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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#721

Post by acjohnson55 »

Uehreka wrote: post #667
acjohnson55 wrote: post #500

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Ah, the engineer who thinks everything can be solved with software. Just as a bit of feedback, starting your comment like this may have turned off the original poster to the rest of your thoughts, which I agree with.

Not GP, but I frequently start comments like this if the comment I’m replying to isn’t just slightly off, but reflects a deeply unexamined prior. It’s a signal that “The thing that’s wrong with your comment isn’t even in the text of the comment, it’s in the worldview that led you to think this in the first place. Simply reacting to the text of the comment would be insufficient.”

I get the impulse, but I just think that if the goal is to correct someone--not just to be correct--starting with snark is most likely to be counterproductive. Even if the first comment is actually in bad faith, I consider my audience to be any reader, not just the one I'm replying to, and snark undermines credibility there, too.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#722

Post by indymike »

obscurette wrote: post #618

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems. 2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing. 3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes…

> no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing.

I wish I could upvote this x10000. This is the exact problem.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#723

Post by notch656a »

kube-system wrote: post #719
notch656a wrote: post #702

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>discarded If I give Johnny, Jimmy, and Karen an equal investment of $20 and 20 hours of labor each for their education, I haven't "discarded" Karen, even if she needs more money and more time to get the same equality of outcome. In the same vein, I don't at all want to "discard" special ed children, I just want any public funds provided to the other children to be a nearly equal monetary investment. >That’s why we h…

An equal monetary investment for disabled children would mean they don’t have a teacher. You might be able to teach 50 non-disabled children with 2 teachers that costs $100K each to employ. An equal $4000/student/year is not enough to hire anyone for a special needs student, who 1) won’t be able to benefit from the economy of scale in a normal classroom and 2) has needs that require a larger portion of a person’s tim…

If the school can't or won't educate the student with his/her equal allotment, then the school needs to return the monetary allotment to the parents for parental discretion on how to educate the child. If the state fails to provide the service with the allotment available, you don't just start taking from the other kids' pie.

>An equal $4000/student/year

You're off by almost 4x the average if you live in the US. For reference, for the $~16k spent per year, I was able to (privately) hire someone to take care of my infant over 40 hours a week (and all 12 months), an infant that needed around the clock care and couldn't be counted on to go unwatched for even a few seconds and who constantly irritated others with utterly mind-shattering screaming colic.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#724

Post by jayski »

prepend wrote: post #416
jschveibinz wrote: post #365

I am an early-retired EE and I thought that I could have a second career in teaching HS physics. I got the MA Teaching in Maryland, and did my one year student teaching assignment. My thoughts: 1. The degree program was decent, although a certificate program would be better for prior professionals if the law allowed it (lower cost, too much wasted time in redundant classes). 2. Teachers are sad. Very sad. They are un…

> teachers work more in 9 months than most professionals I want to understand this more and think we need to measure this well. As a software dev, I’ve always struggled with measuring the amount of work performed and usually disregard measures of intellectual output as misleading measures (eg, lines of code, story points completed, whatever). What makes you think teachers work more in 9 months than a typical professi…

I've been working as a software dev for 20+ years,the only time I actually truly worked 60+ hours a week was when I was attempting to get my own startup off the ground.

Other than that, it's usually been 10-15 of actual work work.

Really not trying to brag, but to bring context to the conversation,I make 10 times what a teacher makes.

I think it's a real problem teachers are underpaid and undervalued. IMO schools should have very basic facilities/luxuries, and awesome very well paid teachers (150-200k) who we expect a lot out of, give a lot of liberties to. This way there will always be competition and prestige involved with being a teacher.

Might sound expensive, but I truly think it's an investment that will more than pay for itself in ~1 generation

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#725

Post by MikePlacid »

8note wrote: post #631
draebek wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The emphasis on "classroom control" personally doesn't surprise me. If two or three students start refusing a teacher's orders, that teacher is done for the year, and maybe forever at that school. In my middle school, discipline was all but lost in most of my classes. Play cards in class, tell the teacher to shut up. What's she going to do? We stole her phone and keys in first period, locked the doors to the room, an…

Send the kid home and fail them for the year? They can try again next year. Well behaved kids are the parents' problem

> Send the kid home and fail them for the year? They can try again next year. Well behaved kids are the parents' problem

You are speaking a Catholic school here. But there are a lot of other schools in 20-mile radius of my home in Silicon Valley where my wife worked.

1. Big city district with “no child left behind” policy, very stupidly executed. Never again, no matter how high the salary is.

2. A charter school chain - a commercial exercise- that has no money planned on disciplinary problems: no staff, no rooms to deal with reports and detentions. Dick drawing, chair humping - “it’s your professional responsibility to control the classroom”.

3. The Catholic school: “thank you doctor N for joining our school” - from kids! When she got all 25 answers on the first assignment- she cried. She was forced to leave the school because you can’t get California credentials in a State university in a program paid by me, not the state - while working in a Catholic school, teaching exactly the same science course.

But there is no need to brutal measures like expelling. There is say option

4. A public school in an ethnic minority suburb. Three reports - and a conference with the teacher and administrator, who is absolutely on the teacher’s side but wants to know how to improve the situation. And that actually helps - these badly behaving kids are not necessarily cruel. “No child left behind” too, but executed properly.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#726

Post by caoilte »

8note wrote: post #626
obscurette wrote: post #618

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems. 2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing. 3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes…

I think if teaching was a $2M/year job, plenty of people would want to teach. They might not be good at it, but actually good money will draw many candidates

This is a better argument to cut CEO pay by 90% than anything else.

The problem for teachers (and lots of other people in the care sector who struggle to take effective industrial action) isn't that the pay doesn't attract good people.

The problem is it isn't enough to live on, especially given all the training they have to do (plus associated loans) and unpaid work.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#727

Post by douglaswlance »

TIPSIO wrote: post #494
douglaswlance wrote: post #475

Why isn't education highly automated? Why do teachers across the country teach the same way we did before we had high-powered computers and information networks?

Your comment made me think of the scene in the first Star Trek movie where all the little Spock children are in an emotionless hole being programmed with math and philosophy. Not saying you are wrong or right, but for many kids having an adult who simply cares is worth infinitely more than any amount of efficiencies or base material.

So automate what can be automated to free the teacher to care more.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#728

Post by sampo »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #643
obscurette wrote: post #618

1. This is not about America. I'm from Eastern Europe and we have the very same problems. 2. This is not about money. Yes, being underpaid is part of a problem how teachers feel, but no money compensates humiliation and bullying teachers are experiencing. 3. It's not a rant. This EXACTLY how I feel after spending three years at school. I was a math teacher in classes of my kids because a school couldn't find any. Yes…

I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland. Teachers there are paid in accordance with the high respect they're given in society.

> I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland.

Schools in Finland are starting to have problems trying to recruit enough teachers:

https://yle.fi/uutiset/3-12555574

https://www.aamulehti.fi/pirkanmaa/art-2000009014541.html

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#729

Post by douglaswlance »

zweifuss wrote: post #717
douglaswlance wrote: post #475

Why isn't education highly automated? Why do teachers across the country teach the same way we did before we had high-powered computers and information networks?

Learning is social. Very close to 100%. That is why the Nuremberg funnel was never really invented. Technology as a teacher substitute has never proven itself in practice (i.e. outside of laboratory environments). There are a few students that are exceptionally driven, but even they learn socially. That we have tried to get better schools by economy of scale and standardized testing is reason for some of the problems…

Not sure how this is relevant. The more automation, the more free time, the more people are able to be social.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#730

Post by dionidium »

sseagull wrote: post #550
dionidium wrote: post #527

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But any good teacher will realize that they have to customize the learning to that year's kids, and constantly update with new teaching methodologies, new information, etc. I mean this seriously: why? High school math is not a rapidly changing field. Sure, you might have to slow down or speed up, depending on the class -- although, is even that true? Is the average student really changing all that much from year to…

In addition to changing cohorts that others mention - What are the chances the way you taught it last year is the most effective way? Good teachers experiment - maybe something they taught last time didn't go over too well, how can that be improved? Can they make the material even more relevant this year? Also, it makes teaching it more interesting, rather than regurgitating lessons. Teachers are human after all.

If kids were learning high school math just fine 50 years ago (and, as far as I know, they were), then that suggests that advances in pedagogy are either not forthcoming, entirely irrelevant, or overwhelmed by other factors.
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