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</p>
<p>One teacher. One. Why do we dwell on this? Were there no other teachers in your kids’ lives that more than made up for this?</p>
<p>I’m on both sides of the fence. Some teachers have been great. Others not. For the most part, my childrens’ teachers have been good. The job is tough. I’m in a professional career, but have also taught a few classes, so I realize it takes a lot of work to do it well. </p>
<p>However, I do think teachers are paid just fine. In fact, I am very jealous. My salary typically averages the same as a public teacher with similar experience…except I work 12 months a year vs. 9. Usually teachers make slightly more. Teachers’ jobs are relatively secure after the first 5 years. I don’t know any teachers with over 5 years experience who have lost a job during a recession. (My field has been devastated). I also have much more liability. Plus, I am shocked at the retirement benefits most public school teachers here get after 25 years of work. Health benefits are incredible. Retirement pay is 60 - 75% of their salary!!! I’m not sure I could evenn save enough to be able to make those retirement earnings. Many “retire” then return for a second career. I hear complaints that they must take classes during the summer, yet most professionals I know must also take continuing education as well.</p>
<p>As a lifetime package, I think most public teachers do quite well. Private school teachers, on the other hand, are not in it for the money!</p>
<p>I ultimately think all of this comes down to this newage ******** that no one is responsible for anything in their own life.</p>
<p>Are you fat? It’s McDonald’s fault. Are you a chronic smoker? It’s the cigarette companies fault. Didn’t turn out the way you wished? It’s your parents fault. Didn’t learn something in school? It’s the teachers fault.</p>
<p>Take some god damn responsibility in your lives.</p>
<p>I think we do mention great teachers- our kids wouldn’t be where they are if they never had had great teachers.
BUt great teachers are acknowledged- and the community is appreciative and they go on to write books or win awards or simply to continue teaching.</p>
<p>But when you have to deal with a sloppy administrator and a lackluster or even vindictive teacher- there is little action taken unless the behavior is actually criminal in nature.
Parents complain and they are either completely ignored or dismissed.
There is no satisfaction in coming to the conclusion that a teacher is bad- especially when as has been pointed out, principals do not do the reviews that would warrant reassignment, it is easier to see parents/students as the problem rather than the way we hire and train teachers, and once your child is out of that classroom, there is another pot to watch- you can’t worry about the next classroom.</p>
<p>To share battle stories with other parents is the only way to stay sane. To know that you * aren’t * imagining things, that your standards * aren’t * too high and also that eventually things will get better.</p>
<p>My personal experience is not a middle school or high school teacher- but a series of elementary school teachers that my daughter had for several years- that did real harm to her and to the others in the classroom.</p>
<p>It is easy to say " bad things happen get over it", when it is a child of 8 or 9 or 10 who has been taught that the adult who they thought was going to help them find the key to amazing things, doesn’t care enough to show up.</p>
<p>How is that my fault or my child’s fault? Parents were not even told until December that the teacher was taking a leave and the classroom would be having rotating substitutes for the rest of the 5th grade year. ( this was after a year in which her 4th grade teacher- has only taught one year of 1st grade prior to teaching and her 4th grade class did much less challenging work than my daughters 3rd grade class had done)</p>
<p>With two kids through the same school for over 12 years, I would say 80% of them have been good. They are no different than other professions, some good and some mediocre and some really bad. I always address my kids’ teachers Mr., Mrs. or Ms. I never call them by their first names. I try to set an example for my kids to always respect their teachers. They never talk back to their teachers. In turn, they will tell me when things are not going right. I would step in to deal with them as one adult to another. I know many CC’ers believe students should deal with their teachers directly, but I feel until they become adults it is still my job to deal with another adult on their behalf. </p>
<p>I would usually call their teachers out if I don’t think they are behaving properly. As an example, D2’s Latin teacher gave her a hard time about giving her work ahead of time when she had excused days off. D2 followed the school’s procedure in giving the teacher plenty of notice. It is not too much to ask to get assignments beforehand(don’t need all the huffing and puffing). I didn’t say anything the first time, when it happened again, I chewed her out. D1’s 10th grade history teacher continuously disagreed with her whenever she gave her opinion in class or made her feel stupid in front of the whole class, but would pay more attention to the boys. I met with the teacher to let him know it wasn’t a good way to encourage girls to speak up in his class. He was surprised by D1’s reaction because it was not his intention to make her feel like that. Of course, there was one female english teacher who had affairs with various senior boys.</p>
<p>At the same time, there have been teachers who made a real difference in my kids’ lives. D1 is very interested in gender studies now because of her English teacher. I think D2’s current math teacher is going to change her view about her ability in math. As a Junior in college, D1 still keeps in touch with some of her high school teachers. I do believe most of my kids’ teachers really do care about their students. It’s more than just a job to them.</p>
<p>I think teachers’ salaries should be higher. My mother, as a grade school teacher from another country, was able to support 4 kids comfortably while my father was a student in this country. It was a highly regarded profession and many young people aspired to get into the profession. </p>
<p>I just would like to add a note about the difference in private school vs public school’s teachers. When D1 was in a public school for a semester, her 2nd grade teacher was with them all the time. She was teaching everything - English, math, science, history, art, music…She rarely had a period to catch a breath. Sometimes she would leave the class for 5-10 min so she could meet with someone, go to bathroom or return phone calls. After school, she then had all those papers/tests to correct and class preparation. Whereas at the private school, they had teachers for different subjects. It allowed those homeroom teachers to catch their breath when the class had art, music, foreign language or gym. At the private school our kids were able to get their writing assignments and tests back faster, and that’s very helpful when they were trying to master a new skill. Those teachers also had more time to return phone calls to parents, write recommendation letters or deal with any problems with students. I do think many teachers at public school are over worked, at least from our limited experience.</p>
<p>I do send a note to great teachers and copy the principal. I do think it’s a shame that the really bad teachers can’t be removed. We have a couple in our system and many, many parents and students have been complaining about them for years and years. The teachers have been moved all over the system teaching various classes in various years. It would be better for the kids just to pay them off and remove them from the classroom totally. This is the biggest tragedy these days, the inability to remove ineffectual and really awful teachers. Most everyone knows who they are and I suspect the administration also knows and they are definitely the minority not the majority. It’s really tragic when the kids “know” they are being poorly taught.</p>
<p>just a correction; most public school teachers work 10 months. Here in Texas ( no real unions,no right to strike etc.) my school district dismisses beginning of June. Officially, Teachers comeback mid-August, but 90% are in the classroom setting up at the beginning of August. There just isn’t time to prepare with all the meetings during the official teacher prep time. And the 8 weeks of summer vacation that you get - while wonderful - are usually broken up by workshops that you are heavily pressured to take. Just wanted to make that clear.<br>
(Longtime teacher here - I work at least 10 hours per day teaching and doing school stuff. )</p>
<p>One thing to consider. My DD had one of those “awful teachers” (you could ask most any parent at the town swimming hole in the summer or on the soccer bleachers…most felt this woman was just awful…and people told me to get my kid switched out of the class before school began). She was one of the BEST teachers either of my kids ever had…well organized, high expectations, differentiated instruction (long before that was in fashion), and my kid learned a TON. She was also a great communicator to parents…she told the good, bad and the ugly. She was NOT the “warm, soft fuzzy” type, and her classroom didn’t look like Martha Stewart’s type of decor. BUT the teaching was awesome (and my kid loved this teacher to bits). So…just remember, just because YOU think a teacher is a clunker, doesn’t mean everyone will think that teacher is a clunker.</p>
<p>And there was ONE high school teacher I whined about to the administration because honestly, I didn’t feel she was doing her job. I did this with my older child…and asked specifically that my younger one NOT be placed in this teacher’s class. Well…guess what, the kid WAS placed in her class because she was the only one who taught Honors Chemistry. And oddly, my second kiddo really liked this teacher. The teacher had “changed some of how she taught the course” but she was the same odd duck, in my opinion. BUT one of my kids thrived in her class and the other was dead in the water. Go figure.</p>
<p>Well, writing as the OP, it seems we’re going exactly in the direction I did not want to go. </p>
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<p>Sure, there are a few good ones that are acknowledged, but, no, mostly we just go about doing our jobs, unsung. That’s not a problem though. We’re doing a job that we love to do, so we’re lucky in that. The issue I have is that there are considerably more negative comments on this board about teachers than there are positive ones. </p>
<p>So, based on the comments so far, I’m gleaning that the teacher bashing is due to:
- The pay
- Tenure
- Unions
- A bad teacher in your child’s life</p>
<p>Did I miss anything? The consensus here is that any bad teaching outweighs all of the good?</p>
<p>In all seriousness, teachers will not win the total hours worked argument anymore and I can say this as a non elementary or secondary teacher in a family with secondary teachers. The average middle manager this days (which is about equal in gross compensation to a teacher (salary + benefits) is working a 40-60 hour week with about 3 weeks vacation. The 37.5 hr. work week just doesn’t exist above an entry level job. It’s just not an argument that will win anymore and it just rankles some people. The summer break whether it is 2 months or 3 is still a huge perk perhaps an earned perk, but a perk nonetheless.</p>
<p>By the way, I’m not trying to sound trivial when I mention the bad teacher in the child’s life. My own kids have have a bad teacher or two, and I know that it can be pretty terrible for the kid and the parents.</p>
<p>I just know that there are hundreds more good than bad.</p>
<p>Pageturner:</p>
<p>My kids have had some wonderful teachers, some great teachers, some okay teachers, and one or two that were inexperienced and overwhelmed. None were truly bad or irresponsible, even the one I requested to be transferred. She just happened to be wrong for that particular class.
But I know there are really bad teachers out there. And they can do tremendous damage to a kid. Take my nephew, whom the kindergarten teacher described as “possibly ■■■■■■■■” because he did not want to sit at circle time to listen to her read a story to the kids, preferring instead to poke around the collection of books in the class and read on his own. It did not occur that instead of being read to, the kid wanted to read on his own because he was able to do so. That teacher lacked basic common sense. His parents had him tested after hearing that their kid was “possibly ■■■■■■■■.” Of course, anyone could have predicted the result: he tested gifted. With that, his parents were able to go to the principal and work out a better situation for their son.</p>
<p>I don’t think teachers are overpaid; many are overworked. Many have to deal with unruly students, unreasonable administrators, stupid curricula that keep on changing. But we must also acknowledge that teachers are a tremendous influence on how our children develop. And the bad ones affect our kids worst than the good ones.
Recommended viewing: The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and The Class.</p>
<p>ETA: Sometimes it’s not a case of good vs. bad but inexperienced or burnt out. My kids had three inexperienced teachers. They were all responsible incredibly conscientious and also totally overwhelmed.
I also agree with Thumper that some teachers work out better with some kids than with others, having observed the dynamics between the same teachers and my quite different sons. S1 told us that he had learned the most from a teacher that many considered rude and harsh (luckily S1 was never the target of that teacher’s ire).</p>
<p>
That is the crux of the matter, isn’t it? That kid will not get a redo of that grade and that year of his/her life.</p>
<p>^^ Right. No argument. But, again, the good teachers in their lives more than made up for it.</p>
<p>No one gets a redo of anything in their lives. That’s how life is.</p>
<p>And that’s precisely why a bad teacher can be so damaging. I do not believe that good teachers can undo the damage that a bad one does. I do not mean an inexperienced teacher like my kids had, but a truly bad teacher. It’s not even a matter of catching up; sometimes bad teachers inflict psychological damage, or, as the case of my nephew, label as “■■■■■■■■” a kid who is different from what they are used to. Labels have enormous consequences in education.</p>
<p>Over the years I have experienced quite a few administrators who were miserable people managers. They hired teachers who did not fit in the group and in the school. They did not have a clue how to stimulate teachers. They often had their mind set on priorities that were not supported by both teachers and parents. </p>
<p>Especially when you have an exceptional child, you depend on the administration to create possibilities. Rules are rules, and a curriculum is a curriculum, teachers cannot focus on just one kid in the classroom, but a good administrator will find solutions that are acceptable. However, the administrators I had to deal with avoided parents of exceptional children and did not coordinate anything. S owes it to individual teachers and to his academic counselor that he survived (of course, not all of his teachers contributed). </p>
<p>thumper1 says: those who should not be teaching. Blame your administration too. In line with her I think that administrators are often the real source of the misery. </p>
<p>Now, at college things are so much easier.</p>
<p>I’m not sure how to respond to that, Marite. I’m not trying to imply that a bad teacher’s actions will have no consequence on a kid’s life. </p>
<p>I know we can all tell a true horror story about mistakes made in education. The point I’m attempting to make (somehow, somewhere) is that mostly good things happen, and we don’t even notice it. </p>
<p>How about this tactic: someone, anyone, name a positive, life changing thing that happened to your kid because of a teacher!</p>
<p>I’ll start: a teacher saw a photo my older son took in middle school and encouraged him to take an art class. The teacher nurtured and encouraged his talent, and today, he’s a freshman majoring in architecture.</p>
<p>OP, I think the concensus is tenure and the unions. Really, it can’t be that difficult for administrations to figure out if they have a weak teacher. Parents and kids know, so of course administrators must know, but because of unions and tenure system there is very little the administration can do except for move them around hoping that they dont cause too much damage. These are not cases of “one offs” where one parent has a problem. These are cases where there are many problems and complaints. Our system had a music instructor that caused almost 70% of the kids to quit. It takes years and years to recover a band program that looses 70% of the middle school kids over the course of 2 years. That is an example that is highly evident because of the nature of the program. I don’t really hear anyone bashing all teachers, in fact most posters are saying most teachers do an good or great job.</p>
<p>And yes, all three of my kids had teachers that literally changed them in very real ways. We’re fortunate to have a small system where a huge majority of the teachers and the administrators are really excellent.</p>
<p>What I find not helpful about threads like these is their overbroad generalizations. As someone else said, pay depends on school, on district, and on state. (Anyone checked the CA budget crisis lately? Or do you just randomly make assumptions based on possibly strong teacher unions and awsome property values in your personal State?) Teachers in my area now have zero prep periods this year, and assorted personnel who took care of non-teacher duties have been let go. They also get 15 minutes for lunch and have to do 30 minutes of Yard Duty for the remainder of the lunch period. The district has mandated no parent-teacher conferences except those with an actual Special Ed label. Terrific. Sounds great for parent-teacher communication, let alone for promoting professionalism.</p>
<p>Regarding the “one bad teacher doing a lot of harm” comment, were you actually irreparably harmed by possibly a single (or more than one) teacher in your own childhood? Did you have to spend several years in psychiatry because of it? Are you now a dysfunctional adult, unable to hold down a career, a marriage, or further education? Or rather, did many of you go onto outstanding U’s and respectable, even lucrative, careers?</p>
<p>My sarcasm does not excuse unprofessional behavior, nor, certainly, repeated unfairness, singling out particular children because of personal or irrational antipathy, and least of all verbal abuse or ridicule. This is why I am not a public school administrator: the teacher union might not let me fire such teachers, even with cause. So I have very much a Take-No-Prisoners attitude about inappropriate teacher behavior. And everybody on CC should know that after my 5 years of postings on this forum.</p>
<p>However, what I see in my (very parent-friendly) current role in education, is that many parents are way too protective and anxious about every little tiny consequence of an imperfect educational environment --and I mean imperfect, not horrific. There’s a sense that the child (of whatever age) is just so delicate and fragile that any change in the educational environment, any departure from their parents’ idealized goals, and any setting or circumstances which the parents themselves cannot control will result in reversal of virtually all learning to date, and an inability to learn in the future.</p>
<p>I was educated in publics largely before the stranglehold of teachers’ unions, and even then I had about 6 teachers between K and gr. 12 that were anywhere between unethical and dangerous. Only in one case did either of my parents complain: it was a teacher who made inappropriate verbal advances to 13-yr-old girls, a teacher about 25 years later arrested for pedophilia. And I would hardly call my parents negligent or uninvolved. Yet I survived it all, and remember it mostly for the outstanding opportunities I had, far exceeding what most children in publics receive today and what probably half received in my day.</p>
<p>So I think the potential for psychological harm is greatly overstated, even though I agree it is entirely unacceptable. Certainly the length of that harm is overstated. Children and even teens are more resilient than most adults give them credit for.</p>
<p>What concerns me, though is the academic area. Frankly the reason that one teacher can do (academic) harm is that there are not enough compensating high-level teachers before and after such a single event-year. (When I had a bad teacher one grade, the teacher the next year made up for it 3 times over; I find that it less true now, in publics at least.) More and more I find the truly professional public school teacher to be an exception. And no insult meant to you, thumper, as you may be such an exception yourself. So that we can define our terms, what I mean by “truly professional” is a teacher who doesn’t punch a clock, regardless of what the union does and doesn’t allow her/him to do – a teacher who comes early, stays late – just like doctors, lawyers, many other professionals. That is the way I was trained and the ethics to which I signed. A teacher who considers it his or her responsibility to get to the bottom of why Student X is not learning, if Student X is trying, paying attention, doing the work, behaving, etc. A teacher who assumes responsibility for challenging each child to his or her maximum capability. A teacher who recognizes that he or she may have “inherited” a previously neglected student, but who resolves that neglect will stop at her or his desk, to the reasonably best of his or her time & ability. A teacher who seeks professional advancement without being assigned to it. </p>
<p>When I in the course of my work contact teachers, I find that those in the above description are in the distinct minority in publics. OTOH, public school teachers are put in positions which make it extremely difficult to perform professionally as I describe, because many of their duties (both official and unofficial) have absolutely nothing to do with teaching. As I have posted often before, public school teachers in my state must do unlicensed psychiatry, unlicensed social work, unlicensed judicial arbitration, inappropriate levels of substitute parenting for truly clueless parents (not the kind on cc), treatment of severe Special Ed kids insupportably mainstreamed (PTSD, untreated severe autism, & much more) – to the level of easily half of any given class at many schools. Add to that the irrational student “discipline” regulations (i.e., mostly nonexistent) and unenforced truancy laws, and it’s a wonder there aren’t massive public school walkouts for reasons having nothing to do with salary or hours, walkouts not engineered by unions but by the logical outrage of any serious-minded and dedicated teacher.</p>
<p>And as I have also said often, I have always believed (before it happened) that unions would additionaly undermine the professionalism of teaching, and i.m.o. I predicted accurately. Unfortunately, unions, societal mores, and political priorities exist in symbiosis. One may have preceded the others, but they are in a dynamic now - unions, for example, accurately maintaining that because of the absurd absence of enforceable discipline, because multiple roles inappropriately assigned, and because of the mandate to teach so many frankly non-academic subjects in the day, teachers must be protected. In a way, they’re right; they are left little productive tiime to create thoughtful (read, non-scantron) assignments, read those carefully, teach all subjects comprehensively, because they must also teach “Anger Management,” “Conflict Resolution,” “Social Tolerance,” and much more – all while trying to sift actual hard-core academic lessons through the disruptions of untreated Aspergers’ Syndrome students whose presence benefits neither those students themselves nor the rest of the class. Dare to refer disruptive students to administration (so that you can get your job done), and you may have literally a lawsuit on your hands, or your job in jeopardy if the parents decide that it’s up to you, not them, to parent.</p>
<p>I was approached the other day by parents of a 6th grader who wanted me to “do something” about the fact that their child was getting D’s in several subjects. And the reason (they admitted) that their child was getting D’s? Um, he wasn’t turning in homework assignments; in some cases, hadn’t written them down, in other cases, had forgotten or neglected to turn them in, though done. Apparently it didn’t occur to these parents that that is actually their job to follow up – not that of the classroom teacher, the administration, or anyone else. This situation is very, very frequent. Parents feel that it is “unfair” that their child is penalized, the grade compromised for work not turned in.</p>
<p>As to cpt’s earlier post complaining about the Eng. teacher’s failure to critique the essay, my position is, You can’t have it both ways. The student in question got the advantage of an actually critiqued essay, so the student benefited from the experience, even though the grade suffered. The teacher responded to the parent’s request/demand. Now, obviously it was a cynical response, wasn’t it? The teacher responded with tokenism, but nevertheless the teacher did do what the parent requested. I don’t think that in this case a parent has a further legitimate complaint except to complain about inequity. (The teacher should have been required to grade all the other papers in the class as well, and that should have been taken up with the principal.)</p>
<p>In my region, the public school system is broken; I know it is in some other regions as well. The system exists for the system, not for the families it should serve. The irrationality & multiplicity of non-teaching tasks, the obscenity of absent discipline policies, the proliferation of mainstreaming every conceivable clinical situation, the refusal to acknowledge that massive numbers of ESL and ELL students cannot be successful taught with no attention to specialized training and materials – and most of all, the political “correctness” of insisting that we must never, ever have anything but maximally heterogeneous classrooms because anybody grouped will “feel bad” – all these have destroyed the ability of even the most talented & idealistic teacher to be effective.</p>
<p>In my area, those teachers who want to protect their initial love affair with teaching have left the public arena and chosen private schools. I can hardly blame them. I also will not go back to public school teaching without radically different societal attitudes and a transformation of the structure of schooling. (I’m not holding my breath.)</p>