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Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

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Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#331

Post by labster »

vanviegen wrote: post #322
labster wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never had assignments that were supposed to have parental assistance after preschool, yet many of them needed it to get a non-failing grade. Perhaps 1% of middle school kids can do a science fair project on their own with all the research tracking and results board and all. But still if you failed that, you failed the class. Utterly ridiculous. Kids that age should be exploring and apprenticing, not coming up wi…

So which is it? Are we asking middle school kids to come up with original research, or are we training them to be good factory workers? These statements seem to point in exact opposite directions.

Unfortunately, both. We ask kids to be on time, every day, sit orderly in their seats. Don't talk to neighbors, you're supposed to be at your job or learning. Collaboration is only allowed when authorized. Looking up information is only allowed when authorized. Any disruption is grounds for punishment, too many notices is grounds for dismissal, er, expulsion.

And then these same kids are sent home and asked to complete creative work, as if we had been training them for a creative job all along. We do not do this, but we expect the results nonetheless. And teachers pat themselves on the back for letting their students "get creative" while upholding the authoritarian system 99% of the time -- which they have to do, because it's their jobs on the line.

So no, those statements are not contradictory.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#332

Post by concerned_user »

tomjakubowski wrote: post #74
TheSpiceIsLife wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If it's the parent writing at the student's request… I'd think it'd be more effective if the student themself emailed the teacher about the grade, wouldn't it?

I think the kid themselves have no motivation and what is happening is their parent projecting their dreams and actually ruining their kid's life and future for years to come.

I am assuming kid will struggle in the top school anyways because of parents not being able to control as much anymore and since self-motivation was never trained it will be hard to do things on your own.

You might say that parents will use same approach in top school as well, but if they had that kind of power I guess they would not need to put their kid into a public school in the first place.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#333

Post by sizzle »

shados wrote: post #11

Articles like these, while only loosely related, always make me think that the software engineering bubble has to pop. You have people with ton of education busting their behind dealing with little brats all day to try to make sure they have a future... During that time, some bro who read a couple of books and hammered on his keyboard, and MAYBE did a 3 months bootcamp gets bummed if he can't pull in 100k in one of t…

Is this a product of supply and demand?

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#334

Post by sizzle »

iheartpotatoes wrote: post #261
xamuel wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most people wouldn't be able to cut it in software dev, whether they did the 3 month bootcamp or even if they managed to pass a 4-year university program. 99% of the time, Little Jimmy's 4th grade English teacher would have a snowball's chance in hell as a professional developer.

Oh hell, software dev is so, so very overloaded with underskilled programmers with fragile egos. They come out of college knowing a little python and javascript and can't do jack shit for at least a year, and just come to a screeching halt with every tough issue they encounter. I'm a project manager box in an org-chart to help un-flatten the management hierarchy (I manage 20+), I am constantly having to re-assign tic…

If this a symptom of bad hiring practices in your organization of representative across the tech industry? How do you know your org isn't to blame?

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#335

Post by grecy »

atombender wrote: post #203
grecy wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My entire family are teachers (Mum, Dad, Sister, Brother), and have all had to deal with this to varying degrees, and have had it consume their lives at various times. My brother has the best work-life balance of any teacher I have ever met, and I think his approach is brilliant. Teaching is one of those careers where the expectation is on the teacher to endlessly do more and work harder, "For the kids", and if you k…

That sounds like a great life-work balance, but it also sounds like a privileged position that is unrealistic for many teachers. My girlfriend teaches art to kids aged 8-14 at an urban public school, and she has zero time during the day for lesson planning, grading, seating plans, hanging up artwork, dealing with parents, etc. On most days she has to stay behind for several hours, and she often works throughout the w…

> sounds like a privileged position that is unrealistic for many teachers

Well sure, he lives in Australia which has much, much better working conditions than the USA.

It sounds like your girlfriend is being taken advantage of and working in a situation that is not to her benefit. In which case she needs to start looking for a new job!

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#336

Post by WoodenChair »

randomdata wrote: post #137
rayiner wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> And there is little reason to believe it would yield better results. This is an important point. $100,000+ per year is not unheard of for teachers in Ontario (conveniently public sector incomes >$100,000 are required to publicly disclosed[1]), and they have problems with graduates not having even basic literacy and numeracy skills[2]. [1] https://www.ontario.ca/page/public-sector-salary-disclosure [2] https://www.t…

$100,000 Canadian is $75,000 American, which is about the average teacher salary in my wealthy US city ($70,000 to be exact).

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#337

Post by anticensor »

jogjayr wrote: post #164
woolvalley wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well it's a pay issue too isn't it? If a family paid for the teachers time for extra work, then I'm guessing the pushback wouldn't be as bad.

It's not a big leap from "pay extra for extra credit assignments to improve grade" to "pay extra to improve grade". I'm not suggesting that the vast majority of teachers would be tempted or give in to bribery. But it sets up perverse incentives and the optics are terrible. It's also unfair to students who didn't do well and whose families can't afford to pay the teacher to grade their extra credit assignments.

The problem is determining where the line lies between teacher/instructor bribery and worthy lesson to learn.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#338

Post by bryanrasmussen »

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 think asking about possible extra credit to up the grade, especially from a - to the not - version is pretty ok. No profanity was involved right.

Re: Teachers Quit Jobs at Highest Rate on Record

#339

Post by yason »

twtw wrote: post #309
8bitsrule wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"What extra credit can she do to make this an A?" "She can't, because that's the grade she earned in the time alloted. The moving finger, having writ, has moved on. "However, I'm confident that, with Janie's capabilities, a little more effort from her and help from you, she can easily demonstrate a higher level of mastery and the consequent benefits from longer-term retention. "Princeton will NOT be a picnic, and dev…

Nice try. I've seen how this goes over with those types. The parents escalate to the adminstrators, who either involve the student counsellors or talk to the teacher directly. One of these two tell the teacher how they need to better support the student because they need a "little extra help" or can't handle the stress required to turn in homework assignments. I wish this stuff worked, but these parents typically don…

Pushing responsibility upward and allowing escalation should end at some point. The administrators should just repeat what the teachers said, and tell the parents that the only way to get better scores is to invite the child work harder for the next test. It's really that simple.

Now, if even the administrators can't do that then someone in the city government, state government or federal government should be able to draw the fundamental line whether the purpose of schools is to give students A's or grade them based on their actual knowledge and make the student responsible for his/her own grades.

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