4 ms·

> when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective Of course. And that ne

> when the working conditions and compensation are such that staffing education at all is a massive struggle, let alone being selective Of course. And that needs to change. Right? However, this should not be a freebie. Pay more? Absolutely. And, with that, comes a require for excellence and performance that should be no different from any job where, if you don't perform, you are out looking for work elsewhere. > I'm a STEM teacher who teaches the "T" without much technology at all This is crazy. I am not sure how to put it other than, with the money we spend our public schools should be so good that private schools --not just in the US, world-wide-- should use them as a tough-to-follow metric. I have tried very hard in our own school district to help up the level of STEM education in a range of ways. My first attempt was with one of the local elementary schools. I offered to fully fund and conduct a model airplane STEM program for up to 100 students (about three classrooms). I would provide airplane kits to build and, for the more advanced class, also the radio control equipment. I met with the Principal to discuss. A couple of meetings later the county and school district got involved. The only way I can described what happened is "dystopian". Rather than jump on the opportunity to provide our kids with something like this, the reaction and interaction was in a range between being ghosted and feeling like I was the enemy at the gates. Truly incomprehensible. My next attempt, years later, was to introduce a robotics class as at four local schools (two elementary, one middle and one high school). I scheduled and met with all four Principals from these schools. I brought with me a short presentation as well as a small inexpensive robot made from 3D printed parts and RC servos with an Arduino for control. Once again, I volunteered to fund the entire thing at all four schools. Well received. Good conversation. One of the Principals took lead and proposed to organize a meeting with the science and math teachers from all four schools. This felt like progress. What happened next? I was ghosted. Seriously. And my kids attended two of these schools at that time. The meeting never happened. Emails and calls were never returned. Nothing. Once again, I eventually dropped the matter. Fast forward to just about a month ago. I offered the local high school's Physics teacher to come in every so often to help with anything she needed. I could bring interesting STEM show-and-tell items from my work in aerospace, robotics and more. She was kind enough to thank me for the offer. Since then, silence. I asked one more time. Nothing. One of my kids is in her class. I spend more time teaching my kid the Physics she is not teaching than she probably does actually teaching the kids in class. It's crazy. We have a bad teacher problem. We have a bad schools problem. Until the system is morphed into one where excellent teachers and excellent schools survive and bad ones do not, we are not going to improve outcomes. And, yes, of course, this affects lower socioeconomic sectors far more than others. The odd thing is that we already spend more per student than most nations of the world. Our return on that investment are high school graduates who are only good for stacking boxes in a warehouse and barely good to work at the local coffee shop. Being that about 60% of kids go from high school to college, that means 40% of adults leaving high school have no marketable skills whatsoever. From there you have to look at what portion of that 60% actually finish college with what I will call a useful degree and how many drop out. A useful degree adds enough value to have better than minimum wage employment. There are lots of degree programs out there that are a straight path to minimum wage + no real marketable skills + lifetime college debt. Those who drop out are back to having no marketable skills due to the failure of our K-12 education. The data [0] (interesting site) seems to show that only about 30% of the 60% who go to college actually graduate. Once again, that is terrible. No useful skills from high school and the vast majority of our college-bound students don't or can't graduate. This is not an example of a school system designed to lift people out of their station in life. Quite to the contrary. It is an expensive mess with bad outcomes everywhere. I could go on. STEM education is a topic I am obviously passionate about. I can't say I have not tried to make things better. I can only hit my head against a brick wall for so long. At some point all I could do is revert inward to devote my time, attention and resources to my own kids. They are doing great. They are far more advanced in STEM than any of their peers. I was willing to devote a nontrivial amount of time to help hundreds of kids in this region. The system expelled me, rather than those who are likely actively causing damage to our kids. That's sad. [0] http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24&year=2018&level=nation&mode=graph&state= http://www.higheredinfo.org/dbrowser/index.php?submeasure=24...

mlyle 4y ago
> This is crazy. I teach in a private school and the school resources my programs well, and I'm willing to kick in whatever else is needed. I chose the "crazy" because it's a better way. https://github.com/mlyle/armtrainer https://github.com/mlyle/armtrainer Most of the course was pencil-and-paper and the special computers come out at the end. If you choose to let the students get their 1 to 1 laptops out, there's a million additional distractions you have to deal with. For the most part you don't need a lot of "stuff". And the stuff you have, it's better to get out sparingly so it's exciting and use of it is focused. (I do coach 2 FTC teams and 1 FLL team; sure, computers are out more in those rooms, and there's capital costs to coaching a robotics team...) > We have a bad teacher problem. Don't mistake not being welcomed with open arms for the teacher being "bad". In many public schools, there's a whole lot of heavy management on hitting specific test goals and curriculum items. Your offer would likely not help the teacher in this task. My closest experience with this is that I teach AP Microeconomics. In most classes, I have a lot of discretion on curriculum, etc. But this is an AP course, and the College Board stuffed the course 110% full of stuff I need to cover and my performance is measured by students' performance on the end-of-year exam. If a Nobel Laureate wanted to come do a fun activity or give a talk in my econ classroom, I'd say no. I don't have the class time. It's terrible: I have a few students that are independently game theory nerds. I have half a class period to talk about game theory in the context of oligopolies. If it were up to me, I'd gladly shear off some content to talk more/play with a subject that my students are passionate about... I also have only 2-3 simulations/activities in the semester; with just a little bit less material I could have a lot less direct instruction and present the material in a way that is much more likely to be retained in the long run.
- robomartin 4y ago
  > Don't mistake not being welcomed with open arms for the teacher being "bad". In many public schools, there's a whole lot of heavy management on hitting specific test goals and curriculum items. Your offer would likely not help the teacher in this task. Understood. I do know teachers who are, objectively speaking, just terrible. Like the teacher who, years ago, was "teaching" a Lego robotics class. My kid told me she would come into the room, take out her magazines and tell the kids to do whatever they wanted. My kid ended up teaching the others, she did nothing all year. When I characterize things as "bad" I am thinking about what I will call the system rather than, for the most part, individuals. Few people are motivated --in any profession-- to push hard and excel without a process, structure and stimulus that drives them there. The colloquial term is "self starters". Most are not self-starters, that's just normal and independent of profession. Add a unionized system within which a genuinely bad teacher can "hide" and be protected for decades and you have the makings of bad educational outcomes. You seem to be the kind of teacher we should strive to have at every school. Your students are lucky to have you. As a kid I attended both private and public schools (about the same number of years each) and I know the difference. My argument is our public schools should be far better than they are and, perhaps, even better than anything private schools could deliver. For one thing, they have the financial backing of an entire nation. The only reason they are not is that our policies and focus are wrong. I come down hard on unions, not out of spite or ideology but rather out of experience. I was a member of a union for about ten years when I was in my 20's. I saw the sausage being made. Unions had every reason to exist back in the day. It is my opinion that, in a wide range of industries (maybe not all) unions are horrible beasts that exist for the benefit of the wrong people. This is to say, their management. Union members are not the problem. They are average folk who just want a good life and everything anyone else would want. Unions, however, are driven into creating the problems they do because their mission isn't aligned with the outcomes of what it is they affect; in this case, educational outcomes. Getting off that subject, I was a mentor for our local FRC team for many years. We got to Nationals a couple of times. While not a teacher, I am pretty good at teaching complex subjects in ways that make them accessible. Well, at least that's the feedback from my own kids and FRC team members. I very much understand you don't need a lot of stuff to teach. It can get in the way. I absolutely love working with kids. I would hate to be under the thumb of a system that did not allow me to help them excel (in real terms, not just pass tests). Regarding your microprocessor trainer. You'll appreciate this. I own a couple of these: https://i.imgur.com/ZsIJj1p.png https://i.imgur.com/ZsIJj1p.png I am of the 8080, 6502, MC6800 era. I actually owned an IMSAI and such things as a real DEC VT100 terminal. I used the 8085 trainer to teach my kids assembler and show them how things work at the base level. They had a lot of fun with it. I've been thinking of doing a series on YouTube that goes from basic gates and logic through actually building a small microprocessor and defining your own assembler instructions. From there I would implement Forth, move on to programming block-based storage, write a text/code editor and then implement a few interesting higher-level projects. I know this would be a lot of fun to do (at least for me). It's a question of time. I might be able to jump on this in a few months. It's one of those things that's been in the back of my mind for, quite literally, years.

mlyle 4y ago

> This is crazy. I teach in a private school and the school resources my programs well, and I'm willing to kick in whatever else is needed. I chose the "crazy" because it's a better way. https://github.com/mlyle/armtrainer https://github.com/mlyle/armtrainer Most of the course was pencil-and-paper and the special computers come out at the end. If you choose to let the students get their 1 to 1 laptops out, there's a million additional distractions you have to deal with. For the most part you don't need a lot of "stuff". And the stuff you have, it's better to get out sparingly so it's exciting and use of it is focused. (I do coach 2 FTC teams and 1 FLL team; sure, computers are out more in those rooms, and there's capital costs to coaching a robotics team...) > We have a bad teacher problem. Don't mistake not being welcomed with open arms for the teacher being "bad". In many public schools, there's a whole lot of heavy management on hitting specific test goals and curriculum items. Your offer would likely not help the teacher in this task. My closest experience with this is that I teach AP Microeconomics. In most classes, I have a lot of discretion on curriculum, etc. But this is an AP course, and the College Board stuffed the course 110% full of stuff I need to cover and my performance is measured by students' performance on the end-of-year exam. If a Nobel Laureate wanted to come do a fun activity or give a talk in my econ classroom, I'd say no. I don't have the class time. It's terrible: I have a few students that are independently game theory nerds. I have half a class period to talk about game theory in the context of oligopolies. If it were up to me, I'd gladly shear off some content to talk more/play with a subject that my students are passionate about... I also have only 2-3 simulations/activities in the semester; with just a little bit less material I could have a lot less direct instruction and present the material in a way that is much more likely to be retained in the long run.

robomartin 4y ago
> Don't mistake not being welcomed with open arms for the teacher being "bad". In many public schools, there's a whole lot of heavy management on hitting specific test goals and curriculum items. Your offer would likely not help the teacher in this task. Understood. I do know teachers who are, objectively speaking, just terrible. Like the teacher who, years ago, was "teaching" a Lego robotics class. My kid told me she would come into the room, take out her magazines and tell the kids to do whatever they wanted. My kid ended up teaching the others, she did nothing all year. When I characterize things as "bad" I am thinking about what I will call the system rather than, for the most part, individuals. Few people are motivated --in any profession-- to push hard and excel without a process, structure and stimulus that drives them there. The colloquial term is "self starters". Most are not self-starters, that's just normal and independent of profession. Add a unionized system within which a genuinely bad teacher can "hide" and be protected for decades and you have the makings of bad educational outcomes. You seem to be the kind of teacher we should strive to have at every school. Your students are lucky to have you. As a kid I attended both private and public schools (about the same number of years each) and I know the difference. My argument is our public schools should be far better than they are and, perhaps, even better than anything private schools could deliver. For one thing, they have the financial backing of an entire nation. The only reason they are not is that our policies and focus are wrong. I come down hard on unions, not out of spite or ideology but rather out of experience. I was a member of a union for about ten years when I was in my 20's. I saw the sausage being made. Unions had every reason to exist back in the day. It is my opinion that, in a wide range of industries (maybe not all) unions are horrible beasts that exist for the benefit of the wrong people. This is to say, their management. Union members are not the problem. They are average folk who just want a good life and everything anyone else would want. Unions, however, are driven into creating the problems they do because their mission isn't aligned with the outcomes of what it is they affect; in this case, educational outcomes. Getting off that subject, I was a mentor for our local FRC team for many years. We got to Nationals a couple of times. While not a teacher, I am pretty good at teaching complex subjects in ways that make them accessible. Well, at least that's the feedback from my own kids and FRC team members. I very much understand you don't need a lot of stuff to teach. It can get in the way. I absolutely love working with kids. I would hate to be under the thumb of a system that did not allow me to help them excel (in real terms, not just pass tests). Regarding your microprocessor trainer. You'll appreciate this. I own a couple of these: https://i.imgur.com/ZsIJj1p.png https://i.imgur.com/ZsIJj1p.png I am of the 8080, 6502, MC6800 era. I actually owned an IMSAI and such things as a real DEC VT100 terminal. I used the 8085 trainer to teach my kids assembler and show them how things work at the base level. They had a lot of fun with it. I've been thinking of doing a series on YouTube that goes from basic gates and logic through actually building a small microprocessor and defining your own assembler instructions. From there I would implement Forth, move on to programming block-based storage, write a text/code editor and then implement a few interesting higher-level projects. I know this would be a lot of fun to do (at least for me). It's a question of time. I might be able to jump on this in a few months. It's one of those things that's been in the back of my mind for, quite literally, years.