but I can tell you that my sitting conditions are vastly more preferable than those of the typical high school student. I sit in an $800+ chair, with a desk with more space than I need, next to a huge window. I can get up anytime I want and go for a walk or break. In high school, I sat in chairs that often felt like they were going to fall apart, and my butt was numb or in pain half…

> I sit in an $800+ chair, with a desk with more space than I need, next to a huge window. I can get up anytime I want and go for a walk or break.

Truly a representative case!

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#73

Post by hnriot »

vacri wrote: post #41
folz wrote: post #4

Saved you a click (from the top comment the last time this was posted): The three points from the article: > [1] Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting. > [2] High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes. > [3] You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. People wonder why high school aged students are unruly, unpleasant, and filled with deep negat…

People wonder why high school aged students are unruly, unpleasant, and filled with deep negative emotions (anger, disdain, need-to-rebel) They don't wonder it at all; it's not some mystery solved by sitting in a classroom. Adolescents, as a demographic, have always been known to be raging pits of hormones with mood swings and strong passions. Items 1 and 3 are common in the working world, and there's a few jobs out…

this is a bit condescending to teens to write them off as that. Biologically we are not programmed to sit in a classroom, teenage girls are programmed by evolution to do something not too dissimilar to HS (show off their new found sexuality and attract a mate), boys on the other hand are better suited to hitting stuff with sticks. That's exactly the kind of mate you want if you're a teenage girl, someone who can go off and bring nice big juicy protein sources for all those babies that are coming soon enough after flaunting their newly grown hips and breasts that signal sexual maturation.

About the only times that boys get to be what evolution programmed them for is during war time. When boys race their cars and do crazy shit we think of it as delinquent behaviour, but those are the exact same skills that made for the best pilots.

Algebra and Shakespeare didn't feature much in evolution's "plan". Even Shakespeare would rather have been shagging Queen Elizabeth than writing Elizabethan soap operas, but he needed to put food on his table... And let's not forget where Richard Feynman did some of his best work - in a strip club. The modern world sadly is something that will take us a long time to biologically catch up to.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#74

Post by pyre »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #71
bane wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Echoing all of this plus I'm left handed and every desk in every class I ever sat in was geared for right handed students. http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/x/student-desk-844709.jpg

I went to high school in the south (Mississippi) and north (Washington state); I can tell you the latter was much more accommodating to lefties than the former.

> south (Mississippi) and north (Washington state)

The whole concept of "North vs. South" is an anachronism from a time when most of middle-/western-America wasn't part of the picture. Washington state, while north of Mississippi, is part of the Pacific Northwest, not part of the "North." You'd be in for a rough time if you would expect (e.g.) Washington (state), North Dakota, Ohio, and Rhode Island to all have some sort of a normalized "Northern experience."

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#75

Post by Meekro »

This is reminiscent of a book called My Freshman Year, by a college professor who actually enrolled as a student at the same school. She writes about numerous discoveries that she found shocking, despite having taught at the same school for many years. It's a great read.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#76

Post by WhoBeI »

calebhicks wrote: post #19
derekp7 wrote: post #5

Why is this so surprising? Wasn't every teacher a high school student at some point? Is the experience so traumatic that they completely forget what the schedule was like once they become teachers themselves?

I'm in my 4th year of teaching, yet I graduated from high school 10 years ago. How well do you remember your daily schedule from 10 years ago? Do you remember what made you restless? What made you tired? What made you stop paying attention? And were you so meta cognizant that you recognized the source of that restlessness? Doubt it. It is rare for teachers to have the time to truly consider the student's perspective…

Good effort

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#77

Post by bsilvereagle »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #68
Sambdala wrote: post #13

I remember high school. During class I hid whatever book I actually wanted to read at the time inside the class book and drowned out the teacher. If homework was worth >10% of the total grade for the class (so that you couldn't get an A from tests/quizzes alone), I would copy the homework from someone else the period before. Tests & quizzes are so gameable it's a complete joke. Standardized tests even more so. Withou…

Standardized tests even more so. Without any actual learning from the class itself, you can generally come close to ace'ing most high school tests by being moderately intelligent. How do you do this? I mean if a test asks you to solve 3x^2+5+2x=7, how do you solve it without know the quadratic formula or some such? There is a difference between gaming a test (in the sense of not knowing the material, but still passin…

> Standardized tests even more so

Standardized tests are almost always multiple choice. So, given four (or five) possible answers for x, plug them all in and see which one equals 7. That's arguably faster than using the quadratic formula to solve the problem.

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#78

Post by earino »

folz wrote: post #4

Saved you a click (from the top comment the last time this was posted): The three points from the article: > [1] Students sit all day, and sitting is exhausting. > [2] High School students are sitting passively and listening during approximately 90% of their classes. > [3] You feel a little bit like a nuisance all day long. People wonder why high school aged students are unruly, unpleasant, and filled with deep negat…

And this, in a nutshell, is why my wife and I let our son "online homeschool" when he asked. He's a freshman in highschool and to quote him: "I'm happy to not have to deal with the arbitrary 'lord of the flies' social structure in High School and just be a normal person."

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#79

Post by nilkn »

pyre wrote: post #72
nilkn wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do sit a lot during my day job, but I can tell you that my sitting conditions are vastly more preferable than those of the typical high school student. I sit in an $800+ chair, with a desk with more space than I need, next to a huge window. I can get up anytime I want and go for a walk or break. In high school, I sat in chairs that often felt like they were going to fall apart, and my butt was numb or in pain half…

> I sit in an $800+ chair, with a desk with more space than I need, next to a huge window. I can get up anytime I want and go for a walk or break. Truly a representative case!

It's pretty representative of tons of professional workers I know from many industries and extremely typical in technology companies. Most high quality office chairs are pretty expensive; the Aeron chair that is used at so many tech companies is easily in that price range, depending on where you buy it (and in what quantity).

Maybe the only thing that's slightly unusual is the window.

If your company is not providing comfortable working spaces, then there are plenty of competitors which are.

The real point, though, is that high school classrooms are often downright uncomfortable and unaccommodating. I'd rather stand all day than have to sit at those desks again for long periods of time. (And that'd be a lot healthier, too.)

Re: Teacher spends two days as a student and is shocked at what she learns

#80

Post by Gracana »

bane wrote: post #51

I found this interesting. I worked for a few years teaching technical subjects to mid-career adults and ended up adopting an educational theory not too dissimilar to the author, but for mostly different reasons. Previous discussion https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8251569 I remember high school very well, and it was a pretty torturous experience. If you could design an educational program that was almost guarante…

It seems tough to have a class that can shovel the information into you and have you actually practice it right then and there, but in the classes I've had where we've done that... holy crap, what a difference it makes. If every class was like that, I'd absolutely love it.

I think a system with short lectures followed by quality labs/recitations would be a huge improvement. In my experience, labs are often rushed and confusing, and recitations are taught by crappy TAs and are truly horrendous. Improve that part of the course and you'll make a big difference.

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