<p>Teachers in our school system, and in many others, have precious little say regarding which method will be the primary one used in teaching reading. annasdad, you clearly favor whole reading, yet there are kids who can’t learn reading skills using it. Our school favored whole reading for a while, switched to phonics because many parents and teachers were dissatisfied with whole reading, and now employs a combination of both techniques.</p>
<p>So sorry to have shortened your quotation. If I now understand you correctly, your objection is only to those teachers who “blindly” accept phonics and therefore don’t tailor their methods to the individual student. I wonder how many of those are out there - your son apparently had one. My experience is with elementary school teachers who want their students to learn to read. And depending upon the number of students in each classroom, their reading readiness, the teacher’s experience, and the degree to which whole reading is supported by the district, it might be asking a lot for reading lessons to be tailored to each student. It’s easy to criticize teachers, but how many people who do could teach a classroom full of students?</p>
<p>
One of my kids scored a 1510/1600 and spent two years teaching in an inner-city classroom. Another is getting her masters in special education - SAT 2210/2400. Is it okay if they have a voice in curriculum design? :rolleyes: Really - teachers should have a voice in curriculum design because they’re the ones who teach the curriculum.</p>
<p>There are certainly exceptions, good teachers who can and will do what’s needed to provide good educational experiences. But they are the exceptions. And it’s our society that is to blame for that.</p>
<p>I certainly hope your children are in private schools, annasdad, away from those terrible, or at best mediocre, public school teachers. Certainly no self-respecting parent who holds teachers in such disdain and talks about them with such derision should ever put their children under their care.</p>
<p>As a matter of fact, they are, and for exactly that reason. The teachers my son has at his Catholic high school are smarter, harder working, and more dedicated to their students than are the teachers at our local public school. By far. And for a lot less money. </p>
<p>I’m confident, for example, that his English teacher would not send home papers with corrections marked, and with grammatical errors in the corrections. Or that his history teacher doesn’t fill class periods showing movies and preaching his political opinions. And I know that the assignments are more challenging and the tests are tougher. </p>
<p>Do you really believe that we as a society benefit when we draw our teachers from the bottom 25 % of the college grad barrel? When research shows that the quality of the teacher is the most important determinant in the quality of the education delivered, and that verbal reasoning scores are the most reliable predictor of teaching excellence?</p>
<p>Research in reading disorders shows that problems with phonological processing, phonemic encoding and decoding, etc are hallmark difficulties that underlie reading disorders. It makes absolute sense to use a phonological approach to reading skill development. But if a student needs, for instance, a Wilson, or Lindamood Bell or Orton Gillingham based approach, they exist as well. The teachers are aware of the resources out there, adn with the proper assessment the kids can get alternative intervention/reading resources. Its not the educators who are rigid in their thinking, but more likely the posters who are unfamiliar with the system, how to access the resources, and prefer to make insulting swipes at the teachers and programs.</p>
<p>Isn’t this pretty similar to what we already have? It probably varies a little from state-to-state, but our teachers have 4-year bachelor’s degrees plus teaching credential or M.A. (= 5 years). Poor children get free breakfast and lunch, some health care and all public schools I know of have a counselor. We have mandatory state standardized testing and school self-inspection via periodic accreditation review. What we lack is teacher assessment - around here there really isn’t any once the teacher is tenured.</p>
<p>Yes, Bay it IS! If you read that article, it says Finland adopted many of these changes from the American system. </p>
<p>There is one big difference – and perfectly illustrated by the opinions of some posters on this thread. And that difference is respect. In Finland they respect their teachers. As they do in, say, Japan, Singapore, France and Slovenia. All countries that outscore our kids. Hmmm… think there’s maybe a connection between high achieving kids and high respect for educators? If so, annasdad’s kids are sc**ed!</p>
<p>^Maybe, but Finland is also a very small country (5 million) and is homogeneous in race and religion, with small families. I’m not sure you can accurately extrapolate their experience to our country.</p>
<p>Annasdad…to say that it is an “exception” to find “good teachers” is a gross exaggeration. As a School Psychologist for 27 years, who works closely with teachers, I can say that in my opinion, perhaps 10-15% of our teachers are poor. I also have a parents perspective, having 2 daughters(both did well enough to be admitted to a vartiety off colleges, with the younger currently attending an Ivy league school (I am fully aware of your view on the Ivies)) go through the same school system in which I work. We are in a rural area that is not attractive to young teachers. From reading your posts it appears that anytime that anyone does, or says, one thing that you feel you wouldn’t have done or said, you “write them off” as being : 1) Stupid 2) Lazy 3) Incompetent. I’ve witnessed plenty of teachers say or do something that I wouldn’t have…but I still think “on the whole”, that they are good teachers.</p>
[quote]
How can we expect people to rise out of poverty, out of welfare, if we don’t provide them with a solid foundation?[/unquote]</p>
<p>Public education in this country was more or less founded for the purposes of warehousing the children of factory workers and creating the next generation of factory workers. Education had little to do with it. The children of the wealthy did not attend public schools.</p>
<p>There’s always been a cadre of CC posters with an anti-teacher bias, though it seems to have increased in number (and bile) lately. It saddens me. I would no more blame teachers for the shortcomings in today’s educational system than I’d blame MDs and other practitioners for the shortcomings in our health care system. Both are complicated systems that serve a profoundly diverse population. It apparently amuses some here to make snidely dismissive comments. Well, vent on if it works for you.</p>
<p>annasdad, I do indeed find your posts about teachers on this thread disgusting. When you say “good teachers who can and will do what’s needed to provide good educational experiences. But they are the exceptions” you don’t appear to be condemning only teachers who inflexibly embrace phonics as a teaching method. You seem to be saying that it’s damned tough to find a good teacher. When you say that Finland’s teachers are respected because they deserve respect, you seem to be implying that American teachers don’t deserve that respect. And when you suggest that teachers are unworthy of participating in curriculum design because of their generally lower SAT scores, you lose me completely. Are we supposed to field committees of curriculum experts based on SAT scores?</p>
<p>annasdad I sometimes make note of your posts because I believe your D attended the same HS as my S - a highly selective math and science public boarding school - just curious how you can justify some of your above comments without making any reference to this? Do you consider the teachers at IMSA “not worthy of respect” too?</p>
<p>If the goal of the reading teacher is to teach students to read, then a curriculum guide that permits only one method of teaching … whether it be whole word or phonics or whatever … disservices students who learn best using an “unapproved” method. When our school system introduced a particularly odious approach for teaching math, my D’s dedicated and hardworking teacher told us that she was going to teach both the new method and the old. (Long division without actually doing long division works … but not for everyone.)</p>
<p>Teacher quality <em>may</em> (I am just speculating here) have been better a generation or so ago, because teaching was seen as one of the few acceptable/respectable occupations for women way back then. Those women who are on the CEO track today, may have ended up teaching high school English back then.</p>
<p>Teaching quality will improve when teachers are paid more. Teachers will not be paid more until they agree to become more accountable for their teaching quality.</p>
<p>Good post Bay…another factor is the lack of rigor in the college education programs. I am often shocked when I see former students of ours making the Dean’s list as education majors, when they struggled with concepts as high school students.</p>
<p>I have an observation in relation to teachers being drawn from the lowest 25%. I am not sure the SAT is designed to measure what it takes to be a good teacher. </p>
<p>The worst teacher I ever had was a math teacher who had himself graduated (from the same prep school I was attending) with a 3.99 gpa. The guy was so smart he had only gotten one B. There was no doubt he knew the material, but he had no clue how to reach students who didn’t just “get it.” I can still picture him at his desk surrounded by the “nerdy kids” who were his favorites, chatting, laughing and carrying on, while I sat at my desk, frustrated and discouraged. I am not stupid and was an honor student in spite of his class. </p>
<p>I am not a teacher, but I have found it is often easier for me to teach/convey a concept/subject I have myself struggled to grasp. As I think about the effective teachers I and my children have had over the years I think “people skills” and other things that might be hard to measure on a standardized test are very important.</p>