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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#751

Post by bobthepanda »

Jensson wrote: post #700
bobthepanda wrote: post #641

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lesson plans vary by the day, so I’m not sure how exactly you would do that without the data from the previous day.

Teachers aren't paid to personalize lessons though, if you work overtime to do that then you can only blame yourself. Teachers are paid to hold standardized lessons and answer questions help students with problems. You could argue it would be better if teachers were paid to personalize lectures, but they aren't. Maybe some document somewhere says they should, but in practice nothing will happen to you if you just use…

Lesson plans are not standardized down to the day and order.

Sometimes, a group of students might need to speed up, slow down, or go in a wholly different direction depending on what happened with the previous lesson. There’s a lot of variation between one class of students and another, and teachers are not some kind of omniscient perfect predictor of behavior. And ultimately, you need to cover a whole curriculum.

There is a whole spectrum between teaching centrally dictated lesson plans and individually crafted tutoring, and one of the requirements of teaching is to be able to adjust lesson plans according to reality. We don’t expect software engineers to waterfall every last character in code down to the wire, but teachers are supposed to do this with unpredictable human children?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#752

Post by ngetchell »

vuln wrote: post #689
thayne wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My mother is a teacher, and she often has to do work during the summer to prepare for the next year, even though her pay is based on her getting the summer off. Not to mention that she is required to do additional training during the summer, sometimes at her own expense.

Interesting. Every public city school system that I’ve attended and participated in gave the teachers the choice of 10 months of pay or 12. Seemed like every tenured teacher took the 12 month while the younger teachers took the 10 month. This might be because of age and financial security. The tired teachers don’t want to pick up a summer job. While the younger bunch picks up jobs as bartenders and servers and probab…

They don't pay the teachers more if they opt for 12 months of pay over 10. They are still paid for 10 months of work, even if the paychecks are spread evenly.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#753

Post by DiggyJohnson »

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.”

The trick is to write the comment, and then delete the snark as a last step before pressing submit.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#754

Post by juve1996 »

carapace wrote: post #590
juve1996 wrote: post #546

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People with kids will tell you how well "internet education" went the last 2 years... This isn't a technology problem. Kids are still kids. Fortnite will still be more fun than doing math, whether that's on a computer or in a classroom.

> People with kids will tell you how well "internet education" went the last 2 years... As I said, I don't have kids, so I don't have first-hand information, but from what I've heard we got the worst of both. I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from the hot mess of the last two years, not yet anyway. In any event, I hope it's obvious that I'm not advocating for more of that. What I mean is that the raw mat…

Internet education can't work for the primary reason: not everyone is WFH. Most places are asking for more to come in. But many jobs require you to come in. So that right there eliminates it. For the lucky that can WFH, they need to dedicate resources to make sure their kid is paying attention or actually learning. It doesn't scale.

It's not a technology problem.

> What I mean is that the raw material freely available on the Internet is more than enough in terms of information, so it seems to me that long hours of mostly-rote learning from approved textbooks, etc. don't make sense anymore (if they ever did.)

It may seem trivial to say "why bother teaching 2+2 if they can just use a calculator." But they still need to understand the CONCEPT of adding. The point isn't just that the answer is four.

Even in something like history where you're asked to remember a date. How can any discussion of history involve not understanding the chronology of events?

> But I reject the idea that playing video games with your friends is more fun than e.g. building a robot IRL with your friends, eh? I mean starting with magnets and wires and, like, an Arduino. You'd have to learn mathematics in the context of electronics, mechanics, software and hardware, sensors, etc. An integrated context where you're immediately applying what you learn to your robot.

All of these options are available to kids with the power of the internet, as you just argued, and yet they almost all choose video games instead.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#755

Post by DiggyJohnson »

closewith wrote: post #522
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.

Maybe it will cause the OP to reevaluate whatever absurd worldview led them to posting a ridiculous comment?

The point, I think, is that it almost never leads to this outcome. Humans respond very poorly to [perceived] antagonism from anonymous strangers. I know I do, and it’s why I’m working on removing all my snark from internet comments.

I’ve also found that you can usually rephrase the snark (“do you really think…?”) into a straightforward question in a neutral tone.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#756

Post by zweifuss »

douglaswlance wrote: post #729
zweifuss wrote: post #717

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

We have tried automation. B.F. Skinner (programmed learning) was neither the the first nor the last.

More recently researches found that the completion rate of most of the MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses) was below 13%.

It doesn't work for most students beyond what good teachers are doing already.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#757

Post by iratewizard »

havblue wrote: post #734
300bps wrote: post #691

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think we can all agree this is not a problem in Finland The county I live in has similar demographics to Finland. We get 350 applications for every open teacher position. Not very accurate to compare Finland’s homogenous population of 5 million to the United State’s incredibly diverse population of 330 million.

This isn't entirely a criticism of the parent post, but praise of entirely different education systems comes across as Finland ex machina: just do what they do and our problems are solved. Aside from the parenting component which is a huge part of student success, there's also the question of replacing school boards, administration staff, hiring better teachers of course and reforming local laws. And of course the te…

Do what they do as in have a high-trust, heterogeneous society?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#758

Post by tppiotrowski »

jedberg wrote: post #523
tppiotrowski wrote: post #512

"Every single teacher I know has a second or third source of income, even professors. They’re either married to a banker, or they work a conventional second job. They have side hustles." My anecdote: My sister is a professor and my partner a 3rd grade teacher. Neither ever worked summer jobs but it sounds like they're outliers. I will say that having a classroom full of kids whose parents want to apply their individu…

Do you and your partner live together? Do you pay some their rent, or food, or for travel? You're basically their subsidy. Nothing wrong with that, but just pointing it out, that maybe they don't need a second job because they have you. And are you sure your sister doesn't have a side hustle? Writing books? Tutoring? Expert witness? Consulting? Professors get a lot of opportunity for short term work, and many have to…

Good points. My partner lived solo for a few years. I moved into her apartment so she's able to save whatever I offset. She got a big pay raise for doing a masters, 35% I think. She also gets pay increases for each year she works. "Teachers" is a massive generalization in this letter. There are teaching assistants, special ed, teachers with masters and PhDs and teachers with 20 years experience that will all make vastly different amounts of money. I think my partners district tops out at $130K after 20 years with a masters which is comparable to what I make as a developer. I think her job is harder in some ways and easier in others. As with most topics, there's a bit more nuance that you can't capture in a short and opinionated piece.

My sister has 2 kids. Partner attending law school. $80K salary between both. They live in Albany. Mortgage was $250K. They don't have money for daycare or babysitters but university schedule is flexible enough that they can always be with their kids. I'm sure they'd love some alone time but it is what it is. They do take advantage of work perks like sabbaticals and free tuition for law school to avoid large expenses they would otherwise incur.

Hope this provides some more context for more original comment.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#759

Post by cultofmetatron »

jayski wrote: post #724
prepend wrote: post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 sho…

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

no, that lines up with my experience. I was making 60k/yr as a software engineer when I was working Part Time. That was fine for me since I had an extra 20 hours a week to do whatever I wanted and they let me work remote. I could not imagine going through that job while dealing witch a laughably disrespectful salary.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#760

Post by rjbwork »

avsteele wrote: post #672

Never trust an article with no numbers in it. Median teacher pay in NJ is $73K in 2020, and they get summer off.

I think I'd be a great teacher. Multiple of my co-workers have asked me if I've ever considered being a teacher, because apparently I'm really good at explaining things and taking on mentoring responsibilities.

But the median pay for a teacher is a fraction of what I make. And for a vastly harder job. I don't think I've worked a truly 40 hour week in years. I at least feel that the software I'm working on can do some good in the world. But the old quote "The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads" seems apropos, and they make a whole lot more than even I do.

73k seems a pittance for those entrusted for ensuring there are humans ready to perpetuate the society in the next generation.

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