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Nobody wants to teach anymore

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Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#811

Post by cat_plus_plus »

The problem is lack of perceived benefit. You drop off and pick up kids for 10 years, at inconvenient times that do not really solve the problem of childcare while you work. After all that they often end up as obnoxious teenagers with no marketable skills.

Imagine if we had schools that at younger age emphasized good manners, being respectful and helpful to parents and allowing for full work days in 2 job households. And then at some point shifted towards practical skills best suited for each individual child - someone is a budding nuclear scientist, someone is better of training as an electrician. I bet parents would love those teachers and not begrudge them good pay.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#812

Post by Beltalowda »

logicalmonster wrote: post #183
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…

> 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). 1) European perspectives on a lot of American problems miss one of the biggest differences between us: you have a lot more of a homogeneous population. There's numerous differences be…

> There's numerous differences between designing a school system for basically all Hungarian or all Norwegian kids, for example, and figuring out what the hell you can do with a school mixed with Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and Whites with all different levels of interests, drive, and ability.

Why would Latinos, Asians, Blacks, and Whites all require a radically different education? It seems to me that math is math, your country's history is your country's history, biology is biology, etc.

I understand there are cultural differences between different population groups, but that's hardly unique to the US; Europe has differences and minority groups, too.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#813

Post by auslegung »

sudosysgen wrote: post #807
peyton wrote: post #795

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I honestly don’t follow. Doesn’t paying more money or reducing class size (by hiring more teachers) directly imply the existing crop of teachers can’t handle the job? Or are you saying we pay the exact same people more money? And reduce class sizes how? Requiring students take fewer classes?

Even when they can handle it as best as you can expect from someone, it's still not going to be enough. You can reduce class sizes by hiring more teachers. Their salaries aren't actually a huge fraction of education spending (only around ~15% if you assume one teacher for every 30 fulltime students and 80k TC per fulltime teacher, both of which are deliberate overestimates). Hire 30% more teachers, give them a 30% pa…

I like a lot of what you say, but

> Reduce school hours that are very often lengthened for babysitting reasons.

This babysitting is vital for many families, most of whom are low income and can’t afford alternatives. If we reduce class hours we should provide something to keep children positively occupied.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#814

Post by sudosysgen »

missedthecue wrote: post #765
jayski wrote: post #724

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I just did the math. Paying every teacher $150k would cost more than my entire local district gets in total funding every year. That's a lot of new property taxes.

Did you deduct the current average pay and take into account federal and state funding which may even exceed local funding?

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#815

Post by moeris »

BuyMyBitcoins wrote: post #353
irrational wrote: post #322

One thing I wonder is if teachers are in such high demand, why do they put up with crap from their administrators and politicians saying that this is what they have to teach and how they have to teach it. Why don’t they just teach whatever they want to teach and do it however they want to do it? The worst that can happen is they will be fired, but they can probably find a new teaching position easily since there is s…

>”The worst that can happen is they will be fired, but they can probably find a new teaching position easily since there is such a high demand.” Just like any career, the next institution looking to hire someone is going to ask about why that person left their last job. Regardless of whether or not the next school is public or private, they’re going to want to hire a teacher that is compliant rather than defiant. Eve…

> the next institution looking to hire someone is going to ask about why that person left their last job

Indeed, schools aren't as isolated as businesses are, either. If you go rogue and make a huge stink at one school, you can bet no nearby district will hire you. On the other hand, if you play ball and do a decent job, other districts will look out for you when an opening happens. It happened to me, right before I left teaching.

Another thing to consider is that outside of large cities, you're geographically constrained. If you own a house and mess things up with your school, you're looking at having to add 30+ minutes to your commute to get to the next school. (Who will probably have heard of your escapades.)

Seniority is another factor to consider. It's very difficult for teachers in their first five years to get a job. (On average, it takes five years for teachers to become proficient in classroom management, so schools tend to prefer more experienced teachers). Anyway, that means there's a huge block of teachers who will have a difficult time despite shortages. Like in tech, it's primarily a shortage of qualified teachers. At least, when I was teaching ~5 years ago.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#816

Post by sudosysgen »

SamReidHughes wrote: post #768
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…

Actual time teachers spend working has, of course, been measured. https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2008/03/art4full.pdf https://www.bls.gov/mlr/1999/04/art4full.pdf

The first study assumes they don't work on weekends - which they very often do.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#817

Post by donw »

Wistar wrote: post #696
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…

My wife is a primary public school teacher in the U.S. I read to her your comment, and she said to me, "We have 21 teachers at our school, and only one of them resembles what that comment describes."

My parents were both teachers.

A significant trunk of my classmates went into teaching after college. We keep in touch.

The above comment is accurate.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#818

Post by 300bps »

pnutjam wrote: post #784
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.

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

I wouldn't consider 7.9% of the population as "a lot" of immigrants when compared to the United States being 26%. And immigrants aren't the only issue. There's a lot of racial diversity in the US that just doesn't exist in Finland.

And the educational record for immigrants in Finland is not great:

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1467598022000008...

And again, Finland's entire population is substantially less than half the population of the US state of Pennsylvania.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#819

Post by BeFlatXIII »

origin_path wrote: post #213
readingnews wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to quote that very paragraph, as a professor teaching three classes this semester, in addition to my 50 hour a week job as the technical director. I see at my university the outside consultants telling us how and when to teach. But OPs first sentence here seems to ring true a lot on my campus. Your boss, HR, some organization called "student success" which is made up of MBAs that have never taught a class…

In fairness a lot of professors are terrible teachers and don't really care about teaching at all. My own course was full of them. I'm sure they didn't like to hear it though.

They may be brilliant at mentoring grad students but worthless at teaching undergrads. It all depends on the focus of the school. Small universities are more likely to focus on undergrad teaching over research or PhD numbers.

Re: Nobody wants to teach anymore

#820

Post by OldBrev »

bArray wrote: post #547
_vdpp wrote: post #98

A few random thoughts: 1. For as much as we spend on education, teachers seem to be grossly underpaid - to be getting robbed of their share of the budget. Where does that money go? 2. It seems that education degrees are seen as easier to achieve than others. 3. Teachers frequently complain about how they are unappreciated, yet children spend _12 years_ in their care. Why do people come up to them and say they hated s…

> 4. Many school problems are caused by disruptive children. > Disruptive children are caused by parents who frankly just don’t give a shit. Throwing more money into schools won’t ever fix this problem. Some. Most children I believe require an approach that the education system cannot adequately provide (for numerous reasons). Children are relatively malleable and in the right environment will thrive.

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