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> > Respect > is a two way street. Teachers routinely blame the parents for any failures in the classroom. I teach in a great environment, but my public schoo

by mlyle 4y ago

> > Respect > is a two way street. Teachers routinely blame the parents for any failures in the classroom. I teach in a great environment, but my public school peers are frequently berated by parents of students that complete no work. Even in my environment, I am pretty constantly "talked down to" by parents-- there's the implicit assumption they're better than me. I have enough confidence from past successes in industry and life to shrug it off, but I could easily see it becoming demotivating. Someone with my skills can easily find more lucrative and less challenging work. > > adequate resources > I never learned more than at Caltech where the material was taught with blackboard and chalk, and the students used pen and paper. I teach computer engineering with pen and paper. I mean things like "a living wage", "time to prepare for your classes and go to the bathroom", "not sticking 40 middle school students, including many with severe behavioral problems, in one room", and "not having to buy pencils and other necessities for your students with your own money". There's also a whole lot of nice-to-haves that make a difference. The $15 set of refillable whiteboard pens that have a very wide nib and make huge dark lines are very useful, but ain't no public school teacher going to get those over worn-out Expo markers. Candy bribes and stickers used judiciously as prizes to fuel classroom competition make a difference. Etc, etc, etc.

staticassertion 4y ago
Out of curiosity, what was the transition from field work to teaching like? I always hated school (the school bits, I liked the socializing) and thought I might like to be a teacher one day for that reason. I have no idea what transitioning would even look like though, it's entirely foreign to me.
- mlyle 4y ago
  It was an accidental process. I was volunteering running after-school robotics teams and my role steadily increased over a number of years. If you want to do this at a public school, you're going to need to go get a specialized master's degree and teaching credential. Of course, there's some value in what's taught in these programs (pedagogy, classroom management, practical experience, etc). I've studied rather intensely on my own.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Interestingly, none of the college professors I had had any education whatsoever in teaching. Neither did my dad, who was a professor for 20 years. They just knew the material. Feynman, perhaps the greatest physics teacher ever, had 0 teaching credentials. I attended one of his lectures long ago, a privilege I didn't realize until much later.
    - mlyle 4y ago
      This works pretty well in an environment of highly motivated university students. But there are reasons why we expect teachers to be educated on how to teach in general. I highly respect you, and we seem to talk here a lot. But you have this habit of holding up various edge cases that don't quite directly relate to what we're talking about as "gotchas". I have 0 teaching credentials, too, and think I'm pretty great. The current systems we have for younger students require teaching credentials, and there's some good reasons to require some education-in-education before letting someone teach kids.
      - barry-cotter 4y ago
        There’s no evidence teaching degrees make people better teachers. ::: It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...
WalterBright 4y ago
> berated Sure, there are rotten parents. No excuse for them. But I'm talking about a general disrespect teachers have for parents. This is manifested in not wanting any input from parents, not wanting to hear from them at PTA meetings, not consulting parents in any way shape or form about the curriculum. Teachers do want parents to volunteer, but only at their direction. No collaboration. As for pencils and paper, pencils cost a few cents each, and the playgrounds of the schools I attended were littered with pencils. Paper is so cheap people throw away reams of unused paper all the time. Me, I prefer the more expensive $5 gel pens, but they'll last me a couple months each. P.S. My dad taught at university for years. He grew up in the Depression, and his thrifty ways followed for the rest of his life. He'd bring home used paper - such as exams printed on one side of the sheet, and blank the other side. His notes and drafts and accounts and tax records were done on the blank side. I have many boxes filled with those papers. When they were inadequate, he'd buy boxes of newsprint, the cheapest paper possible, and write from edge to edge in tiny script. Nobody could get more out of a piece of paper than my dad :-)
- mlyle 4y ago
  > But I'm talking about a general disrespect teachers have for parents. This is manifested in not wanting any input from parents, not wanting to hear from them at PTA meetings, not consulting parents in any way shape or form about the curriculum. Teachers do want parents to volunteer, but only at their direction. No collaboration. It's easy to blame teachers for this, but in public schools generally greater than 100% of instructional time is already spoken for. Administrators and regulators are heaping requirements upon teachers to cover material. Then, because not enough time is allotted, the only option is to cover it badly and quickly. Also, because many teachers have inadequate planning and grading time, it gets really tempting to do what you did last year; veteran teachers tend to work >125% of contract hours already. I'm open to collaboration. Unlike most teachers, I have a lot of flexibility in how I run most of my classes. But AP Microeconomics? Pfft. I don't have the luxury of caring what your suggestions are about how I run that class. I have 34.5 equivalent-block-periods of material to cover in 35.5 equivalent-block-periods, and I'm sure there will be a fire drill or something that I need to reteach that will claim that buffer. This is just a snippet of the high level plan (lesson plans go into greater detail), showing how I'm forced to think about a class where there's explicit heavy curriculum requirements: https://i.imgur.com/YQk5LBP.png https://i.imgur.com/YQk5LBP.png > As for pencils and paper, pencils cost a few cents each, and the playgrounds of the schools I attended were littered with pencils. That's nice. You are still trying to shame someone who is making below a living wage to purchase it, and many other things, for other peoples' children.

by mlyle 4y ago

staticassertion 4y ago

Out of curiosity, what was the transition from field work to teaching like? I always hated school (the school bits, I liked the socializing) and thought I might like to be a teacher one day for that reason. I have no idea what transitioning would even look like though, it's entirely foreign to me.

mlyle 4y ago
It was an accidental process. I was volunteering running after-school robotics teams and my role steadily increased over a number of years. If you want to do this at a public school, you're going to need to go get a specialized master's degree and teaching credential. Of course, there's some value in what's taught in these programs (pedagogy, classroom management, practical experience, etc). I've studied rather intensely on my own.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Interestingly, none of the college professors I had had any education whatsoever in teaching. Neither did my dad, who was a professor for 20 years. They just knew the material. Feynman, perhaps the greatest physics teacher ever, had 0 teaching credentials. I attended one of his lectures long ago, a privilege I didn't realize until much later.
  - mlyle 4y ago
    This works pretty well in an environment of highly motivated university students. But there are reasons why we expect teachers to be educated on how to teach in general. I highly respect you, and we seem to talk here a lot. But you have this habit of holding up various edge cases that don't quite directly relate to what we're talking about as "gotchas". I have 0 teaching credentials, too, and think I'm pretty great. The current systems we have for younger students require teaching credentials, and there's some good reasons to require some education-in-education before letting someone teach kids.
    - barry-cotter 4y ago
      There’s no evidence teaching degrees make people better teachers. ::: It's easier to pick a good teacher than to train one: Familiar and new results on the correlates of teacher effectiveness Neither holding a college major in education nor acquiring a master's degree is correlated with elementary and middle school teaching effectiveness, regardless of the university at which the degree was earned. Teachers generally do become more effective with a few years of teaching experience, but we also find evidence that teachers may become less effective with experience, particularly later in their careers. These and other findings with respect to the correlates of teacher effectiveness are obtained from estimations using value-added models that control for student characteristics as well as school and (where appropriate teacher) fixed effects in order to measure teacher effectiveness in reading and math for Florida students in fourth through eighth grades for eight school years, 2001–2002 through 2008–2009. Research highlights ▶ Majoring in education is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ University attended for college is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Acquiring a master's degree is not associated with teacher effectiveness. ▶ Teachers become more effective with a few years of teaching experience. ▶ Teachers may become less effective later in their careers. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0272775710001755 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02727...

WalterBright 4y ago

> berated Sure, there are rotten parents. No excuse for them. But I'm talking about a general disrespect teachers have for parents. This is manifested in not wanting any input from parents, not wanting to hear from them at PTA meetings, not consulting parents in any way shape or form about the curriculum. Teachers do want parents to volunteer, but only at their direction. No collaboration. As for pencils and paper, pencils cost a few cents each, and the playgrounds of the schools I attended were littered with pencils. Paper is so cheap people throw away reams of unused paper all the time. Me, I prefer the more expensive $5 gel pens, but they'll last me a couple months each. P.S. My dad taught at university for years. He grew up in the Depression, and his thrifty ways followed for the rest of his life. He'd bring home used paper - such as exams printed on one side of the sheet, and blank the other side. His notes and drafts and accounts and tax records were done on the blank side. I have many boxes filled with those papers. When they were inadequate, he'd buy boxes of newsprint, the cheapest paper possible, and write from edge to edge in tiny script. Nobody could get more out of a piece of paper than my dad :-)

mlyle 4y ago
> But I'm talking about a general disrespect teachers have for parents. This is manifested in not wanting any input from parents, not wanting to hear from them at PTA meetings, not consulting parents in any way shape or form about the curriculum. Teachers do want parents to volunteer, but only at their direction. No collaboration. It's easy to blame teachers for this, but in public schools generally greater than 100% of instructional time is already spoken for. Administrators and regulators are heaping requirements upon teachers to cover material. Then, because not enough time is allotted, the only option is to cover it badly and quickly. Also, because many teachers have inadequate planning and grading time, it gets really tempting to do what you did last year; veteran teachers tend to work >125% of contract hours already. I'm open to collaboration. Unlike most teachers, I have a lot of flexibility in how I run most of my classes. But AP Microeconomics? Pfft. I don't have the luxury of caring what your suggestions are about how I run that class. I have 34.5 equivalent-block-periods of material to cover in 35.5 equivalent-block-periods, and I'm sure there will be a fire drill or something that I need to reteach that will claim that buffer. This is just a snippet of the high level plan (lesson plans go into greater detail), showing how I'm forced to think about a class where there's explicit heavy curriculum requirements: https://i.imgur.com/YQk5LBP.png https://i.imgur.com/YQk5LBP.png > As for pencils and paper, pencils cost a few cents each, and the playgrounds of the schools I attended were littered with pencils. That's nice. You are still trying to shame someone who is making below a living wage to purchase it, and many other things, for other peoples' children.