37 ms·

Numbers vary, but we’re on a modified block schedule, so it’s 180ish every two days. ;) Anyway, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been pretty down about it recen

Numbers vary, but we’re on a modified block schedule, so it’s 180ish every two days. ;) Anyway, thanks for the kind words. I’ve been pretty down about it recently because it seems like we’re just papering over deep structural and systemic problems, which just hurts our kids more than acknowledging the realities would.

prox 2y ago
What is your view to get out of the deep structural and systemic problems?
- dmvdoug 2y ago
  Fully acknowledge and confront the fact that public education serves as essentially a catch-all social service agency for a significant chunk of our populace and stop pretending it’s just about knowledge-transfer. For kids who come from stable family backgrounds (of whatever composition—-stability and reliability are the keys), and a stable (not necessarily affluent or adjacent—-again, stability and reliability) socioeconomic environment, that model works. Kids routinely make it to high school without being able to read or do math at more than a third grade level, because at some point, we can say well, we can’t solve society’s problems, but we also can’t “penalize” these students by holding them back several years (gotta get ground up by the economic machine as soon as they’re 18), so… well, it’s above our pay-grade. I have seen some interesting work and individual charter schools that are like “full service schools.” The problem is, for every decent idea in a charter school, there are 25 charter schools that are pieces of shit. I need to go take a shower and get ready for work, so I’m going to stop ranting, but the basic solution is to recognize that one size does not fit all. The career tech-normie hs-gifted division we operate with is too broad-brushed. The school I’ve been at has a shit ton of profound mental health problems among students. Poverty is real but it’s not as grinding as our rival school down the street (the “super ghetto” school I was told), nor is life-threatening violence necessarily a daily companion for our kids as for theirs. Yet we are both Title I urban schools. It’s complicated, man.
  - prox 2y ago
    Thanks for showing your insight and the problems you face. I hear these experiences from many places. I know someone who started a buddy system from the sports coaches in his place. They made an on campus chill out room where kids can relax with coaches nearby in the next room. They are confidants and they keep them away from their homes which are sometimes terrible places. They also get these kids a sports team so they have mates who are in the same situation. Finally they got some local shops to sponsor it because the idea is that they and the police have less problems with the kids being of the street. It’s not a 100% cure, but it does seem to take away the biggest strains on the system.
mike_hearn 2y ago
Thanks for posting. It sounds like you're doing a great job in difficult circumstances. And I really agree with you. A lot of this stuff is getting blamed on phones when the problems are elsewhere and the disengagement is just a symptom, but it's easier for educators to blame some distant third parties (tech companies) than it is to blame the education system. Key things from the article blamed on phones/the internet/entertainment: - Schoolteacher says "they don't care about grades, they don't care about college" - College teacher says, "I am teaching Intro to Theatre and prisoners care more" - Cheating in college. All this has a simpler and much more direct explanation: college doesn't motivate students anymore, and especially not humanities courses. If college doesn't matter then high school grades matter much less, what professors teach in class matters much less, and all this is totally as expected because universities have been trashing their reputations very publicly for a very long time now. Roll back to the pre-smartphone era and it was taken for granted that any degree at all would grant you upward mobility into the world of easy-breezy office jobs. Why not study Plato for a few years, given that expectation? Roll forward to today's world and even teenagers got the message that this was a lie, that many degrees are nearly worthless, that the debt costs are huge and that if they're a straight white male the university staff will at best hate them for how they were born, and at worst try to make life deliberately hard for them. The fact that most universities aren't even trying to stop LLM based cheating is the final nail in the coffin. Why tune in when you can get a computer to write your assignments for you, the professors won't notice and you'll get good grades without any effort. This blasé attitude deeply offends the generation for whom university attendance was a quasi-sacred act, hence Gioia's astonishment that 40% of students would cheat in an ethics class. For younger generations they see it as a purely transactional interaction, in which they are forced to pay lots of money to listen to someone waffle about ethics despite having no particular claim to being an ethical person, in return for the ability to maybe get a job better than barista. The fix for all this isn't to wage war on smartphones, although that is what the educational establishment will do. It's to recognize that schools have drifted too far from what kids actually need (especially boys), and to rethink the way they work to reflect a world where college degrees are devalued.

prox 2y ago

What is your view to get out of the deep structural and systemic problems?

dmvdoug 2y ago
Fully acknowledge and confront the fact that public education serves as essentially a catch-all social service agency for a significant chunk of our populace and stop pretending it’s just about knowledge-transfer. For kids who come from stable family backgrounds (of whatever composition—-stability and reliability are the keys), and a stable (not necessarily affluent or adjacent—-again, stability and reliability) socioeconomic environment, that model works. Kids routinely make it to high school without being able to read or do math at more than a third grade level, because at some point, we can say well, we can’t solve society’s problems, but we also can’t “penalize” these students by holding them back several years (gotta get ground up by the economic machine as soon as they’re 18), so… well, it’s above our pay-grade. I have seen some interesting work and individual charter schools that are like “full service schools.” The problem is, for every decent idea in a charter school, there are 25 charter schools that are pieces of shit. I need to go take a shower and get ready for work, so I’m going to stop ranting, but the basic solution is to recognize that one size does not fit all. The career tech-normie hs-gifted division we operate with is too broad-brushed. The school I’ve been at has a shit ton of profound mental health problems among students. Poverty is real but it’s not as grinding as our rival school down the street (the “super ghetto” school I was told), nor is life-threatening violence necessarily a daily companion for our kids as for theirs. Yet we are both Title I urban schools. It’s complicated, man.
- prox 2y ago
  Thanks for showing your insight and the problems you face. I hear these experiences from many places. I know someone who started a buddy system from the sports coaches in his place. They made an on campus chill out room where kids can relax with coaches nearby in the next room. They are confidants and they keep them away from their homes which are sometimes terrible places. They also get these kids a sports team so they have mates who are in the same situation. Finally they got some local shops to sponsor it because the idea is that they and the police have less problems with the kids being of the street. It’s not a 100% cure, but it does seem to take away the biggest strains on the system.

mike_hearn 2y ago

Thanks for posting. It sounds like you're doing a great job in difficult circumstances. And I really agree with you. A lot of this stuff is getting blamed on phones when the problems are elsewhere and the disengagement is just a symptom, but it's easier for educators to blame some distant third parties (tech companies) than it is to blame the education system. Key things from the article blamed on phones/the internet/entertainment: - Schoolteacher says "they don't care about grades, they don't care about college" - College teacher says, "I am teaching Intro to Theatre and prisoners care more" - Cheating in college. All this has a simpler and much more direct explanation: college doesn't motivate students anymore, and especially not humanities courses. If college doesn't matter then high school grades matter much less, what professors teach in class matters much less, and all this is totally as expected because universities have been trashing their reputations very publicly for a very long time now. Roll back to the pre-smartphone era and it was taken for granted that any degree at all would grant you upward mobility into the world of easy-breezy office jobs. Why not study Plato for a few years, given that expectation? Roll forward to today's world and even teenagers got the message that this was a lie, that many degrees are nearly worthless, that the debt costs are huge and that if they're a straight white male the university staff will at best hate them for how they were born, and at worst try to make life deliberately hard for them. The fact that most universities aren't even trying to stop LLM based cheating is the final nail in the coffin. Why tune in when you can get a computer to write your assignments for you, the professors won't notice and you'll get good grades without any effort. This blasé attitude deeply offends the generation for whom university attendance was a quasi-sacred act, hence Gioia's astonishment that 40% of students would cheat in an ethics class. For younger generations they see it as a purely transactional interaction, in which they are forced to pay lots of money to listen to someone waffle about ethics despite having no particular claim to being an ethical person, in return for the ability to maybe get a job better than barista. The fix for all this isn't to wage war on smartphones, although that is what the educational establishment will do. It's to recognize that schools have drifted too far from what kids actually need (especially boys), and to rethink the way they work to reflect a world where college degrees are devalued.