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

Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

wsj.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 420 posts

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#111

Post by ghufran_syed »

allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

I had a math professor at Berkeley who used to be a high school math teacher, but started doing an MS just so he could teach at community college and not have to deal with parents. Worked out well for him, he ended up doing a PhD and on the faculty at Berkeley

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#112

Post by robertAngst »

kumarski wrote: post #78

It is harder and harder to be a blue to gray collar worker in the USA than ever before. 66 jobs have bigger licensure requirements than EMT's. Cosmetologists spend ~400 days training, EMT's - 33. https://www.adamtownsend.me/regulating-licensing-gig-workers...

Wrong place to post this.

HN loves their government regulations.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#113

Post by jetru »

ineedasername wrote: post #35
allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

Okay, I get that's more work, and sounds like a hassle. So this isn't a criticism of your mom. But on the A- and extra credit issue, I never understood the point of rigid grading schemes. I've taught at a college level, and I always give students the chance to improve their grades if they want to put in additional work. To do otherwise seems like saying "nope, even if you learn more and improve to the point of A-leve…

A grade is a record of the knowledge at a given point in time.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#114

Post by dominotw »

neom wrote: post #25

One of my favourite hypotheticals to play out is what would be like if we somehow paid public school teachers and emergency services/law enforcement professionals an extreme of today, a million usd a year, and increased the difficulty to attain this work. I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious what others think/why this couldn't work?

why would i need someone so insanely talented to teach 5th grade algebra.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#115

Post by stupidbird »

TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #69
village-idiot wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Riding your kids too hard also causes burnout and rebellion

Again, that may or may not be an accurate characterisation of the circumstances. The parent may genuinely be writing at the students request. It’s seems reasonable there may be at least some students who genuinely want to do more work to improve their chances of being accepted in to their preferred choice at the next level.

Assuming this child is 15 or older and not developmentally delayed, a parent should absolutely not be intervening for the difference between an A or an A-

This is how you get kids with parents who go to job interviews with them. I actually had to teach a kid I went to undergrad with how to grocery shop because "I never had to do it myself"

Kids need to learn how to be their own advocates.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#116

Post by robertAngst »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #8
yourbandsucks wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No way. Teaching is really, really important for society. And we've made it low-status, because we are morons. If it were higher-status, you'd see fewer people being 'bored' and seeing the 'excitement' elsewhere. The fact that we've screwed this up should not be celebrated.

Pay more and treat teachers better. Market forces at work.

My worst teacher bragged about how great of a teacher she was, and that she rightfully deserved 120k/yr.

She had a PhD, Masters, etc...

She would teach 2/5 days a week, and tell us to read the text book the other 3/5 days.

And her answer to anything libertarian was- That's fine, you can just build your own road, and put out your own fire.

Looking back on it, and believing her overly simplistic answers, I think a youtuber could have done a better job.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#117

Post by bjourne »

djrobstep wrote: post #54
allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

What's sad is that all this desperate competition by parents to improve their kid's grades is zero-sum: A noisy but pointless rearrangement of positions on the socio-economic ladder. One kid getting into Princeton means another misses out. Very little of it results in actual useful learning or eventual public benefit.

But it isn't. The question was "X is trying to get into Princeton - an A- isn't going to get her in. What extra credit can she do to make this an A?" Presumably, the extra credit means the student will learn more. Hence, it is not zero-sum. And it actually seem fair to me; the student that works the hardest and scores the highest grades deserves to win the spot.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#118

Post by barry-cotter »

e1g wrote: post #102
archon wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Presumably the backpresure of requests does not go away If a teacher's work email is anything like my email inbox at work, ~90% of emails just go away if ignored. The other ~10% email again if it's actually important. Once your contacts are "trained" not to expect instant feedback to every email they send you, you can often get some actual work done.

This is often the case for internal comms in a large company overran with administrators / coordinators. Yet parents are more like customers than colleagues - and no operation can ignore 90% of external / customer comms and stay alive (to say nothing of effective!)

Parents aren’t customers in a government school. Customers pay money. Parents are stakeholders, along with teachers, the teachers union and local politicians who compete for teachers votes. Children are not stakeholders because they have no power and their opinions are irrelevant.

A government school has an enormous advantage over private schools in that it’s free at the point of use. You can be a lot worse than the competition if the competition is expensive and you’re paid for by tax money.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#119

Post by fromthestart »

bjourne wrote: post #101
allcentury wrote: post #14

There's much more to this story. My mother, a high school calculus teacher for the last 22 years is so ready to retire. I didn't think my mom would ever retire, she spends countless hours coming up with unique lesson plans for the kids - they usually involve games, real world use cases and many ah-ha moments. She lives for those moments when a kid lights up when they understand the value of what their learning. Now t…

That complaint doesn't make any sense. I can understand teachers complaining about kids disturbing their lessons, are unruly and threaten them with violence and so on. I can not understand teachers complaining about kids being extra ambitious and doing what they can to get the highest grades! I'll get downvoted for this, but if your moms worst problem is overachievers and parents caring about their children's educati…

There's a line between caring about your children and helicoptering and/or demanding special treatment for your child.

If you care about your children, you teach them to work and study, or at least approach the teacher on their own for things like extra credit.

The teacher probably has 20+ students. How much extra time per student do you expect him or her to suck up so that everyone's special child can make it into Princeton?

Plus, isn't the point of grades a measure of ability? If we can just erase any bad grade at a parent's discretion, what's the point in having grades at all?

The whole system in my opinion is rotting. We seem to be increasingly reluctant in the U.S. to measure merit - but in this case, if nobody loses, then nobody wins. Sometimes that's life. Princeton only has prestige because it is selective, and that selectiveness depends on some kind of measure of entrant ability.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#120

Post by [deleted] »

rayiner wrote: post #42
neom wrote: post #25

One of my favourite hypotheticals to play out is what would be like if we somehow paid public school teachers and emergency services/law enforcement professionals an extreme of today, a million usd a year, and increased the difficulty to attain this work. I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious what others think/why this couldn't work?

> I usually end up in a pretty good place but I'd be curious why this could not work? It would be fantastically expensive. Chicago has 21,000 teachers. Paying them $1 million per year would cost $21 billion, dwarfing the city's current $3.8 billion budget. Even paying them $100,000 per year on average would cost half the city's budget. And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results. American teac…

[deleted]
Post reply on HN