Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021 • Hacker News Board

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#731

Post by thomastjeffery » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 5:14 AM UTC

kickout wrote: post #414

thomastjeffery wrote: post #379

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You could double teacher pay and it wouldn't make a lick of difference. I sincerely doubt that. Having a teacher who isn't struggling financially would be a huge improvement.

OP is correct. double your salary at your job, but have to take verbal abuse and berated from your 'boss' and see how that paycheck affects your life

Yet public school teachers do this all the time. They take low pay and a bad work environment, and keep teaching anyway. Why? Because they are passionate about teaching.

I had several high-school teachers who weren't financially comfortable, yet still chose to spend hundreds or even thousands on their students during a school year.

Of course, those teachers would have been much more effective if they were in a financially stable position. I also would have had fewer quality teachers leave.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#732

Post by Khaine » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 6:05 AM UTC

pjerem wrote: post #674

Khaine wrote: post #573

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is keeping those kids in school ruins the education of all of the kids in that class. How is it fair to damage the potential of so many kids, because one kid is disruptive, and their parents don’t care.

The options here are not binary. There are other possibilities than keeping them ruining the class or abandoning them. A lot of countries have dedicated schools for those children, so they damage nothing around them and can be treated individually. And in lot of cases, since it requires removing them from families where their problems comes, it’s a breadth of fresh air for them.

As an outsider, it looks to me like the options in America are binary. Either the student can be removed from the class, or they can’t. The problem as I understand it, is that in regular schools teachers are disempowered from removing trouble-making students for a number of reasons, including “equity”.

I agree, that special programs and schools are required for challenging students. But that is a different question.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#733

Post by galfarragem » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 8:09 AM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #554

I’ve noticed that in the time since I was a kid, the focus of public school has shifted from about the 40th percentile student to the 5th percentile student. In my school, the entire focus of the operation was the decent student... the one who showed up, put in a decent effort, did at least three quarters of their homework. The school had tremendous resources for these kids to go to college, and the very best college…

This is the less political correct top HN comment I see in years. There is still hope.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#734

Post by candiodari » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:24 AM UTC

dntrkv wrote: post #676

candiodari wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the incorrigible will perform (much) better given 1-on-1 instruction. Less kids per teacher yields better results. The problem is that performance is exponential. That same 1-on-1 instruction will take a well performing kid to "surgeon". It will take the incorrigible ... maybe ... to only quit school at 10th grade. Which does directly translate to money for the school these days. What teachers/schools also effec…

Many of these difficult kids are legit toxic to everyone around them. They make life hell for other students and any of the faculty that dares interact with them. At my school of ~2,000 I'd say at any given moment there would be at least 30 of these kids (they didn't last long). They were violent. They hit teachers. They were regularly dragged out of classes by police officers. After a few of these interactions, they…

> Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed.

The problem with that is if you can't fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument's sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day ...

This is not going to work for those kids.

So it depends who you want to help. You want to help disadvantaged kids? This will, certainly in the short term, make it worse for them and make life better for advantaged kids.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#735

Post by candiodari » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:25 AM UTC

awillen wrote: post #715

candiodari wrote: post #658

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even the incorrigible will perform (much) better given 1-on-1 instruction. Less kids per teacher yields better results. The problem is that performance is exponential. That same 1-on-1 instruction will take a well performing kid to "surgeon". It will take the incorrigible ... maybe ... to only quit school at 10th grade. Which does directly translate to money for the school these days. What teachers/schools also effec…

Incorrigible literally means they cannot be helped, and the fact is there are kids for whom that is accurate. Giving them one on one instruction doesn't help, because they genuinely do not care. It does take up the time of teachers and burn them out, though, so they're less able to help the kids who are struggling but actually want help. It's important to distinguish kids who just do not care at all from kids who are…

That's true, but you can't expect these people to accept that, and we live in a democracy. This is not going to be a popular viewpoint in most places.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#736

Post by dragonwriter » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 9:27 AM UTC

candiodari wrote: post #734

dntrkv wrote: post #676

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many of these difficult kids are legit toxic to everyone around them. They make life hell for other students and any of the faculty that dares interact with them. At my school of ~2,000 I'd say at any given moment there would be at least 30 of these kids (they didn't last long). They were violent. They hit teachers. They were regularly dragged out of classes by police officers. After a few of these interactions, they…

> Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed. The problem with that is if you can't fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument's sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day ... This is not going to work for those kids. So it depends who you want to help.…

> The problem with that is if you can’t fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument’s sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day …

No one is saying you can’t fix it for 8 hours a day, its saying that fixing the 8 hours a day environment doesn’t address the problem because that’s not the environment that’s brokenness is causing the problems.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#737

Post by candiodari » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 11:35 AM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #736

candiodari wrote: post #734

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Point is, there is nowhere near enough teachers and resources to fix these broken kids. Their broken homes are what need to be fixed. The problem with that is if you can't fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument's sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day ... This is not going to work for those kids. So it depends who you want to help.…

> The problem with that is if you can’t fix their environment for 8 hours a day (most schools are more like 6 these days but for argument’s sake), and you propose fixing their environments 24 hours a day … No one is saying you can’t fix it for 8 hours a day, its saying that fixing the 8 hours a day environment doesn’t address the problem because that’s not the environment that’s brokenness is causing the problems.

Well, sure, but what you say "needs" fixing has a lot of problems:

    1) it's double or quadruple the time (8/6 vs 24h) vs school
    2) kids aren't arranged per 20 (or 40 these days). You really need someone in a location per 2/3 kids.

So this is a non-starter, fixing the home environment. Plus current attempts to fix it, meaning mostly CPS, generally make things a LOT worse, make these kids far more toxic than they would be left in their problematic home, if that's what you're concerned about. Also, it would further take away opportunities from these kids.

(e.g. https://www.kansascity.com/news/special-reports/article23820... )

Which leads to:

    a) we can't "fix the home situation", beyond providing some education on how kids should be raised
    (seriously, someone in government make a fucking youtube series about it ... talk about useful spending of CPS budget!)
    b) current attempts to do just that anyway make the situation worse for everyone involved (toxicity + crime + lack of opportunities), and don't improve things for those kids.
    c) I don't see b changing.
    d) we *still* do want to "fix" those kids

Ergo it will need to happen at school. Home situation problematic or not. Addressing the core problem or not. It will need to happen in school (taken widely. E.g. sports ... can be included). Maybe this is a very hard problem, but it's not nearly as hard as the other side of the coin.

And not helping those kids do better is not acceptable. Even aside from the obvious observation that homelessness, drugs and crime don't just impact the people directly involved.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#738

Post by dionidium » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 12:51 PM UTC

muyuu wrote: post #367

mindvirus wrote: post #64

One of the most radical beliefs I have is we should get rid of private schools, because it lets the people most capable of forcing change to opt out of an increasingly broken system, and so it doesn't get fixed. Of course I say this as I seriously consider sending my kids to a private school because of articles like this.

people cannot opt out of the DMV and I hear it's still garbage for some reason, the US never mastered publicly run institutions and they seem to attract the kind of people who run them into the ground I do agree that the fact that lobbyists and major donors being able to remove themselves from the social consequences of the policies they help implement is a major problem in the American political system; cronyism is…

"people cannot opt out of the DMV and I hear it's still garbage"

But is it, though? I get the impression these complaints run mostly on inertia. In the last 5 years I've been to DMVs in Missouri, New York, and Rhode Island and I've never waited long (they take appointments now at many branches), the people were friendly, their websites explained exactly what I needed to bring, and so on.

The experience was fine.

And yet I keep hearing about how awful the DMV is. I get it; nobody really wants to be at the DMV, but I didn't walk away from those experiences aghast at the dysfunction.

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#739

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

spoonjim wrote: post #710

walledstance wrote: post #707

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continued from above again: Admin churn and policy changes have a direct and deleterious impact on teacher, student, and school performance. I can't focus on teaching academics if I am supposed to reteach classroom policy changes at random times throughout the year. Policy changes can take weeks to months to integrate into a classroom. Teachers who are whipped back and forth between admin and policy changes don't hav…

You should write this up on Quora so it sticks around.

[deleted]

Re: Life as a public school teacher in the San Francisco Bay Area in 2021

#740

Post by detroitcoder » Mon, Jun 21, 2021, 1:43 PM UTC

walledstance wrote: post #707

walledstance wrote: post #706

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Continued from above: Let's start at the top with administration. I'm not going to speak in detail on administration actions because my expertise is within the classroom and working the policy decisions made by school boards and administration into my daily lessons. Over the course of my career as an educator (27 years) I have had 16 different principals. Teachers call this the "admin churn." This is when budgeting e…

Continued from above again: Admin churn and policy changes have a direct and deleterious impact on teacher, student, and school performance. I can't focus on teaching academics if I am supposed to reteach classroom policy changes at random times throughout the year. Policy changes can take weeks to months to integrate into a classroom. Teachers who are whipped back and forth between admin and policy changes don't hav…

Are there studies that show a statistical relationship between admin churn and student performance?