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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#551

Post by simonw »

acjohnson55 wrote: post #498
douglaswlance wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you need to plan/grade ? Why isn't that automated?

Planning needs to be responsive to how the prior lessons went. You can't simply pre-plan a whole year and expect those lessons to be effective. Eventually, you can get close to that point, if you are lucky enough to teach the same subject for years. But much like you can't expect a standup comedian to perform someone else's routine effectively, as a teacher, each individual has to figure out what's effective for them…

This is one of the many things that I find so interesting about effective teaching.

Your students are forming a mental model of how something works. Your job is to help guide them to the correct mental model.

If their mental model goes wrong, you have to debug it: you need to figure out exactly what they've misunderstood (which could be anything, and could be from years before your lessons with them started) and help them correct.

Here's a really good detailed write-up of this idea: https://teachtogether.tech/en/index.html#s:models

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#552

Post by randomdata »

downboots wrote: post #515
randomdata wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Automation. Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away, leaving it to be a valueless human endeavour. “Teaching” in the context of children survives because it has become a childcare service. But babysitting is not able to charge much as its cost must remain under the income potential of parents, else parents will take the responsibility themselves.

> Teaching in its rawest form has been automated away Wishful thinking. If kids magically taught themselves there would be no schools. Some do. Most don't.

Of what relevance are kids? We're talking about adults. When was the last time you hired a teacher instead of turning to YouTube (or whatever)? That's where teaching is effectively dead, lost to automation.

Children require care. Again, "teaching" survives when children are present because childcare is the functional service offered. There is no impetus to move to automation here as childcare is not easily automated, necessitating a warm body anyway. However, the value of a teacher is constrained by the value of childcare as there is no longer market value in teaching alone.

Like I said in the other comment, teaching outside of schools for children isn't even recognized in the word teacher anymore because the career, as a general one, effectively no longer exists. You've proven my point.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#553

Post by jmugan »

jmugan wrote: post #545

As a father of 3 kids, one thing that gets lost in these discussions is the fact that some teachers are great and some are bad, like really bad. We need to give the good ones more money and freedom and the bad ones means and incentive to improve or find a new profession.

I wonder if this also relates to police officers. One of the problems seems to be that society doesn't have the right leverage over their behavior. Some are heroic and some give the profession a bad name.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#554

Post by juve1996 »

irrational wrote: post #322

One thing I wonder is if teachers are in such high demand, why do they put up with crap from their administrators and politicians saying that this is what they have to teach and how they have to teach it. Why don’t they just teach whatever they want to teach and do it however they want to do it? The worst that can happen is they will be fired, but they can probably find a new teaching position easily since there is s…

The cushy easy jobs in great school districts don't have vacancies. There are plenty of jobs in "bad" neighborhoods where you'll be endlessly abused.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#555

Post by RHSeeger »

swores wrote: post #544
RHSeeger wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You still have to pay the bills before retirement. That's a valid point, but choices need to be made. Go to the teachers union and ask if they'd be willing to drop future pensions (and cap current ones to the benefits payed in so far) in exchange for a higher salary (based on the amount saved by not longer having pensions). My guess would be that they wouldn't even be willing to discuss it.

You're talking as if "choices need to be made" doesn't extend to the question of whether or not they get enough tax dollars total, regardless of split between income and pensions. But actually, you're the only commenter I've so far seen in the thread who claims that their pensions are enough to make up for their salaries. Personally I think both salaries and pensions for (most) teachers should increase, in most count…

> you're the only commenter I've so far seen in the thread who claims that their pensions are enough to make up for their salaries

That is not true, given that I was replying to you, and you were replying to the person that said _this_.

> Counterpoint: teachers' pay is great, it's just backloaded in pension plans.

That being said, in some places the teachers make good money when you include their pension; in other places they do not. It's not consistent across the country.

> You're talking as if "choices need to be made" doesn't extend to the question of whether or not they get enough tax dollars total

That was not my intent. My intent was to indicate...

If you think that teachers make enough when you include their pension, you can't complain that their pension causes a hardship early in their career; because the choice of a pension is likely not something they'd be willing to give up". If you think the pension causes a hardship earlier in the career and that that needs to be changed, then either 1) You do _not_ believe teachers make enough including their pensions, OR 2) You think pensions should be done away with (which I doubt will be supported by the teachers/union).

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#556

Post by juve1996 »

pnf wrote: post #130
anthonyskipper wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

Some of the worst educational outcomes in the US are in deep blue states and deep blue cities. Meanwhile, suburban communities in the US tend to vote more "red" and are also the places people go to raise families because of the better public schools.

Poverty is a better analysis than political lines.

Most of the best school districts are in purple districts. The worst ones are in heavily red or heavily blue districts, largely correlating with poverty.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#557

Post by didibus »

Tomte wrote: post #431
status_quo69 wrote: post #345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The rallying cry seems to be that "2+2=4 is racist". Source? This is such a wild claim it has to be made up. A cursory google search brings this article: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/teaching-math-throu... Which is distilled down to "teachers teach math in a way that is topical to the current environment, such as BLM protests which is really nothing new. You might disagree with it, sure, but to say that…

> Source? For example the Wall Street Journal. And hundreds of similar articles. https://www.wsj.com/articles/in-california-2-2-4-may-be-thou... > This is such a wild claim it has to be made up. This is against the site's rules. > I'm personally hard pressed to find that one person tweeting means that all math teachers everywhere Funny how you build up a straw man. I never claimed any of that.

I'd have to agree with OP, it does seem to be bad faith, because the entire time, instead of discussing the proposed changes at face value, they seem to try and ridicule it as if someone says that 2+2=4 is racist, yet they don't quote anyone actually saying that or anything.

I've read the whole article you linked, and I'm no smarter in understanding what the problem is, and the suggested changes are which they're making fun of.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#558

Post by epmatsw »

analog31 wrote: post #247

The US has always experienced relentless political activism against public education. This creates a climate where teachers, and the institution they work in, are actively hated by a wide swath of the public. This is due in no small part to proponents of religious education. It's true that teachers receive an above-average salary, but that can be both a blessing and a curse. The curse is that your wages are a matter…

See the federal government in general. People like my dad elect politicians who actively want the federal government to fail, and then use the government’s failures to justify that: “see, they were right all along!”

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#559

Post by meetingthrower »

spoils19 wrote: post #529
notch656a wrote: post #517

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a finite amount of tax money available, so disproportionately allotment to a few special children effectively robs the other children of resources.

Agreed. We also have to consider the comparative ROI.

This data is REALLY hard to get. For me to do it, I had to go line by line through the budget.

For example, all the classroom aids are typically assigned as teaching costs. But the reality is that they are assigned to individual students with IEPs (individual education plans), ergo, they should be categorized as special ed.

Same thing in pulling out transportation. Or tuition to other districts. Admin dealing with special ed grants and recordkeeping. It goes on and on...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#560

Post by dorchadas »

grog454 wrote: post #379
Macha wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Why are differentiated classes such a taboo? The concern is that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. You get sorted into the lower grade, perhaps because of maturing more slowly in the early years, or a home environment non-conducive to study due to two working parents, or just economic disadvantages like having to live further away from the school and therefore spending time commuting that other kids are spend…

> The concern is that they become a self-fulfilling prophecy. An effective education is ultimately the student's responsibility. If we could somehow teach that at an early age, lot of these problems become irrelevant. As a freshman I was placed in a geometry class in high school that included several seniors that obviously came to class high and some that spoke 0 English. I asked for more difficult problems in class,…

This was basically my experience as well. I had to fight against our idiotic guidance counselor to do so. This lady told, and is still telling (she's still there and is the one I've complained about in my other posts) to take whatever class is easiest, there's no need to push yourself, etc. She also actively discourages AP for dual credit, which is beyond useless if you actually want to study a subject in university; she also told 17 year old me that taking out 250k in debt is worth it for my dream school...Like wtf! There were three things that saved me, and pushed me more in high school

(1) My mom was a teacher there, so she knew what classes were offered better than I did, and was able to help me plan stuff early on without the counselor.

(2) The curriculum director used to teach beside my mom and got hired the same year (and they retired the same year even), and had known me my entire life. She often just went over the counselor's head to make sure my schedule lined up like I needed it to

(3) I had an uncle who worked over at the central administration for the school. He got sent lots of information about summer camps, etc, and passed them on both to my mom and the curriculum director to advocate for them.

All three of them are, sadly, retired now (though my mom keeps coming out of retirement because they can't find biology teachers) and there's not many at the school who advocate for the kids in the same way. The old principal (left at the end of the 2021 school year) was horrible too. I've heard the new one is better, and is slowly trying to re-rigourise the curriculum, but he's fighting against a lot of lazy teachers and our guidance office. It's a mess, but I truly hope he succeeds. It's almost made me want to go back to help push for that and for academically gifted kids, so they actually realise what's available.

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