<p>^^</p>
<p>Actually, there are no teeth in that fluff article, and the comments from the teachers are harmless. Well, perhaps with the exception of that line of communication BS. </p>
<p>Perhaps to the chagrin of the writer.</p>
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<p>Oh, it is not going down the tubes at the elementary school level. You know, that level where teachers have to spend time and efforts helping kids blow their nose and learn how to tie their shoes. That is where our army of teachers well-versed in the art and science of pedogogy shine. </p>
<p>Neither does it go down the tubes in the bottom half the middle school years. It only starts unraveling when the advances in curriculum become more difficult for the parents to fill the holes of the day-time instruction. </p>
<p>No, it really goes down the tubes when pedagogy skills become an afterthought and when mastery of subjects become crucial. And that is where our ill-advised refusal to let our school evolve past the failed models of sixty years ago comes in full bloom. </p>
<p>With black and white TV sets and happier times, the times when our teachers were mostly talented and dedicated women who had NO real career future in corporate America are gone. The new generations have been slowly but surely replaced by ill-prepared (not their fault) culled from third-rate institutions (our fault) and the entire dialogue has been about extorting more benefits for less and less work.</p>
<p>But that is all the fault of the parents! After all, why could they not carry the load all the way through high school? Yep, that must be it!</p>
<p>Can we just shut this thread down now? I’m not a teacher but I am plenty tired of hearing them bashed. Many posts on this thread are not in the same courteous tone as the rest of the threads.</p>
<p>I think rather than get into the political complaining, I would rather state what I have learned. That is, reward the teachers yourself for good behavior. Here’s what I think</p>
<p>1 - Tenure, accompanied by the step system of pay, is the worst idea ever. No incentive leaves too much room for laziness. I bear the responsibility for figuring out my teacher’s strengths and weaknesses, and either changing them (several times for each kid - for valid reasons) or supplementing what they could offer. I can’t get perfection, but I can certainly research the “best fit.”<br>
2 - I work in a number of districts professionally, and would place mine smack in the middle in terms of effectiveness. With that said, I would say that 20 percent of my kid’s teachers were A+; 10% (including the one that would routinely tell kids they were worthless and throw chairs across the room) were outrageously bad, and the vast majority of the middle, as well as the ones at the top, swelled with motivation and pride given the least bit of encouragement and respect.<br>
3 - I have made it a goal to send at least one positive comment to every one of my kid’s middle and high school teachers a year. It’s one thing to have a class of 30 and keep track of their strengths and weaknesses. I have no idea how you would do it for 150. I have had many a teacher say that my email was the nicest thing anyone has said/done for them all week (in one case, all month).
4 - Given the level pay scale, I make it my personal goal to identify the very best of my kid’s teachers every year, and do whatever I can think of to reward them. Not only do I compliment them, but I send them links to material I find on the internet on the topic they are teaching, repeat the positives my child says, and send them a Starbucks card NOT on teacher appreciation day. Several years in a row I volunteered to teach a writing program in the computer lab for half the kids so they could work with the others uninterrupted.<br>
5. Three separate times, I have been allowed (I do have a credential) to teach a lesson to the students on giving and receiving compliments. In every case, I have secretly asked each kid to write a compliment to the teacher that can’t contain the words “nice” " good" or “best.” The last time I looked, one of them was still on the wall 5 years later.<br>
6. Both of my children are square pegs, especially the oldest. I waited until the second week of school, and then emailed the teacher to talk about my “square peg.” I brought her Starbucks as well as a single sheet “cheat sheet” listing what other teachers had done that had worked/didn’t work, areas of interest, a summary of her strengths and weaknesses, and a statement that I was willing to buy/do anything she needed for the classroom that she thought would better help kids like my daughter. I know that sounds like an extreme offer, but the requests were always under $10. It’s simple things that matter - like willingness to partner.<br>
5. I have learned that I need to be realistic in my expectations. You can’t teach a pig to sing. The resource teacher assigned to my daughter was excellent at paperwork, and hopeless in helping an honors kid with organizational and management issues. I maximized her strength in pushing paper by making her survey the other teachers for me, and simply declined her direct services. She helped in the best way she could, and my child didn’t have to be pulled for someone who didn’t know what to do. J</p>
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<p>This was my experience, as well. Teachers say they want parents to help with the learning process, but in reality, they don’t really mean it if it means they have to hear about it.</p>
<p>When I asked my D’s English teacher if I could come in and look at D’s paper she received a D-grade on (they were not returned), I was rebuffed. When I asked S’s French teacher why they were required to turn in their textbooks before the final exam (ergo, they couldn’t study), the teacher told my S she was “insulted” by my inquiry. When I asked S’s geometry teacher how I could help my child bring up his poor grade, he did not even respond to my email.</p>
<p>I also agree with whomever said that there are terrible teachers out there, who give the entire profession a bad name, because the profession does not respect students and parents enough to want to do anything about those teachers.</p>
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<p>There is a parallel with the coaches of select soccer teams. The coaches actively seek the support of the parents for all the trivial matters such as organizing fundraisers, providing all the parent-volunteers, take care of all the administrative matters, go sit in all league meetings, organize carpools, getting the kids ontime to practice and games, and everything else. </p>
<p>In exchange, they also expect the parents to sit on the other side of the field during games and practice in complete silence, and never, ever get involved in discussions about the team and playing time of their children.</p>
<p>And guess what the parents would like to do and talk about? :)</p>
<p>My son’s public school teachers were all good and mostly wonderful. They really did welcome input from parents. I felt we were partners in my son’s education and he was really well prepared for college. I have nothing but gratitude for them!</p>
<p>why are we spending twice as much on K-12 education (per student) compared to 30-40 years ago with no improved results? how is this acceptable?</p>
<p>I had mostly good teachers, and have many teacher friends… there are also many problems in education that don’t involve the teachers; these problems occur higher up in the administration level.</p>
<p>My pet peeves have been the same regardless of what grade the student is in. Here are 3 things I would like teachers to know. </p>
<p>1 Teachers if you have something to say to a child, ask them to stay after class and tell them. Do not announce embarrassing comments to the class about the student as if the other students will agree with you. They won’t. And you look stupid trying. </p>
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<li><p>Do not try to use that principle you must have learned somewhere called peer pressure where you blame one student as the reason that the class is being published. Someone, somewhere taught you that these make believe students are going to pressure the misbehaved student into “shaping up”. They won’t and you just look mean. </p></li>
<li><p>If you want a student to improve their behavior like talking out use something simple, basic and actually helpful, like my 5th grade teacher did as a punishment. Every time we crossed that line of misbehavior, she would assign times tables from 1x1 to 10x10. Each subsequent infraction meant you wrote them out more times. I was up to 5 times by the years end and you know what, I know my times tables pretty well now because of it.</p></li>
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<p>Replicating parental duties by a third-party is very, very expensive.</p>
<p>Singapore spends a little bit more than we do and they have a world-class education system. Money does matter up to a point but you need parents to do their job too.</p>
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<p>I had met with the assistant superintendent for our first homeschool meeting and she asked me a few questions and then we discussed educational matters for about an hour. I think that the AS spent a few minutes trying to size up a parent to determine the level of scrutiny they would apply on notification and evaluation.</p>
<p>She invited me to a meeting of the math curriculum committee and I accepted and went. The number of people on the committee was surprising. Assistant Superintendent, principals from five schools (elementary, middle, high), math department heads, school board members, random teachers and a few non-affiliated people (like me). I immediately understood why it took so long to get things done within the school system. I had attended school board meetings in the past and I’d guess that about half the time was wasted. Our district was in a very nasty political battle and it spilled over into school board meetings and classrooms.</p>
<p>On rolling your own education: it is a ton of work or a ton of money or both. Your first responsibility is to raise and educate the kids that you brought into the world. If your local public schools or charter schools can’t do this in your child’s timeframe, what do you do? What would a teacher do? What would a Superintendent do? They’d send their kids to private school or move to a better district or homeschool them (I’ve run into lots of former teachers that homeschool).</p>
<p>After you’ve taken care of your kids, you can then support the public cause, whether through serving in office or making direct financial payments or by other means. My current approach is to pay back our son’s scholarships from his school. When your kid finishes university, you feel relatively rich as you’re not spending all of this money every semester - if you’ve adapted to not having the income, then you’ll feel like it is easy to donate to their school afterwards.</p>
<p>That’s nice, BCEagle - and some like you with your contributions, actually BECOME the change and run for school board or volunteer resources or time or both to the school as well.</p>
<p>Start a literacy program. Learn to speak a foreign language and help ELS students learn English. DO something instead of complain about the system, about teachers, about administrators.</p>
<p>I have had several co-workers or their spouses on the Town Council or School Board. These are serious responsibilities and consume a lot of time and the people on these boards usually run when their kids are teenagers or a little younger to improve things from the inside. This exposes their families to all kinds of attacks from parents, teachers, and political opponents. I think that some find out that making large changes can be pretty difficult - especially in a divided town.</p>
<p>Folks usually leave elected office when their kids leave the school system.</p>
<p>If I had a magic wand, I’d make sure that parents were educated first so that they’d be able to help educate their kids. Fixing education without parental support is very, very, very hard. The countries that do very well in education have to set the stage where you have a well-educated populace that can then contribute to helping educating their own children - even with just setting good examples. This becomes a virtuous cycle. We don’t have that here generally. Where we do have it usually results in districts that price out the vast majority.</p>
<p>Those personal attacks are EXACTLY why I would consider running AFTER my kids were graduated!</p>
<p>But yes, agreed, the trick is to change the culture and engage the parents.</p>
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<p>Really? Do you have a short list of countries that do well and rely on parental involvement? Which are those? Asian countries a la Korea? Cities like Shangai? European countries such as Finland, the Netherlands, or Belgium?</p>
<p>I can give you plenty of examples of countries that are doing much better than we do and have very little parental involvement. At least not the parental involvement that is often suggested by the academic lobbies. </p>
<p>The reality is that the countries that have successfully maintained or created a system of excellence have done it through a number of factors such as maintaining a level of competition between private and government schools (all are public schools) and maintaining a high standard for the access to the teaching profession. Being a teacher in some countries is just as respected as being a doctor or attorney, but there are reasons behind this, starting with a similar level of required education and specialization.</p>
<p>My usual educational example is Singapore.</p>
<p>So, you have Singapore on your short list of countries. As far as I know Singapore is a very wealthy but small country that can afford to spend a smaller portion of its GDP for education than most other countries. Isn’t the budget for education in Singapore about 7bn Dollars for about half a million students, and the National GDP around 260 bn? </p>
<p>Do you have evidence that Singapore’s success can be tracked to parental involvement? Is that country known for its openness in government affairs? </p>
<p>Since you wrote “The countries that do very well in education …” I assumed you had a few more examples, but that is OK!</p>
<p>@LoremIpsum-- Anybody can teach 1 kid algebra. But the reality is that I sincerely doubt your 6 year old really understands it. It’s more likely that you’ve taught him the mechanics of it without your kid really knowing how to apply it in a situation that is not just replicating what you’ve done.</p>
<p>I know so many parents that think their kids can do things that are amazing. But the reality is that MOST of the kids are just regurgitating patterns that they’ve been introduced to… </p>
<p>nothing more.</p>
<p>"Controlling a class of 20-30 kids may be an acquired skill, but teaching is something that almost everyone does at some point in life: with children, siblings, spouses and co-workers. "</p>
<p>That strikes me as nonsensical, because in the work world, some people are great teachers/coaches and others aren’t and need to develop that skill. </p>
<p>I hope that teaching a 6 yo algebra didn’t preclude said 6 yo from biking, climbing trees, being silly and just being a kid. Glad my kids weren’t such geniuses that they needed algebra at age 6 to stop being soooo bored. Doesn’t seem like any kind of blessing to me.</p>
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<p>ugh</p>
<p><em>flashback</em></p>
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<p>It’s not a blessing, and mostly because of people like you and nwcrazy who freak out whenever a kid does something “too advanced.”</p>
<p>Why would I freak out over what YOUR kid does that’s so far advanced? That’s an odd statement.</p>