Great opinion piece. Much agree. My wife works as a middle and high school substitute teacher across 6 districts in a large metro. All schools need subs so badly. But only 1 even raised their sub pay rate this year. Some try to offer higher rates for working more days in their district. But when one district pays $25 more a day than the others, they still don’t increase it. Teachers deserve more money. Also boggles my mind that the teachers unions are supposedly so powerful in this country, but if so then why are they paid so poorly?
Nobody wants to teach anymore
501–510 of 1001 posts
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#502Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m all for creating a new salary band for teachers with 1300+ SAT scores and STEM degrees. I’ll pay whatever taxes you want for that.
Is there any evidence to show that these people make good teachers? You don't need to be a genious to teach. You need to have good social skills with kids, care about doing a good job, and a mastery of the subject matter (which not very demanding for even average-intelligence adults, at least until the latter part of high school).
Yes to all of those: necessary but not sufficient.
You left out "willing to do whatever it takes for THAT kid, regardless of what the textbooks or principal or union says."
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#503Earlier quoted context omitted.
What has “urban” to do with it?
Quoted post unavailable.
I’ve never heard of ”urban” being a code word for “black”. Is that a thing? I assume they mean “urban” as in “city” where you’re likely to have many other forms of opportunity vs “podunk” where you’re kinda stuck in one career because there’s nothing else around.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#504A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…
1. Administrators. We have insane administrative bloat, especially in higher ed. In some institutions there is nearly a 1:1 count of administrators to faculty. Ironically, given the social politics implied by the author, a significant amount of administration bloat is specifically tied to DEI. 2. Well, they are. A teaching certification used to only require two years of higher learning compared to typical 4 for other…
Special Ed is as stupid as doing open heart surgeries on 85 year olds to give them 3 extra years. They’re an enormous burden on the system and are ruining everything for almost all of us. Why do severely mentally handicapped kids even need to be educated. Just provide them with an amount of money to live their lives and make their time here as happy as possible. There is going to be a reckoning.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#505Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why do you need to plan/grade ? Why isn't that automated?
Ah, the engineer who thinks everything can be solved with software. To automate grading you first must create a general AI, because if you just do multiple choice exams, you aren't really testing or measuring someone's ability to perform the task, you're just measuring their ability to make a good guess. And some teachers do that. But not the good ones. As for planning, some senior teachers have filing cabinets label…
Also, I will add, there is an element of good teaching that involves building a relationship with your students.
Getting personalized feedback (encouragement, small corrections, etc) can mean much more to a student than a simple green checkmark/red x somewhere. Good educators can know when to apply the right amount of pushing or backing off that can help a student succeed.
Ideally, of course. Lots of bad teachers out there…
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#506Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive analysis of our budget. For primary education through high school, admin is NOT the root cause. If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3 or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs. Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and…
You say that like we’re overspending on spending ed. I don’t understand that position. Of course they require more resources than the average student - they’re special cases, literally! To take that away would be devastating for society’s most vulnerable, as most parents aren’t equipped with the skills or resources to be able to do any different with their children. Some cases are extreme. Should we just let them eit…
Speculation: Maybe they aren't funded from a distinct resource pool and are instead assumed to be a percentage of the whole that is too small to care about. However over the years the number or cost of providing service has gone up to the point where the current expectations are an undue burden on the rest of the group. If that is the case then the funding should be split off at the source into it's own portion and receive clearer representation in funding deciding bodies.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#507Earlier quoted context omitted.
I’m all for creating a new salary band for teachers with 1300+ SAT scores and STEM degrees. I’ll pay whatever taxes you want for that.
So instead of putting in the work and weighing out the different qualities of an effective educator, you pick out the most arbitrary of criteria out there and want to make that the gold standard for evaluating teachers. I'm not a betting man, but I'd feel comfortable wagering that you are a STEM grad with solid SAT scores.
I am, and I'd make an awful teacher. Engineers are generally horrible teachers, I think because they've become so immersed in their subject that everything that is entirely alien to the learner seems obvious to them. I'm so impatient. I just want people to repeat after me, do the thing exactly like I said, and to show no initiative.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#508Earlier quoted context omitted.
You almost had me at "whatever isn’t sufficient to keep enough people" but then dammit, you lost at "wildly unqualified people" If you mean "having an education degree" or "getting a grossly irrelevant teacher's certificate" then no, those are not "qualifications." Those are just the teacher's union contract provisions.
There are some problems with the system you're objecting to, but the "veterans and random college students" qualification some places are moving to is... worse.
no argument there.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#509Earlier quoted context omitted.
Re #1) I was a school board member and did exhaustive analysis of our budget. For primary education through high school, admin is NOT the root cause. If you take any school budget, and strip away everything that is not an actual classroom teacher, you will find that ~1/3 or less goes to "frontline" teaching costs. Another 1/3 goes to special ed and all that is attendant with that. I mean, my district BOUGHT a car and…
Wife often gets kids who need to be in special Ed. Takes a few weeks or more. Basically most of her time is spent dealing with the one kid. Or the aftermath. Not fun calling parents telling them that Susan is bleeding from a thrown chair. Of John was assaulted in the bathroom. Lots of time spent chasing kid when he runs away. Never mind her own wounds. These are kindergartners. This year She’s currently has 2 full ti…
That and the special ed kids get a high allotment of cash vs regular student. In effect, the normal kid is robbed by the special ed kid who gets disproportional budget per capita.
A lot of time and talk gets spent about equity between poor and rich kids, or white and black kids, but you rarely see talk of normalizing the spending differential between special and gen pop.
Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore
#510Earlier quoted context omitted.
Do you have any evidence that teachers are all using “automated teaching services”? I’ve never heard of such a thing.
Teaching as a career basically doesn't exist anymore outside of schools for children. It is not that teachers are using automated tools, but students are using automated teachers instead of hiring human teachers. When was the last time you hired a human teacher instead of consulting an automated teacher when you wanted/needed to learn something new? Like I said before, we don't even recognize the existence of general…
I've never heard of an automated teacher. I've heard of tutors and I've heard of books.