4 ms·

>For example, when a teacher has to send a student out of the room for bad behavior, the student should have hell to pay from parents and the vice principal. In

• scott_s 16y ago
  I think you sailed past the fact that the professor for your course had a TA to help with grading. I TAed a junior level computing systems course, derived from the CMU offering: http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ http://csapp.cs.cmu.edu/ Some weeks I would get very little research done because the grading and office hour help duties were so substantial - and that's even with farming the work out to other TAs. If the professors in the course had to have done both teaching and grading, there's no way they could have sustained the level of instruction and assignments required by this substantial course. One or the other would have suffered. I assume the same was true for your courses. My point: college courses with TAs don't neatly map to pre-college courses because in elementary, middle and high school, one teacher has to do it all.
  • endtime 16y ago
    The point of that part of my comment wasn't to issue a who-was-busiest challenge (though I'm pretty sure I'd win such a challenge, against either the OP or any of the profs I was TAing for), but to say that long hours grading and regrade requests are to be expected, and especially that the latter are not just the result of unreasonable expectations on the part of the students. Grading is not always fun, but that's why someone gives you money to do it. And even though it's apples to oranges, I'll state for the record if I hadn't been taking three classes, working on my startup (which I launched during school), and (one quarter) interning at NASA, I think I would easily have had time to put together and deliver lectures in addition to the office hours/recitations/review sessions I was holding, problem sets I was grading, exams I was helping write, robots I was admining, class logistics I was organizing, and whatever else happened to fall under the umbrella of my TA duties any given week.
    • scott_s 16y ago
      Sure, if you had not been doing all of those other things, you would have had time for the remaining duties of a teacher. But you wouldn't have time for much else. And you're thinking of a work week in the same way that a grad student, professor or startup founder does: work all the time. Which brings us back to the point of the original article: if we're going to expect people to put in that much time and effort, perhaps we should pay them more to compensate.
      • endtime 16y ago
        I said in my comment that I think teachers should be paid more. I can think that and also think that the complaints in the comment to which I was replying were unreasonable. >Sure, if you had not been doing all of those other things, you would have had time for the remaining duties of a teacher. But you wouldn't have time for much else. Again, it's beside the point, but actually I think I would have had time for quite a lot else. Do you really think working for NASA, starting your own company, and being a full time grad student at once take up the same amount of time as preparing and delivering a couple lectures a week?
• caterping 16y ago
  > > For example, when a teacher has to send a student out of the room for bad behavior, > I had a lot of teachers with serious personality problems when I was in public school. During my time teaching I didn't meet any. Not saying there weren't any, just that I didn't run across any. You must understand, high school kids are kids. They do the same stupid things we did when we were kids. They try to push bad behavior as far as they can until there are repercussions. Teachers are adults and professional educators. We've seen the behavior patterns over and over and over again. We try our damned best to let and get the student to win, but some are determined to get themselves thrown out. Teachers and students are not on the same level, and it totally undermines the teacher's authority for administration to even hint that they are (eg, by having them sit together and "referee" a discussion). > > Also, grading is a bitch. > Suck it up. Hey, you want educated professionals to take teaching jobs? I'm telling you that it's a metric ton of grading work -- and it's not fun like programming or problem-solving; it's grinding slow repetitive work that makes you miserable. I've worked plenty of other jobs. I've worked outside in the summer heat. I'm telling you that grading -- and dealing with the fallout from grading -- is miserable, and if you want good professionals to stay in the career for more than their first year, you're going to have to find ways to make it less miserable. > I agree that schools start stupidly early in the US, but when your workday ends between 2:30 and 4:00, I don't think you can really complain about having to go to bed early. That's the thing: it doesn't really end between 2:30 and 4. There's meetings after school on many days. There's paperwork. There's parent contact that must be carefully maintained (which provides necessary documentation if the student fails). And then there's grading. And that's if you're not doing any coaching or other after-school clubs. > (and the end of seniority, teachers' unions, ridiculous benefits, rubber rooms, etc.) If it weren't for teacher's unions, then any time that administration wanted a teacher gone, they would be gone. Teach a government class and point out something bad about the current local gov't? Gone. Superintendent gets a complaint about you? ("He assigns my kid too much homework!"). Gone. Superintendent simply doesn't like you? (Regardless of how good a teacher you are.) Gone. Teaching any controversial subject that a parent decides to complain about? Gone. Yes, the health benefits are good. Perhaps this makes up to some degree for the lower pay. I've got no idea what you mean by "rubber rooms".
  • endtime 16y ago