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How Many People Can Someone Lead?

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Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#71

Post by schoolornot »

leetrout wrote: post #33
anonexpat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the part where she's criminally underpaid for the work she does.

But she gets her summers off! /s It's crazy how underpaid teachers are.

Tenured positions, strong unions, pensions, benefits the average blue collared worker can dream of, and no accountability or pressures to ensure students make their marks. I can support raises once merit pay is instituted and they start doing something about the bad teachers, of which young me would say is the majority.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#72

Post by xvedejas »

chrisseaton wrote: post #59
marvin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wonder anyone wants to do the job at all, knowing all this in advance. I almost became a teacher once. Figured all the abuse would be a degrading waste of my efforts.

Maybe not everyone's motivated by money?

If they were entirely not motivated by money, we could just have them do it for free. I think clearly teachers expect at least a little money, and perhaps many potential teachers would expect even more.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#73

Post by robbedpeter »

anonexpat wrote: post #28
Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

You missed the part where she's criminally underpaid for the work she does.

Sorry to shit on your sacred cow, but you mean overpaid. For babysitting.

The education children get in public schools is abysmal.

Good teachers that actually educate are exceedingly rare.

The education requirements for teachers is a sick joke. If you get a master's degree in underwater basket weaving, have a tolerance for noise, you join a teacher's union, work 9 months out of the year, get weeks of holidays, get virtue by association, a retirement, and are basically employed for life. Unfireable.

The reason teachers aren't paid more is because what they do isn't worth paying them more.

Some of the smarter ones move to private schools, but more of the good ones burn out and either leave, or stop giving a shit. Formalized regurgitation and pavlovian schedule training prepares kids for 9 to 5 bullshit. Barely. The rest is hit and miss on a garbled curriculum of mostly irrelevant filler and fluff.

You can't continue inflicting the bullshit teachers on the good ones, or on the kids. Unions have to end for certain classes of employment, but especially teaching. A vast majority of teachers need to be canned and kicked to the curb.

Kids deserve better, and that starts with honestly addressing the problem in the classroom.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#74

Post by 101011 »

robbedpeter wrote: post #73
anonexpat wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You missed the part where she's criminally underpaid for the work she does.

Sorry to shit on your sacred cow, but you mean overpaid. For babysitting. The education children get in public schools is abysmal. Good teachers that actually educate are exceedingly rare. The education requirements for teachers is a sick joke. If you get a master's degree in underwater basket weaving, have a tolerance for noise, you join a teacher's union, work 9 months out of the year, get weeks of holidays, get vi…

Gee, I'll bet you were a peach to teach.

Let's just fire all the teachers and see if the next batch of applicants do any better.

I'm a software engineer and I'll happily admit that I'm grossly overpaid for the contribution to society I provide.

I'm curious what you think teachers should be paid for trying to educate our future.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#75

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

I'm sure I could also make my job sound extremely impressive.

I don't understand why everyone believes teachers are so undervalued. On average, I don't think teachers provide that much value.

My pet peeve is teachers teaching children maths. How can you teach something that you don't understand?

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#76

Post by thanhhaimai »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #75
Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

I'm sure I could also make my job sound extremely impressive. I don't understand why everyone believes teachers are so undervalued. On average, I don't think teachers provide that much value. My pet peeve is teachers teaching children maths. How can you teach something that you don't understand?

There are plenty people who are qualified for teaching children math. But it would be a disservice for them and their family to accept a low wage teaching job when they can work for $400k+ elsewhere.

Your argument is like hiring only minimum wage workers to build rockets, then complain that on average they don't provide that much value and can't solve integrals in their heads.

If we want better teachers, the solution is not surprising: pay more.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#77

Post by thanhhaimai »

brendoelfrendo wrote: post #42
marvin wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a wonder anyone wants to do the job at all, knowing all this in advance. I almost became a teacher once. Figured all the abuse would be a degrading waste of my efforts.

In a lot of cases, they don't want to do the job. There are teacher shortages in a lot of the United States, especially in states that are infamous for mistreating teachers, like Texas.

There is no teacher shortage. There is a shortage of people willing to teach for peanuts.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#78

Post by starky »

I found it interesting that the author was making a case for 2-3 people for someone inexperienced. I've seen people claim that you need to give someone new to leadership a team of 4-5 people because it is so easy to drop into micro-managing if you only have a couple reports.

I took on a lead role earlier this year and unless the 3 people on the team were all inexperienced or I had enough other things to work on, I don't think it would be enough. I do feel like my balance of attention is better with a couple more relatively autonomous people involved.

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#79

Post by Wistar »

schoolornot wrote: post #71
leetrout wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But she gets her summers off! /s It's crazy how underpaid teachers are.

Tenured positions, strong unions, pensions, benefits the average blue collared worker can dream of, and no accountability or pressures to ensure students make their marks. I can support raises once merit pay is instituted and they start doing something about the bad teachers, of which young me would say is the majority.

Tenured? We are talking kindergarten here. Also, are you seriously comparing an advanced-degree career to blue-collar workers?

How is it you'd institute a merit system? By the volume-of-students-per-hour, or what, exactly? The least complaining parents? Test scores that depend on parental involvement to be any good? How are disinterested or absentee parents or those parents who have it in for teachers accounted for in such a system?

Re: How Many People Can Someone Lead?

#80

Post by spaceisballer »

anonexpat wrote: post #28
Wistar wrote: post #18

My spouse both leads and manages ~24 direct reports, each of which require near continuous instruction, supervision, mentoring and encouragement. Her role demands an advanced degree with on-going education and certification requirements; exhaustive planning; an endless well of optimism; extensive individualized communication with third-party stake-holders; detailed performance accounting and reporting to stake-holder…

You missed the part where she's criminally underpaid for the work she does.

I live in a state where they pay is pretty decent starting around $50k a year (they should be making more, but still not a bad start). Also the state pays for pretty much all of your Masters degree. Their health insurance is top notch and their pension is solid. Lots of states really don’t care for public education.
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