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Yep. Currently a teacher myself, and I'm seriously considering quitting after this year. I enjoy teaching, but there's just so much BS crap that I have to deal

Yep. Currently a teacher myself, and I'm seriously considering quitting after this year. I enjoy teaching, but there's just so much BS crap that I have to deal with. Parents here (rural area in a Southern state) have no desire for education and often think their kids shouldn't have to do anything to pass. So I constantly get emails from Little Johnny's mother about his math grade when Little Johnny literally hasn't picked up anything except his phone all damn year. But I can't tell her that, or if I do it doesn't matter ("He'd do great if you taught him real world stuff"). The huge culture of anti-intellectualism leads to a lack of respect here, as does the whole "Those who can, do" type attitude. IT sucks. Thankfully, my district doesn't require lessons plans except for the classes we're being observed in. They give us the syllabus and trust us to teach it. I love this, as it gives me the freedom to try and be creative and spend as little or as much time as I need on a topic, without being rigid in how I approach it. Sadly, a new hire last year came in and wants to change all that; we're now forced to give standardized tests across the same class (so all geometry teachers must give the same test), which implies we have to do it on the same day...So someone either ends up going too slow or too fast. It was damn annoying, and thankfully I'm leaving that department next semester (I'm certified for both math and science, so am moving to the latter). And then there's education classes. They're all jokes, and the "research" is so BSed it's not even funny. And the writing quality of the Ed.D.s wouldn't fly for an undergrad at any top 20 school. It's hilarious, and they're all quite useless, and just talk about "theories" and never explain anything practical (laws, for instance, would be damn nice).

whatshisface 8y ago
>And then there's education classes. They're all jokes, and the "research" is so BSed it's not even funny. I knew someone who was taking these classes, they said the same thing. One time I saw a great takedown of education studies, but I could never find it again. Do you have any examples of or links describing the phenomenon how atrociously bad the education of educators is?
- dorchadas 8y ago
  Unfortunately I don't, but I'd love to find that link you mentioned. As to my own experience with them, they're all very generalized and often don't actually test how well a student has learned something. I see these a lot with tech use. Calculators help test scores, but do students actually learn how to do the math? No, take away the calculator and see; often they can't even do basic multiplication without their fingers. Or you'll see studies generalized from groups of 10 students, without taking other variables into count. I remember one where 20 kids improved after a certain strategy in an upper middle class private school. Authors then said this is the wya to do things and it should be implemented in lower socioeconomic class schools too. And then the results often aren't meaningful and often feel forced, and really depend on how students feel on a given day and such... A student can easily bomb a test if they couldn't sleep the night before, and that score shouldn't show that they didn't necessarily learn with the intervention tested or whatever. And that's just the studies. The actual classes are worse. I've learned nothing about education theory, and it's mostly just random teachers pushing their philosophy of teaching on us, or spouting off the research that agrees with it. And half my classes have been irrelevant. I teach high school math/science, and at least half my classes have been solely dedicated to elementary school apps/content. The one sole HS class I've taught was a joke where the teacher just went into how good dual credit was and how all HS should basically become community colleges... Without realizing that it isn't that way everywhere (our school's, for instance, is a joke and half of them don't transfer to other schools in-state).
- lr4444lr 8y ago
  I don't know if you meant this one[0], but it's well known among maverick ed. researchers. Even though it focuses on special education, it generalizes well (and SpEd in fact has some of the highest quality research, because kids with diagnosed disabilities are much less likely to succeed when more politicized, faddish, and unproven methods are used). [0] http://eitaneldar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ten-Faulty-Notions-JSE-03.pdf http://eitaneldar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ten-Faulty-...
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    That's an interesting article, though I think I would disagree with assumption 3, at least as they apply towards non-special needs secondary school children.
  - dorchadas 8y ago
    That's an interesting article, though I think I would disagree with assumptions 3 and 4, at least as they apply towards non-special needs secondary school children. But, that said, I agree with all 10 of his misguided notions. They're all issues. As a math teacher, I've mostly seen issues with 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 10, though they others have been prevalent some (except the special needs one; I have not worked in a special needs class nor have I had a collaborative class with special education students, only ESL learners). And number 3 especially hits a point with me, as so many of my students don't have fluency in basic math and it makes teaching Algebra 2 and Geometry a real pain in the ass.

whatshisface 8y ago

>And then there's education classes. They're all jokes, and the "research" is so BSed it's not even funny. I knew someone who was taking these classes, they said the same thing. One time I saw a great takedown of education studies, but I could never find it again. Do you have any examples of or links describing the phenomenon how atrociously bad the education of educators is?

dorchadas 8y ago
Unfortunately I don't, but I'd love to find that link you mentioned. As to my own experience with them, they're all very generalized and often don't actually test how well a student has learned something. I see these a lot with tech use. Calculators help test scores, but do students actually learn how to do the math? No, take away the calculator and see; often they can't even do basic multiplication without their fingers. Or you'll see studies generalized from groups of 10 students, without taking other variables into count. I remember one where 20 kids improved after a certain strategy in an upper middle class private school. Authors then said this is the wya to do things and it should be implemented in lower socioeconomic class schools too. And then the results often aren't meaningful and often feel forced, and really depend on how students feel on a given day and such... A student can easily bomb a test if they couldn't sleep the night before, and that score shouldn't show that they didn't necessarily learn with the intervention tested or whatever. And that's just the studies. The actual classes are worse. I've learned nothing about education theory, and it's mostly just random teachers pushing their philosophy of teaching on us, or spouting off the research that agrees with it. And half my classes have been irrelevant. I teach high school math/science, and at least half my classes have been solely dedicated to elementary school apps/content. The one sole HS class I've taught was a joke where the teacher just went into how good dual credit was and how all HS should basically become community colleges... Without realizing that it isn't that way everywhere (our school's, for instance, is a joke and half of them don't transfer to other schools in-state).
lr4444lr 8y ago
I don't know if you meant this one[0], but it's well known among maverick ed. researchers. Even though it focuses on special education, it generalizes well (and SpEd in fact has some of the highest quality research, because kids with diagnosed disabilities are much less likely to succeed when more politicized, faddish, and unproven methods are used). [0] http://eitaneldar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ten-Faulty-Notions-JSE-03.pdf http://eitaneldar.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Ten-Faulty-...
- dorchadas 8y ago
  That's an interesting article, though I think I would disagree with assumption 3, at least as they apply towards non-special needs secondary school children.
- dorchadas 8y ago
  That's an interesting article, though I think I would disagree with assumptions 3 and 4, at least as they apply towards non-special needs secondary school children. But, that said, I agree with all 10 of his misguided notions. They're all issues. As a math teacher, I've mostly seen issues with 2, 3, 5, 6, 8 and 10, though they others have been prevalent some (except the special needs one; I have not worked in a special needs class nor have I had a collaborative class with special education students, only ESL learners). And number 3 especially hits a point with me, as so many of my students don't have fluency in basic math and it makes teaching Algebra 2 and Geometry a real pain in the ass.