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> I've heard the pencil trope from you, as well as other teachers, not administrators. When the school spends $16,000 per student, and can't get pencils, it jus

by mlyle 4y ago

> I've heard the pencil trope from you, as well as other teachers, not administrators. When the school spends $16,000 per student, and can't get pencils, it just doesn't add up. The school is perfectly capable of getting pencils. The local public school teachers get $150/year for supplies and classroom decorations for ~30 kids. And they get yelled at if their room ends up looking spartan. > Any other industry would share lesson plans. Yup! We have things like teachers-pay-teachers where you can make a few bucks sharing lesson plans. We have some districts that give teachers a small amount of funds to use this. We have other districts forbid teachers using any resources not provided by the district or the teacher themselves. Often "quality concerns" are really code for "we want someone local to blame if there's something in the material we don't like". > Teachers also tell me that each summer for their grade, they have to develop the 5th grade lesson plans all over again. The main reason you need to do this is if there's a major schedule change or upstream curriculum requirement change. Though, it's reasonable to plan to throw away 20-25% each year for other reasons. For my classes, there's a lot of drift. I don't need to teach as much basic material in the robotics programs because I have veteran students and a lot of the knowledge spreads by osmosis. In turn, I need to e.g. figure out how to tell a bunch of 7th and 8th graders who haven't had linear algebra yet about state estimation filters this year. Also, ... cookie cutter using common curriculum isn't great. My school purchased me the "best" set of economics slides. There's a lot of stuff I can get across clearly in a fraction of the time. There's other stuff that I feel I need to hammer harder, and have to cobble together other materials and my own creations to fill that in. I'm adjusting things for the specific class that I have (e.g. a very math-strong econ class this year), and I'm adjusting things for my specific strengths and weaknesses in lecturing to the class. Finally, if you just try to duplicate last year's class, it's probable that you won't have the energy of presentation and excitement and effectiveness. You need to have new lessons to look forward to and some degree of discomfort / newness that you're experiencing with the class to be the best possible educator, I think. > More like that's what socialism does. The public schools are a service provided by the government, and exhibits all aspects of socialism. Your observation that the public schools are Kafkaesque is right on target. More money will not fix them. Again, you're not arguing with what I'm saying. I've already acknowledged we spend lots of money on schools for the most part. On the other hand, teachers from other countries with public education mostly shake their heads at what public school teachers in the US need to deal with.

WalterBright 4y ago
> other countries The grass is always greener effect, and who knows what really is happening in foreign schools without being there. They may be just telling Americans what they want to be true. A more interesting comparison is with local charter schools. > We have other districts forbid teachers using any resources not provided by the district or the teacher themselves. Haha, just use them anyway. It's not like they're going to check. Besides, the teacher can reuse what he used last year, or copy one from a fellow teacher. There ought to be quite a surfeit of materials from other 5th grade teachers in the same district. There ought to be lesson plans coming out of their ears if each teacher was redoing them every year. Most teachers I had just followed the Teacher's Edition of the textbook. I didn't see any evidence of lesson plans. Perhaps in high school things change from year to year, but they can't be changing that much, and why would 5th grade math change? Personally, I rarely reuse lectures I give. This is because the technology changes constantly, my old lectures are available online, and when I get invited to speak and the conference is paying the bill I think it's disrespectful to use old material. Also I just get bored with what I did before :-)

by mlyle 4y ago

WalterBright 4y ago

> other countries The grass is always greener effect, and who knows what really is happening in foreign schools without being there. They may be just telling Americans what they want to be true. A more interesting comparison is with local charter schools. > We have other districts forbid teachers using any resources not provided by the district or the teacher themselves. Haha, just use them anyway. It's not like they're going to check. Besides, the teacher can reuse what he used last year, or copy one from a fellow teacher. There ought to be quite a surfeit of materials from other 5th grade teachers in the same district. There ought to be lesson plans coming out of their ears if each teacher was redoing them every year. Most teachers I had just followed the Teacher's Edition of the textbook. I didn't see any evidence of lesson plans. Perhaps in high school things change from year to year, but they can't be changing that much, and why would 5th grade math change? Personally, I rarely reuse lectures I give. This is because the technology changes constantly, my old lectures are available online, and when I get invited to speak and the conference is paying the bill I think it's disrespectful to use old material. Also I just get bored with what I did before :-)