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On February 29 2012 18:06 hersenen wrote: Maybe I'll respect teachers more when teacher unions stop preventing bad teachers from being fired.
/reverse rant reverse rant what? and just cause you don't like the policies of a union consisting of people with a certain profession you don't respect any of them? You can't really mean that so why on earth do you post it.
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On February 29 2012 19:30 nttea wrote:Show nested quote +On February 29 2012 18:06 hersenen wrote: Maybe I'll respect teachers more when teacher unions stop preventing bad teachers from being fired.
/reverse rant reverse rant what? and just cause you don't like the policies of a union consisting of people with a certain profession you don't respect any of them? You can't really mean that so why on earth do you post it.
Read more closely, I said "respect teachers more", meaning there's already respect there. I don't fault you for not reading my post closely, I skim everything on the internet too.
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I think the english vocabulary lacks different words for "education" as in learning new stuff at school, and "education" as in learning how to become a responsible member of society.
Anyways, I've also seen the trent where the responsibilities of both before mentioned educations where shifted towards teachers in Germany, something that I don't really like. Thank god I am teaching at a university level, where I can just not let the student pass without much backlash onto my person (by the student or by their parents). But sometimes I am really eager to try talking to those parents as to see why in the world they expect me to teach their kid the basic values of life.
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I agree. I worked my ass off in school, while peers complained if a teacher was known for "harsh grades".
Also, epic picture 5/5
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United States24490 Posts
Ah reminds me of this picture:
I see where you are coming from, OP. You've described just a few of the things that really both me as an educator. Honestly, it makes me want to leave public education until there is eventually a cultural shift where (hopefully) things get better.
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In my experience motivation for many kids has more to do with respect than with grades. Of course I went to a highschool with many kids whose parents just didn't care at all (which while easier on you, is probably worst of all for the kid), and many students had no desire to succeed at anything. Grades just couldn't motivate them.
It was also a school with a lot of really, really bad teachers. (And 3 or 4 amazing ones) By bad teachers, I mean teachers who:
- Looked at porn all day on their laptop instead of teaching, and made up grades for imaginary tests and assignments. (I finally got this guy fired.) - Teachers who were teaching upper level science classes who were supposed to be teaching English, because of the salary difference. Also fired for making up grades and not teaching. - Teachers who really only wanted to coach sports, and made it clear they hated teaching, and gave straight As to all the students they coached without expecting them to learn. And so forth.
Then there were those very few teachers who payed attention to what was going on and cared about their kids. If you didn't do well at something, they pull you aside and ask if you needed more help. They asked if things were ok at home if you stopped doing work or missed class. They offered to come in early, stay late, drive you home if need be so you could get some tutoring. They asked what you were interested in, and if you thought about going to college. They were happy to talk about life stuff instead of school stuff if you stopped in during a prep period. They graded fairly, but students ended up with much better grades in these classes compared to others.
The grades weren't really a factor so much as the fact that when a teacher shows respect for you as a person, and that they are teaching for the right reasons (they care about their students and helping them succeed in life), you are inclined to respect them back by making an effort.
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I work as a teacher and agree with the OP, and it makes me not to like my job (which I will quit). Whenever I have seen this phenomenon, it seems to originate from the same source: grading is in some way politicized or linked with money, either for the students or for the teachers/schools. This creates a huge initiative to inflate the grades, and it shifts the power from the teacher to the student. The effect snowballs, because when one teacher lowers requirements, and therefore gets more stuff X and more students, others will follow in competition for "low quality". If you attempt to keep high standards, there will be no students and you are considered a bad teacher because the grades are bad.
It is for this reason that I think the educational system I currently work in will sunk into oblivion. Its like Zimbabwean dollars that you can just print until everybody is a billionaire and a new currency will just quietly replace it. There is no causal, logical or correlative link between grades/the number of degrees and money: its all imagined and abstractly forced into use, by putting an arbitrary price tag for a piece of paper obtained from some institution.
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I've mentioned to people before that school grades never reflected a students ability to learn, intelligence, knowledge of the material taught, etc.
I graduated with like a 2.0 in high school. I didn't care, I didn't try, and to be honest it didn't matter. Lucky for my teachers, they were not graded on my performance. (went to high school several years ago now).
When I finally decided to go to college and make a better career and life for myself I entered community college and literally made straight A's. I made Dean's list every year and graduated Magna Cum Laude with my Associates. I later transferred to a University and had a 3.6 GPA before finishing my mechanical engineering major.
None of my teachers in high school would have thought that I could have possibly went into something as difficult as engineering and excelled at it. I wouldn't have blamed them. I didn't show them I was bright, and I didn't show them that I was stupid, I showed them that I didn't care. Teachers should not be graded by student performance. You can be the best teacher in the world and good ole' Albert Einstein will still fail your class and be diagnosed with a learning problem because he is bored or unmotivated.
You know what motivated me to do well after high school? Being in the real world and realizing if I wanted anything better for myself, I would have to do what needed to be done. Simple as that. It isn't a teacher's job to motivate me. I am not doing poorly due to their ability to present material or to interest me in the subject. I was 14-18 in high school, you think I give a flip about chemistry, calculus, or history? I was interested in girls, hanging out with my friends, and having a good time.
TLDR: Each individual person is the reason they excel or do poorly in life. Period. You can blame someone else or your circumstances all you want, but in the end, it is your decision to do well or not.
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Lol , is this for real? This goes beyond the logic. You fail a test and its the teachers fault? what , what , WHAT? What the hell is going on in america lol.
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On February 29 2012 21:24 Knap4life wrote: Lol , is this for real? This goes beyond the logic. You fail a test and its the teachers fault? what , what , WHAT? What the hell is going on in america lol.
This mindset is indeed really bad. Although it could indeed be the teachers fault ( the teacher is just crap for instance), there's not alot you can do about it. Sometimes you just gotta get through a year with a really bad teacher. Ofcourse if a teacher is just ridiculously bad then you should go complain. But if a teacher just teaches in a way that's not really compatible with a student, well then he just needs to study harder or have someone else to help him.
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Too much energy is being spent to figure out who is to blame. It's the teachers' fault for not motivating the kids. The parents' for not making their kids study and not teaching respect. The kids' for not putting in the work. Society's for creating an anti-intellectual culture.
Who the fuck cares?
The only important question is what you can do to make the situation better.
Let's say you do figure out that it's mostly the parents' fault. What's you next move? Tell them that it's all their fault and they should stop bugging you? They'll just get defensive and probably start blaming you. Everyone will be focused on defending their ego (or their work) instead of trying to help the kids.
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Hey, im a recently graduated high school student. I went to HS in Michigan moving between the suburbs and the rural areas. while i was in school many of the issues that you are talking about were glaringly apparent to me even as a student. Specifically the problem teachers have of motivating their students. The problem with motivating students as I see it, is that some students outright refuse to put any effort in at all.
You cant teach someone who just doesn't want to learn, and it's a real tragedy when a teachers performance is judged based on the motivation or performance of students who don't care about the course. rather then their actual merits as an educator. As a high school student, i observed this dynamic taking place, and I think i can say with great certainty that I would never, ever, want to work as an educator of those ungrateful bastards. I hope you find dedicated students to teach Good luck!
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On February 29 2012 22:58 PassiveAce wrote:Hey, im a recently graduated high school student. I went to HS in Michigan moving between the suburbs and the rural areas. while i was in school many of the issues that you are talking about were glaringly apparent to me even as a student. Specifically the problem teachers have of motivating their students. The problem with motivating students as I see it, is that some students outright refuse to put any effort in at all. You cant teach someone who just doesn't want to learn, and it's a real tragedy when a teachers performance is judged based on the motivation or performance of students who don't care about the course. rather then their actual merits as an educator. As a high school student, i observed this dynamic taking place, and I think i can say with great certainty that I would never, ever, want to work as an educator of those ungrateful bastards. I hope you find dedicated students to teach Good luck!
To be fair, some teachers are able to motivate kids to hate the class as it's being taught even if they're normally excellent in a subject. Math was always easy for me, but I failed Algebra 2 (Only class I ever failed, too). The teacher was so concerned about trying to get every single person to pass the class that she didn't even look at cause and effect. She paced the class for people who were NEVER paying attention, never trying, and generally not doing shit. Literally, we got less than a quarter of the way through the book that year, because we would spend a week on one day's worth of lessons. Now this wouldn't have been so bad, but she would assign a good hours worth of homework every single day. Mind you, these kids had a study hall in HER ROOM the period DIRECTLY before class... and she watched them sit there, reading magazines and BSing the whole time. But she still slowed the class to a crawl, even though THEY were completely unmotivated.
I'm also the only person I know who ever failed by .1%... 69.4% Yeah, I could have done the same (Not literally, just the same topic, same difficulty) homework 5 days a week all year, and passed. But unless I spent a couple of pointless hours showing my imaginary work (I just kind of looked at it and knew the answer generally), I would have been getting 60% at most on those assignments, for having the sheer gall to actually UNDERSTAND the subject.
Yes, the majority of the time it's the parents, and partially society, for wanting to coddle children. It's not like parents actually have the authority to ENFORCE any consequences for their children these days, at least in the USA. But there ARE circumstances where the teacher needs to get canned. It's entirely possible to be dead wrong for trying to help the class understand, if you take it too far.
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Oh boy, do I have a LOT to say about things like: - music education in high school - high school teachers and teacher's union - relationships and interactions between students, their parents, and teachers - teacher/school reputations - attitudes, in general
Excuse me while I indulge myself in a massive rant. Here it goes.
First of all, regarding the OP content, I mostly agree. The sense of entitlement is growing. Students feel entitled to a lot of things - sadly, a "good mark" is one of them. In high school the whines never ended: "I studied for 4 hours how come I only got a 70 Q_Q" or "I used to get 90 in math last year how come I'm only getting a 65 now? Mr. / Mrs. [teacher] is such a bad teacher." I tell them that peeking at the text book once every 10 facebook posts is not really studying. Nope, doesn't matter, all the teacher's fault for making such unreasonable tests at the most unreasonable time. I'm sure you've had similar experiences.
I don't have public school teaching experience. I worked as a music theory teacher at a private music school (part time) during my high school and university years. Additionally, I tutored students in piano performance / theory / math / science. Anyway, I do have a lot of experience at a smaller group / personal level when it comes to interactions with students. In a group setting, I remember that my primary goal was to have everyone's attention at all times. As long as they don't doze off, they'll maybe remember something I said during the exam, eh. Whatever subject I was dealing with, I made a lot of absurd connections with pop culture to keep them entertained. Not sure if I earned 'respect' that way, but at least nobody walked out on me.
As a student in high school, I did not respect some of the teachers there. To me, it became clear that those teachers (that I had little to no respect for) were sitting on their 20 year experience shield and milking the money out of the system with minimal effort. One of my math teachers barely spoke any English and relied on photocopies of my test paper to provide answers / explanations at the test take-up (I basically got a straight 100% in that class). My civics/careers teacher strongly discouraged any answers outside of what was explicitly mentioned in the textbook. My history teacher talked about stocks and football all day (fine, I didn't mind it too much) and sat all the cute girls in the front row. My friend's chemistry teacher didn't know her own subject well enough to grade her students properly - after comparing answers with me, my friend talked to my teacher to get her test re-graded properly. There are more examples, but you get my point.
Then, there are the ones I respected enough to re-visit multiple times after graduation. My calculus teacher was passionate about providing creative challenges in-class that I thoroughly enjoyed. The computer science teacher was a funny Asian old man who came up with bullshit 'wise words' that breathed life into an otherwise dry subject. I was even pretty chill with the school security guard because we both liked to talk about EPL (he didn't mind me skipping classes or sneaking in free to school events, lol).
Most of all, I respected my music teacher above all else. She was an angel. I couldn't figure out how she coped with a class full of kids looking for easy marks with minimal effort (I am part guilty in this). High school strings class, and half the second violins couldn't play a D major scale. Some of the first violins were those snobby private lesson kids and randomly broke into cadenzas. Cellos never played loud enough despite there being six of them. Violas... I don't even need to describe them =P I was one of the two bassists. Anyway, my teacher - she tolerated all those musical failures, kept the class interesting for the most part, managed meaningful history and theory lessons, and yet she somehow got everyone together in a large orchestra to produce reasonable-quality music nights every semester. I got more and more involved in the music activities at school, and as I spent more time in the music office, I saw how much hard work goes into preparing for each class.
I rambled on too long, it seems. I don't even think I got to all the points I listed at the start. Whatever, okay. So my point is - some teachers definitely need to be flushed out, but there are gems in the system that keep it rolling. Spoiled kids and their parents will from time to time cause you grief, but you can't control them (especially not the parents). You can and you should do your best to leave a positive experience for the students so that they don't become those delusional parents down the road.
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On March 01 2012 00:19 OpticalShot wrote: Violas... I don't even need to describe them =P . LOL. Oh violas...
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On February 29 2012 21:24 Knap4life wrote: Lol , is this for real? This goes beyond the logic. You fail a test and its the teachers fault? what , what , WHAT? What the hell is going on in america lol. Seriously this is happening. It's a feeling of self-entitlement that students get from their parents and a huge wake up call is needed.
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Good teachers will have more motivated students. Bad teachers will have less motivated students.
It's hard to be motivated to do your homework when you don't understand shit because of your awfull teacher. Physics used to be my worst class. No, wait. Almost everybody in my class except 4 or 5 failed the first semester for physics. What did we get? Every replacement came in with an attitude oh my god this class is so bad, you guys aren't motivated blah blah blah. We had about 3 of those before we got a full time replacement. This guy is fucking amazing. He explains everything so extremely clearly and vivid. When I make my homework i'm like. How the fuck did I ever find this remotely hard? It's such a piece of cake because I truly understand it. Even he thought we were an awfull class. Not anymore, almost everyone gets good grades now. I bolded almost, because obviously you will always have students who aren't motivated no matter how good you are as a teacher. Just as how a bad teacher will always have a couple of motivated students. Don't be like omfg I can't do shit about it. Yes you can. Another example. My biology teacher doesn't do jack shit. He just sits behind his table the whole time, like what the fuck? This stuff is actually hard, yes I can understand and teach it myself by reading the books. But it would be a hell of alot easier if you explained it clearly first =.=? I bolded clearly. My chemistry teacher understands his shit. You can tell. But I truly don't give a shit if you have a PhD in chemistry if you dismiss half off the steps whilst solving a problem because it's ''so obvious/logical'' teh fuck.
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On March 01 2012 01:20 Recognizable wrote: Good teachers will have more motivated students. Bad teachers will have less motivated students.
It's hard to be motivated to do your homework when you don't understand shit because of your awfull teacher. I agree 100%. I guess my perspective is from the standpoint of a teacher of an elective class. Band is not required. Some form of fine arts is, but there are other classes (art, chorus, orchestra, theater, etc.) available to fulfill those fine arts credits. I know a lot about music (band specifically) because I've studied it for 17 years (I started with piano when I was 6) and studied at the post-secondary level for 5 years. This does not automatically make me a good teacher, but as I have included specific examples in some of my other responses, I do try to make the class as enjoyable and as good of a learning experience as it can be. I really feel for teachers of the required classes, especially math. All students are required to take X amount of years of math, and they can't quit because they don't like it, or they won't graduate. It's a tough situation for everyone.
Parents want to see their child succeed, and in the current American education system, grades are the standard of success. So parents want their child to get good grades. Teachers want students to learn and earn the A or B. I for one don't feel it is my job to give a student a B who didn't earn it. In the US education system, B means above average and A means excellent (or superior or whatever, it depends on the state/school district). I can't give a student an above average grade for average or below average work. It reminds me (again) of Harry Potter. The Weasley twins were talking about OWLS and one of them says "We should have gotten Exceeds Expectations just for showing up!" (or something along those lines)
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This is exactly why I could never teach highschool. I'd want to tear their heads off. I'm going into teaching but at JC or Lib Arts college. That's bad enough!
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Calgary25953 Posts
When you read most teachers' stories, they start out like you: wide-eyed and set to change the world. 10 years later, and tied down in red tape, they've either lost their passion or switched careers.
/debbie_downer
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