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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#781

Post by okaram »

galaxyLogic wrote: post #738
dhosek wrote: post #457

Former HS math teacher here. It was the hardest job I’ve ever had. I still have nightmares about being back in the classroom 18 years later. I was easily working 12+ hours a day doing class planning, grading, etc. not to mention the actual teaching. Returning to programming my pay doubled and my stress level dropped profoundly. Teacher pay should easily be double what it is. (And about that summers off—with the excep…

Teacher's job is no doubt stressful. Therefore I think we must invent new ways of automating the teaching, amplify the powers of a single teacher. That way there will be enough teachers to provide for every child. Not sure how to get there. But what about the adult population? I think large swaths of it are in need of more education. Math literacy, evidence-based evaluation of propaganda. Large portion of US populati…

We already automate things and amplify somewhat the power of a teacher... We've been trying computer stuff for decades (and books before). You still need tons of teachers.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#782

Post by archhn »

It's called "class warfare." America isn't one nation: it's a hierarchy of classes. The managerial/administrative class is superior to the proletarian educator class in the hierarchy. They don't want to listen to what teachers have to say just like a baron didn't want to listen to what his peasants think. They are seen as a highly redundant exploitable resource, thus they are disposable.

The author feels all these things, but she can't properly interpret them because she's still under the spell that there's good faith at the top, that we are one nation trying to work together the best we can. She would have to believe this to maintain her self-worth as a pillar of the system. If she didn't, she would lose faith in the significance of her job. She would see herself as a conditioner of slaves, not as one who enlightens the lives of others with knowledge. Once she loses this faith, she'll either become a dead, dispirited teacher, or she'll quit. Right now, she's in the twilight zone between idealism and jaded realism.

The inequality and unfairness is not a bug: it's a feature of the class system. In order for the high to live like demigods, we must be trodden under foot to level the field for their opulent lives. They can't live as they live if we aren't forced to live as we live. It we weren't constantly in fear of losing our jobs and ending up on the street, to openly die as passersby mock us, reaffirming the value of compliance in their minds, we wouldn't endure the hardships we suffer. We wouldn't work for minimum wage. We wouldn't consent to clearly unfair exploitation. But since utter ruin and death is the consequence of refusal, we keep running along and comfort ourselves with a whole host of delusions and distractions that make us feel better about our servitude.

There will be no empathy from those who build their dreams upon our nightmares.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#783

Post by 0xFEEDC0DE »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #742
galaxyLogic wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teacher's job is no doubt stressful. Therefore I think we must invent new ways of automating the teaching, amplify the powers of a single teacher. That way there will be enough teachers to provide for every child. Not sure how to get there. But what about the adult population? I think large swaths of it are in need of more education. Math literacy, evidence-based evaluation of propaganda. Large portion of US populati…

Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and magically be able to: * pay teachers a fair wage * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday 'off the books' * fund…

Ah yes the ol' "Let's just cut the military budget" position.

Teachers salaries are 100% a local issue. If you want to raise their salary then vote to increase taxes in your county. Teachers are state employees. The states governments are more than capable enough to solve these issues since they are local issues.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#784

Post by pnutjam »

300bps wrote: post #691
TimTheTinker wrote: post #643

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

Finland has a lot of immigrants and refugees. https://www.theguardian.com/education/2011/nov/21/finland-ed...

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#785

Post by nobody9999 »

Kye wrote: post #624
Cupertino95014 wrote: post #583

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So do you have some other estimate of their relative intelligence?

At some point along the way I stopped trying to rank people by intelligence.

>At some point along the way I stopped trying to rank people by intelligence.

I agree. Some of the nicest, kindest and best people I've ever met aren't very bright, and some of the nastiest, stab-you-in-the-back jerks are quite intelligent.

That's not to say the converse isn't true for many folks, but "intelligence" isn't a proxy for the quality of a human, IMHO.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#786

Post by christophilus »

gorgoiler wrote: post #645

I tried teaching high school CS for the best part of two years in a private school. Everything to do with the pupils was amazing and I loved every moment. I am a natural with behaviour management and although it was stressful, every time the bad kids acted up it presented a teachable moment. You could really feel the impact on their lives and behaviour, well behind the Python and the TCP/IP and while loops. But every…

I taught at a code school. It was absolutely crazy. I’d never do it again, but I totally loved the teaching and mentoring aspect of it.

The business and sales aspect pushed me away. That, and a particular SJW fellow teacher. I have a fairly high tolerance for that sort of thing, but they were insufferable beyond words.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#787

Post by _hcuq »

GiorgioG wrote: post #5
uniqueuid wrote: post #2

As a European, it has always been perplexing to me how little the US invests in teachers and schools, given that we know how huge the benefits are down the road (educational attainment, income, pro-social behavior, life satisfaction). Watching how large parts of the political spectrum embrace hardship as a societal teaching tool, I begin to understand that the expectation may always have been that kids ought to figur…

"K-12 schools spend $666.9 billion or $13,185 per pupil annually." - https://educationdata.org/public-education-spending-statisti... We invest plenty. We just don't get a great return on our investment.

And yet a teacher with 30 kids in the class gets maybe 80k in a better paying state. 30 x 13k is $390k….

Something isn’t adding up. What are all the overheads?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#788

Post by briHass »

KennyBlanken wrote: post #742
galaxyLogic wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Teacher's job is no doubt stressful. Therefore I think we must invent new ways of automating the teaching, amplify the powers of a single teacher. That way there will be enough teachers to provide for every child. Not sure how to get there. But what about the adult population? I think large swaths of it are in need of more education. Math literacy, evidence-based evaluation of propaganda. Large portion of US populati…

Or, and hear me out: we could cut our military budget (which is larger than the next ten or so countries combined, both total and per capita) and start tipping the corporate tax share back towards the ~%50 it was sixty years ago and magically be able to: * pay teachers a fair wage * hire enough teachers, assistants, and admins so that teachers don't have to work at least another half a workday 'off the books' * fund…

Why is it always about more money?

The US is usually in the top 3 spending per student (beaten only by small countries that represent statistical outliers like Norway or Luxemburg), so really, it spends the most. Yet, as many are quick to point out, all that money results in educational outcomes well below many European countries and also many Asian countries that spend far, far less.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#789

Post by nobody9999 »

judge2020 wrote: post #709
nobody9999 wrote: post #665

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Not just mediocre pay, but nowadays unlivable pay with the current rent trends in suburban and city environments. Not just "nowadays." I recall (I've looked around, but can't find it archived) an article from 2000 in the San Jose Mercury News about full-time public school teachers living in homeless shelters because they couldn't afford housing in San Jose. So, no. Not new. Still a big problem, but not a new one.

But that’s San Jose - I think we’re seeing the problem spread to more reaches of the US. For example, Savannah, GA is a mostly stagnant area with only 4,000 population growth since 2017 and not much job growth. Meanwhile, the average rent for a 2 bedroom was stuck under $1100 until 2018, and after Covid the expiration of the CDC moratorium enabled a rent boom to $1500. I can guarantee you income has not risen to matc…

>But that’s San Jose - I think we’re seeing the problem spread to more reaches of the US. For example, Savannah, GA is a mostly stagnant area with only 4,000 population growth since 2017 and not much job growth. Meanwhile, the average rent for a 2 bedroom was stuck under $1100 until 2018, and after Covid the expiration of the CDC moratorium enabled a rent boom to $1500. I can guarantee you income has not risen to match that, so anyone already in an apartment is simply dedicating more of their income to paying the rent.

You won't get an argument about that from me. I wasn't trying to deride or minimize the issues you mentioned. At all.

Rather, I was pointing out that low pay for K-12 teachers isn't a new phenomenon.

I wholeheartedly agree that this is a pressing issue right now, and in lots more places than Silicon Valley.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#790

Post by archduck »

dionidium wrote: post #730
sseagull wrote: post #550

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It doesn't "suggest" that at all. Perhaps changes in pedagogy were necessary in order to adapt to a changing world.

Education isn't like the naive "encoding/decoding" model of communication, where the subject matter is simply "transmitted" from teacher to students. Even if the subject matter remains stable over time, many other things do not: changes in the media of communication, signal interference (say, from the average classroom size drastically increasing over time), all kinds of changes in the teachers and students themselves, changes in society's expectations of what constitutes success or failure (e.g. rote learning is now widely seen as having many shortcomings), changes in what students actually need to move forward (a career in the trades may well require a much lower standard of understanding in the age of the pocket calculator), ... this list could go on and on. Teaching is not a "solved problem" like that.

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