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The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

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Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#81

Post by animex »

kodreaming wrote: post #37
animex wrote: post #28

Maybe do some job research before getting an education degree in the US. I think most teachers would have told you it's pretty shitty in general. In Canada, teachers make more than most software developers, ~90k/yr. Still, much of the same bureaucracy exists here as well.

I don't know where you get the number, teachers in Canada make ~90k / yr. Let's say that number is correct, and this is why Canada doesn't have a thriving technology industry, companies like RIM fails. They can't pay enough to retain good engineers in the country.

Tons of my friends are teachers. Software dev salaries are on the rise but I'm sure the medium is around this range. We constantly lose talent to the bubble markets in the US though.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#82

Post by mjevans »

antimagic wrote: post #77
logicallee wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests? >Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable bare minimum. Why does test-driven development enable the efficient creation of software that works, but the same isn't true of education? For example, asking a student to r…

Actually, test-driven development is a pretty decent analogy. Including the shortcomings of TDD, such as the fact that you pass the unit tests doesn't mean you have a working product, which in education translates as students passing tests but not being able to use the subject in real life. You can reduce the delta between passing tests by writing more, better tests, but again you quickly run into a problem - you spe…

Open book, large project 'tests'.

Do the job, make the thing, etc. If you have to observe the process.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#83

Post by neilcrj »

logicallee wrote: post #71
loteck wrote: post #60

Do we care more about student progress or our appearance? We care about both, and we have to. Proposed solutions will have to cater to this reality to have any hope of success. Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests? Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable…

>> Why can’t we start a movement to walk away from these tests? >Because a ton of scared people think the tests are the safety net of education. They are the last resort. If you got a bad education and can still past the test, it's a quantifiable bare minimum. Why does test-driven development enable the efficient creation of software that works, but the same isn't true of education? For example, asking a student to r…

The tests the teacher is criticizing are standardized summative assessments used to rank, reward and punish students, teachers or both. These usually fail to provide any detailed feedback of instructional value, and frequently aren't even scored until students have advanced to the next grade. How do you use an SAT score to diagnose and then help Johnny with his conceptual misunderstanding of the relationship between exponents and logarithms? It is the wrong tool for the job.

On the other hand, TDD is formative testing: You iterate over the code until all the tests pass in a structured way. You don't fire programmers for writing code that doesn't pass all the tests on the first attempt, but deliver actionable feedback at every step. That kind of testing is massively useful in the classroom and teachers practice it with formal and informal assessments all the time.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#84

Post by aerique »

Honest question:

We lived with one car (a car that was given to us) for 4 ½ years. During that time, I walked or rode my bike to school to save on gas. We recently bought a second car with money I saved from my web design business.

Is the US really structured so that owning one car is (seen as) a problem?

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#86

Post by a-saleh »

w1ntermute wrote: post #18
rdtsc wrote: post #12

Great points. This, I think is one of the fundamental problems: --- If parents and local decision-makers really value education (and there is a small portion of the community that does), student and teacher morale would be much different. --- The overall environment matters more than the teacher. We've mentioned it here not too long ago as well. Doesn't matter how fancy the workbooks and new materials or how hard we…

If the problem is community, why not take the students/families who really do care (from all the schools in a metropolitan area) and put them all in the same school? That would at least be a start.

We had this on a school level. I am from different country and educational system, but have seen the pattern for several years as I was attending.

After first 4 years of school, all the classmates were split according to some equivalent of GPA.

Because we had 4 classes in a year (class as a group of students sharing a room and a schedule), it resulted in one full of very good students, two more or less mixed and one class of students that were barely passing from year to year.

I don't think it helped.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#87

Post by zacharycohn »

ck425 wrote: post #85

Good post and a lot of interesting points, some of which I've seen raised in the uk too. But one thing that confused me, in the US is only having one car and walking or cycling to work considered a big sacrifice?

(full disclosure, I do not know anything about the town OP is from)

It is a big sacrifice when you live in a suburban area, which typically don't have great (if any) public transit options. You could easily be 3 or 4 miles out from the nearest grocery store or shop - let alone your job.

In many cities in America, you NEED a car to get around. It's just not feasible to live without one.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#88

Post by WoodenChair »

aerique wrote: post #84

Honest question: We lived with one car (a car that was given to us) for 4 ½ years. During that time, I walked or rode my bike to school to save on gas. We recently bought a second car with money I saved from my web design business. Is the US really structured so that owning one car is (seen as) a problem?

Yes, the U.S. is a giant country geographically and many areas have poor public transportation as a result of how spread out it is. Virginia is a fairly rural state.

Re: The Tough Decision to Leave the Classroom

#89

Post by ck425 »

zacharycohn wrote: post #87
ck425 wrote: post #85

Good post and a lot of interesting points, some of which I've seen raised in the uk too. But one thing that confused me, in the US is only having one car and walking or cycling to work considered a big sacrifice?

(full disclosure, I do not know anything about the town OP is from) It is a big sacrifice when you live in a suburban area, which typically don't have great (if any) public transit options. You could easily be 3 or 4 miles out from the nearest grocery store or shop - let alone your job. In many cities in America, you NEED a car to get around. It's just not feasible to live without one.

Is it a big deal to have only one?
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