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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

#141

Post by mschuster91 »

iirc either McDonalds or BK has rumors of an internal rule that even the uppermost layers of management have to spend at least one full day each year standing behind the cash register and selling burgers.

It would be nice if a) this was more than an urban legend and b) if more companies embraced variations of this rule.

I believe it to be a good way to catch problems (e.g. unrealistic expectations of workers) before shit hits the fan like in a Mannheim (Germany) hospital where medical instruments were not disinfected properly due to too few workers and time - and reports to upper levels vanished in bureaucracy.

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

#142

Post by kirsebaer »

pdonis wrote: post #61

The money quote to me is this one: "I was struck by this takeaway [#2] in particular because it made me realize how little autonomy students have, how little of their learning they are directing or choosing." What strikes me about this is how none of the solutions the author offers fix this problem. In fact, it's unfixable with our current concept of what a school is. No amount of monkeying with how classes are taugh…

Exactly, school is a prison. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d_DJAZ-ByV0

It would be nice to see more attention on unschooling-style homeschooling and also on non-coercive schools where children are free to play and explore for themselves, so-called "democratic free schools" like Sudbury Valley School in MA. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awOAmTaZ4XI

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

#143

Post by eli_gottlieb »

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…

Adolescents, as a demographic, have only been around for about 100 years.

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

#144

Post by JoshTheGeek »

dunder wrote: post #98
bsilvereagle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So in the US, math tests are multiple choice AND teachers don't even require the student to write down the process by which they've come to the conclusion? Both of those seem unusual to me and I don't see how that method could possibly be beneficial in assessing knowledge.

The Florida standardized math tests and the SAT have fill-in math questions as well as multiple choice. Teachers themselves can choose whether the students must show their work for their tests. In my experience, most only check the answer, but some do check the work.

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

#145

Post by Balgair »

wavegeek wrote: post #111
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…

As an example, people routinely study a foreign language for 3+ years and come out with zero ability to actually use the language. While a couple of months in the same country will produce a person with real useful usable skills in the language. If you believed that school was there to teach people this is shocking. But it all makes sense on the basis that school is there to keep young people out of the way.

Hear, hear! I use Duolingo for new languages and their system of spaced repetition is so vastly better than Ms. McGee's that I wouldn't even think to enroll a student in a class anymore. I was using Duolingo to study Italian before a trip to Milan and even then using the app was nearly pointless. All it did was get me started in the grammar and some basic words, but actually being surrounded by Italian, seeing it on every billboard, every menu, every streetcorner, having almost no-one speak to you in English (if requested), THAT got me good in Italian. If we simply wanted to take a random assortment of children, fly them to #Country# and let them live there, that would get the language and culture into you.

Reading this back, actually, that is what I think I'll do with my kids then. We have family all over the world, speaking a variety of languages, we should just have the kids go there for a month each summer. In the end, it'll be less expensive, maybe....

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

#146

Post by yummyfajitas »

mcintyre1994 wrote: post #133
yummyfajitas wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen variants of tests (maybe SAT Algebra?) where you fill in bubbles to choose a digit. (E.g., in column 1 you fill in a bubble next to []0, []1, []2, ..., []9, column 2 you fill in a bubble for the second digit, etc.) Cumbersome, but it would seem to overcome this. This also only seems to be an issue for the narrow set of problems where checking the answer is a lot cheaper than solving it. Sounds to me like st…

I don't understand how math answers without workings presented and marked are in any way useful or anywhere near "the right track"? The first thing any teacher will tell you about UK math tests is write all your workings, because these are marked by a human. So if you're solving some complex statistical thing, and you type 0.535346 instead of 0.545346 so get the wrong answer, but all the steps are right, you get almo…

I don't understand how math answers without workings presented and marked are in any way useful or anywhere near "the right track"?

The goal is to have a score which is a) standardized and objective b) well correlated with mathematical knowledge in the curriculum.

Bsilvereagle identified a flaw with my particular example - students can substitute an easier problem for the real problem. But there are mechanisms to fix that. So given fixes for particular flawed questions like that, it seems like a typical standardized test will provide both (a) and (b).

It would be quite a coincidence if a student could write down the answer to many questions without knowing the intermediate steps, no? (I'm of course assuming security is sufficiently strong, i.e. no cheating.)

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

#147

Post by bsilvereagle »

dunder wrote: post #98
bsilvereagle wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

So in the US, math tests are multiple choice AND teachers don't even require the student to write down the process by which they've come to the conclusion? Both of those seem unusual to me and I don't see how that method could possibly be beneficial in assessing knowledge.

AP exams are the only standardized tests I have taken that were not multiple choice.

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

#148

Post by kemist »

visarga wrote: post #94
treehau5 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can relate to this so much it's not even funny. Don't let your fear of failure get in the way. I currently struggle with the same -- applying myself to a difficult task. Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult -- so difficult I was even suspicious I may of had adult ADHD. Turns out that I don't. What I have is the fear of failing and rejection. The fear of exposing my weaknesses to others, an…

> Staying focused longer than 10 minutes at a time was difficult I found an unexpected solution in working with someone else - that is - not working alone on the project. The more social interaction is involved, the less I am affected by procrastination. You have to make yourself visible and accountable to other people, to feel shame if you slack off, to feel energized when you make progress and then discuss it with…

Terrific advice.

We're social creatures. When we work cooperatively with others we gain an enriched sense of accomplishment, even when know we could have done the work ourselves.

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

#149

Post by Yourfags »

ska wrote: post #128
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…

One thing that's missing here is that college really is a "you get out what you get in" situation. As a prof, you see people like this all the time, and hopefully you take the time to try and engage them more, but at the end of the day it isn't your responsibility if they choose to waste the opportunity. The "challenge" in college isn't to make a 4.0 GPA, it's to push yourself to find your own boundaries. Many profs…

You're assuming that everything he's skipping by giving forth the least amount of effort is more important that whatever else he's doing with his free time. It may be, it may not be,

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

#150

Post by mikeash »

thirdsun wrote: post #101
earino wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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."

To be honest, I'd say there's actually some value in socializing and the concept of engaging with friends and students on a daily basis - especially outside of class. Aren't you worried that your kid might be missing out on those social interactions? There's a lot more to school life than attending several 90 minute classes in a row and calling it a day.

There's tremendous negative value in being locked in a building with a thousand teenage dickheads.
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