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We can't win here, can we? Because we won't quietly take our beating, we must be a bunch of whiners.
Please elaborate on how you're taking a 'beating'.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
It'e people like you who drive good teachers out of the profession. Why should I be disrespected as a teacher when I can be respected as an engineer?
People like me? You mean the parents who send their kids off to teachers like you who refuse to accept any accountability for the success, or lack thereof, of their students? How can I respect you if you refuse to be accountable?
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
Before I became a teacher, I did not have to defend my profession, I did not have strangers on the street telling me how I'm doing my job wrong...people, gasp, considered ME the expert in my profession and left me to do my job.
Maybe you didn't have to 'defend' your profession as an engineer, but you sure as hell were held accountable!
You're job description does not end with 'teaching' the kids, because the kids come along with parents; parents who DO have a vested interest in their child's education; parents who DO see their property taxes going up every year; parents who DO hold you at least partially accountable.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
You'd complain too if you were treated like we are.
Please enlighten me on the mistreatment of teachers
If you're looking for sympathy, you won't find it here. EVERYONE I know works hard, so please don't complain about working hard.
Everyone I know feels they deserve more pay than they get, so don't complain about that either.
Many people I know work very long hours, often without extra pay because they are salary. Uh, and NO, their salary doesn't compensate - we're in a recession and if you don't accept a lower salary companies will just find someone else who will.
There is a difference between having to stay at work and work overtime compared to grading papers at home. You may have a couple of hours of grading to do, but that can be done all while doing your laundry, cooking dinner, helping the kids with HW, or lying in bed with the TV on.
Oh yes, I know, the 2 1/2 months off for summer, the additional 3 weeks off during the year and the numerous days off for every holiday under the sun sounds horrible.
I think if teachers were TRULY honest in a poll, you would find the vast majority feels a lower salary is worth the PERK of all that time off.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ivorytickler
How are teachers acting spoiled and entitled? I work more hours as a teacher than I ever drempt of as an engineer for half the pay. ... and you call me spoiled and entitled?????
It's the kid's fault
It's the parent's fault
It's the administration's fault
It's the government's fault
We're overworked
We're underpaid
The principal sides with the parents
The parents are too involved
The parents aren't involved enough
I have to do grades
I have to do paperwork
I have to do behavioral charts
I'm a babysitter
I have to attend meetings
I have to work 15 minutes past my contractual time twice a year
I only get summers off, Christmas vacation, Easter Vacation, Winter break, and every bank holiday plus some off
I work more than 40 hours a week
I have to TEACH
Blah, blah blah!
Whine, Whine, Whine!
Get out the violin
I know of no other 'profession' where on a daily basis the employees are whining on a public forum about how bad they have it and how it's everybody else's fault
Interesting. I know of very few professions where the "professionals" are called upon to work full-time (I worked about 60 hours a week as a teacher, and think the average in my district is 55) without expecting compensation. Yes - think about it - teachers are bad if they actually want to be compensated for their work. We are supposed to do it out of caring for the children, caring for the school, etc. God forbid we expect payment for these services. We are called upon regularly to "donate" our time after school for extra-curricular activities, meetings with parents, meetings with other teachers, meetings with administrators, school events, unpaid professional development, mentoring, giving extra help, and the list goes on. No time is allotted for planning or grading or anything else - that's for us to somehow fit in on our own time (whatever is left of it).
We are also expected to shell out our own funds in significant amounts to furnish and decorate our classrooms, for instructional supplies (ever see the "teacher" stores? who do you think the clients are??), including books, paper, crayons, and more. Pretty much everything in some schools.
No one expects doctors to work for free because they care about you. If you need to go to the doctor and can't take a day off from work, the doctor isn't expected to meet you at 8pm at night. And yet teachers are subject to the pervasive myth that they are working not for money, not for a living, but only because they really care and they do not expect anything in return. The salary is like a dirty little thing we are supposed to act like we don't care about, because then we seem like we don't care about our students.
Is there any other profession where people are assumed to work only because they care, expected to "donate" 15-20 unpaid hours a week under the belief that if they don't do that, then they don't care and thus are bad at what they do?
Perhaps having its beginnings in the "pink collar" days when teaching was a female profession more closely associated with mothering and childcare than an actual profession, schools continue to exploit the emotional aspects of teaching and to demand that teachers behave more like selfless parents than actual professionals doing their jobs. The assumption is so pervasive that in my experience, teachers were constantly pretending not to care about the "donated" time - it was like a taboo to admit that you resented working an extra six hours on Saturday or waiting around til 8pm for a parent who couldn't make a parent/teacher meeting. Heck, I think most of the time we actually convince ourselves that we are ok with all this. No one volunteers for extra work like teachers do - they'll actually sign up for extra stuff just to prove to everyone how dedicated they are.
And don't anyone bring up the point that lawyers work lots of hours before they make partner, or that people at the beginning of their careers must put in extra time to advance. Teachers have nowhere to advance to. This is not beginning of the career behavior - this is permanent expectation. Teachers don't get merit pay or extra pay for this stuff, they can't get promotions (no teachers do not get promoted to principals, that's not how it works).
So I ask you, what other profession expects the professionals not to want to be compensated for their work and then gets upset when they do?
By any measure I have well achieving students. We had 10% of our seniors get perfect on the SATs, 100% college placement rate, 15% into the IL, I had multiple students published in peer reviewed journals, go to the national intel science fair, more than a third of the sophomores got 750 or better on the chem SAT II, etc. I am a good teacher, I am also no more responsible for the success of these children then any other teacher.
The reality is that student achievement is in equal parts due to parents, the school (including teachers) and the students themselves. If any one of those parts is lacking it is almost impossible to succeed.
Which begs the question, when students achieve why do parents take all the credit and when they fail teachers get all the blame?
That is incorrect. The inner-city districts spend more money per pupil than suburban ones.
Yep, the paper in San Diego just did a big study of school performance. It showed that for the most part, the poor performing schools got the most money.
Some kids just do not give a rats *ss about learning, ditto for their parents.
It's as simple as this (for the most part). We as a family unit value education- therefore our home resembles a homeschool even though my kids attend a public school. I have a book collection that rivals a small library. The kids have reference material in their room. We have maps on the walls. More importantly is that my kids actually use the stuff. Don't know what a word means-- use the dictionary! My 8 yr. old son is a sports fan- this summer he is spending time reading sport chapter books by Mark Lupica. As a parent- follow you kids' interest and get them to use it productively. Be an example! My kids see me reading- they model what they observe in their environment. I will always be there for my kids making sure they have what they need to have a solid foundation as they will become adults one day. I will make sure they have diversified learning experiences whether directly or indirectly. I will make sure they go to school ready to learn and take on any challenge they encounter. Yes they will falter- it's a part of life. They will have the skills to get up and try again because that's what we do around here
This is EXACTLY the way I was raised. Parents are the most important teachers, examples, and models. Too many completely abdicate this responsibility. Fact is, your kids' teachers are SUPPLEMENTAL. YOU are the one who sets the tone, and YOU are the one who instills the values that dictate whether or not knowledge and learning are priorities, and weather or not they are a pleasure.
This is EXACTLY the way I was raised. Parents are the most important teachers, examples, and models. Too many completely abdicate this responsibility. Fact is, your kids' teachers are SUPPLEMENTAL. YOU are the one who sets the tone, and YOU are the one who instills the values that dictate whether or not knowledge and learning are priorities, and weather or not they are a pleasure.
Sorry, that's not true. There's no further explanation needed, it's just not true. Virtually all parents want what's best for their kids. Sometimes they have a different idea about what that is than the teachers do. The parents aren't always "right", but neither are the teachers.
Please elaborate on how you're taking a 'beating'.
Please enlighten me on the mistreatment of teachers
If you're looking for sympathy, you won't find it here. EVERYONE I know works hard, so please don't complain about working hard.
Everyone I know feels they deserve more pay than they get, so don't complain about that either.
Many people I know work very long hours, often without extra pay because they are salary. Uh, and NO, their salary doesn't compensate - we're in a recession and if you don't accept a lower salary companies will just find someone else who will.
There is a difference between having to stay at work and work overtime compared to grading papers at home. You may have a couple of hours of grading to do, but that can be done all while doing your laundry, cooking dinner, helping the kids with HW, or lying in bed with the TV on.
Oh yes, I know, the 2 1/2 months off for summer, the additional 3 weeks off during the year and the numerous days off for every holiday under the sun sounds horrible.
I think if teachers were TRULY honest in a poll, you would find the vast majority feels a lower salary is worth the PERK of all that time off.
Background on the writer of the article on the mistreatment of teachers.
National Teachers Hall of Fame (http://www.nthf.org/inductee/haskvitz.htm - broken link)
Quote:
Alan Paul Haskvitz has spent over twenty years in the classroom. He has taught at Suzanne Middle School in Walnut, California for over a decade. In his first year at this school, the students' standardized state test scores were at the 22nd percentile level. By using his methods and curriculum, student test scores went into the 94 percentile, the largest gain in history
The bullying of educators, using misleading facts, is rampant. Most recently, Wisconsin teachers, fighting merely for the right to negotiate as a union, were accused of causing over seven million dollars of damages to the state capital building and grounds. The media spread that lie and never followed up with the fact that the damages never were properly assessed.(1) Sorry to say, but this is just one example of the media’s bullying of teachers. When is the last time the public learned that 145,100 public school teachers were physically attacked and that 276,000 were threatened with injury?(2) And they say the press is liberal? (3)
I am also sorry that, as a teacher, I did such a poor job of teaching students to think for themselves, allowing the fear mongers to drug their critical thinking skills. I worry that I have done a poor job of teaching my students not to ask for proof when an organization says it offers fair and balanced news reporting.
Until today I never stopped to look at what my decision to become a teacher had cost. I wrote a letter to one of the commissioners on the Little Hoover Commission expressing how my decision to become a teacher had cost my family dearly and telling them that their findings made me sorry I had become a teacher.
Quote:
I left the financial world after tiring of the constant manipulation of the general public in order to add to the company’s bottom line. I am sorry I didn’t fight my temptation to help others and instead stay in the corporate world with a secretary, parking spot, executive dining room, paid-for college courses, free health care, my own office, and a chance to continue to hobnob with the movers and shakers of the world, from Richard Nixon and king maker Asa Call, to Ronald Reagan. At age 22 I had my own upscale apartment in Los Angeles and a racing Cobra. Life was good and the pension plan was lucrative. I paid nothing into it. The company was going to move to a beach community and I would have been a made man. All I had to do was ignore my desire to help others.
Some personal notes - I worked for IBM before I went into teaching. When I worked for IBM, I worked lots of hours, but was given comp time when I did so. My dh also worked for IBM and had 10 weeks of vacation per year by the time he retired. IBM also gave people sabbaticals to work in the community at full pay.
In the inner city school where I taught for 8 years, I got tired of having to buy supplies including copies since we were limited in terms of numbers of copies so if I did not do my own, I would have only had enough for chapter tests. I got tired of having books that were falling apart because the district would not approve new textbooks and then when they did, they approved dumbed down texts (what my dd called geometry for trees - no proofs at all) and threw away the textbooks we got from a grant (no, they did not even offer them to another school, they put them in the dumpster).
I got tired of bringing my own toilet paper at the end of the year because the school ran out of tp.
I got tired of having parent meetings with parents who were gang members and insisted their children would not be *dissed.* Despite that there were many good kids. I went back to graduation two years after I quit to see my wonderful honors geometry kids graduate.
I quit before the NCLB, thank heavens. The stress of working in that school was ruining my health and with the NCLB, it would have been worse.
As with Ivory, I put in a lot more hours when teaching then I ever did in the corporate world for much less pay and with a lot more aggravation. Parents who thought they could do the job better, but who never actually stepped foot in a classroom were a problem even then. Everyone thinks they can teach because they have been a child in the classroom, but they would not last even a year if they attempted it.
Please elaborate on how you're taking a 'beating'.
People like me? You mean the parents who send their kids off to teachers like you who refuse to accept any accountability for the success, or lack thereof, of their students? How can I respect you if you refuse to be accountable?
Maybe you didn't have to 'defend' your profession as an engineer, but you sure as hell were held accountable!
You're job description does not end with 'teaching' the kids, because the kids come along with parents; parents who DO have a vested interest in their child's education; parents who DO see their property taxes going up every year; parents who DO hold you at least partially accountable.
Please enlighten me on the mistreatment of teachers
If you're looking for sympathy, you won't find it here. EVERYONE I know works hard, so please don't complain about working hard.
Everyone I know feels they deserve more pay than they get, so don't complain about that either.
Many people I know work very long hours, often without extra pay because they are salary. Uh, and NO, their salary doesn't compensate - we're in a recession and if you don't accept a lower salary companies will just find someone else who will.
There is a difference between having to stay at work and work overtime compared to grading papers at home. You may have a couple of hours of grading to do, but that can be done all while doing your laundry, cooking dinner, helping the kids with HW, or lying in bed with the TV on.
Oh yes, I know, the 2 1/2 months off for summer, the additional 3 weeks off during the year and the numerous days off for every holiday under the sun sounds horrible.
I think if teachers were TRULY honest in a poll, you would find the vast majority feels a lower salary is worth the PERK of all that time off.
It's spelled dreamt.
The teaching profession is attacked every time I turn around. I see it in the news, on boards like this and IRL. If I get into a casual conversation and the fact I'm a teacher comes up, MOST of the time, within 5 minutes I will be told either/and/or 1) I work part time 2) I'm paid too much 3) We fail at our jobs 4) how to do my job right. Every problem with the education system is blamed on us and placed on our shoulders. The one thing I was not prepared for, when I left engineering to become a teacher was the level of blatent disrespect. Teachers are held in contempt by society. And our only protection, teacher tenure, is under attack (It's the only thing that protects us against one angry parent on the warpath).
Something I've noticed since becomming a teacher is the reaction of people when they learn my profession. As an engineer, people, literally, stood taller upon learning I was an engineer. It was apparent that my opinion of them mattered to them and I was respected just for being an engineer (they had no idea whether I was a good one or a bad one but they assumed I was a good one). As a teacher, it's the reverse. There's this little scowl and within minutes I'm being told how to do my job. As a teacher, I'm treated like I'm an idiot who has no clue how to do her job. It's assumed I'm a bad teacher and I don't know how to do my job.
I'm in Michigan and teachers are, definitely under attack. Our pay, our benefits, teacher tenure, we're threatened with accountability rules that make absolutely no sense (It is impossible to use test scores to determine which teachers are good and which bad unless you have an extremely large sample set (several teachers teaching the same subject at the same level in the same district and even then you'd need longitudinal data to do the comparison).
As a teacher, I am accountable for teaching and I'm accountable for classroom management. I am not a miracle worker. When you put 30 kids in my classroom, some of whom cannot read on grade level or do the level of math required for the subject I teach, SOME WILL FAIL. I'm told that any child failing is unacceptable and it's my fault if they do. They want to use test scores do decide whether or not I'm doing my job. Somehow, I'm supposed to individualize education for the 30 kids in my room in 45 minutes a day and teach them 143 CCE's in a 180 day school year so well that they know them all when they take the state tests.
As an engineer, I was held accountable for doing my job. I'm all for being held to doing my job as a teacher. They're trying to hold me accountable for things that are not under my control.
What do I mean by people like you? Look at what you said. You don't even know me yet you accuse me of failing to accept accountability. Please state your evidence that I don't accept accountability? What I don't accept is the form of accountability that they're trying to force down our throats because it fails to consider major contributors besides me in the equation. It fails to consider home background, innate ability of the student, prior teaching or lack thereof of the student and, effort (or lack thereof) on the part of the student, which are all things I have no control over yet have a major impact on how well I can teach. How well my students perform has more to do with their parents, their prior level of achievement and their effort than it does me!!!! I am one link in a long chain, yet, I'm the one you want to hang out to dry. What about the rest of the chain. How about holding parents and students accountable. Teaching is often compared to business. In business, you can fire lazy employees. I can't fire lazy kids. In business, you don't hire anyone without the proper background or work ethic. In teaching we get them all, prepared and willing to work or not. My job is to teach. Hold me accountable for teaching what I'm supposed to. I'm fine with that because I do it. I cannot, however, force every student to learn what I teach. Some, simply, don't want to and I can't make them and that is not on me. IMO, the biggest problem education has is the attitude of our students. If they valued education, as students do in other countries, (which also, not surpringly have a deep respect for teachers), maybe we'd see their results.
I know I work for a broken system but it is the SYSTEM that is broken not me. Quit attacking me.
And I don't care if I misspell a word when I'm typing fast. If you do some reasearch, you will find that that is common on BB's because people write the way they talk on a board and when we talk, we don't think about spelling or punctuation. Please stick to the topic. We all make typos. Pointing them out serves no purpose.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 06-14-2011 at 03:56 AM..
Background on the writer of the article on the mistreatment of teachers.
National Teachers Hall of Fame (http://www.nthf.org/inductee/haskvitz.htm - broken link)
Some personal notes - I worked for IBM before I went into teaching. When I worked for IBM, I worked lots of hours, but was given comp time when I did so. My dh also worked for IBM and had 10 weeks of vacation per year by the time he retired. IBM also gave people sabbaticals to work in the community at full pay.
In the inner city school where I taught for 8 years, I got tired of having to buy supplies including copies since we were limited in terms of numbers of copies so if I did not do my own, I would have only had enough for chapter tests. I got tired of having books that were falling apart because the district would not approve new textbooks and then when they did, they approved dumbed down texts (what my dd called geometry for trees - no proofs at all) and threw away the textbooks we got from a grant (no, they did not even offer them to another school, they put them in the dumpster).
I got tired of bringing my own toilet paper at the end of the year because the school ran out of tp.
I got tired of having parent meetings with parents who were gang members and insisted their children would not be *dissed.* Despite that there were many good kids. I went back to graduation two years after I quit to see my wonderful honors geometry kids graduate.
I quit before the NCLB, thank heavens. The stress of working in that school was ruining my health and with the NCLB, it would have been worse.
As with Ivory, I put in a lot more hours when teaching then I ever did in the corporate world for much less pay and with a lot more aggravation. Parents who thought they could do the job better, but who never actually stepped foot in a classroom were a problem even then. Everyone thinks they can teach because they have been a child in the classroom, but they would not last even a year if they attempted it.
Thanks for the links. It's finals week and I just don't have time to find them right now.
I agree on all points (I'm not in an inner city school but I have taught in a charter school that had lots of inner city kids. I'm sure the city schools themselves are many times worse.). I worked fewer hours as an engineer than I do as a teacher and I was paid for every hour I worked as an engineer while I'm only paid for most hours as a teacher. If I got comp time now they'd have to extend the calendar year by a few weeks to give me all the time I have coming, because the summer doesn't quite make it, yet, there is no shortage of people who tell me I work part time....UGH.
I'm amazed that anyone thinks teachers aren't under attack. I feel attacked at every corner these days. Engineering is looking better and better and I'm hearing rumors that there is a shortage of chemical engineers in the south.
I think you hit the nail on the head with the bolded sentence. Teaching 30 kids is different than teaching one yet people think that because they've worked with one, one whom they have a long term relationship with BTW, that they could teach 30 at a time whom they aren't related to and only have a short term relationship with.
Teaching is very different than parenting. Hold me accountable for teaching and hold the parents accountable for parenting.
By any measure I have well achieving students. We had 10% of our seniors get perfect on the SATs, 100% college placement rate, 15% into the IL, I had multiple students published in peer reviewed journals, go to the national intel science fair, more than a third of the sophomores got 750 or better on the chem SAT II, etc. I am a good teacher, I am also no more responsible for the success of these children then any other teacher.
The reality is that student achievement is in equal parts due to parents, the school (including teachers) and the students themselves. If any one of those parts is lacking it is almost impossible to succeed.
Which begs the question, when students achieve why do parents take all the credit and when they fail teachers get all the blame?
As a teacher, I have to say that effort on the part of the student can overcome the other two. A student's effort, or lack thereof, is the one thing that can sway the quality of their education one way or the other. Most teachers can't. There are those few exceptional teachers that can reach a student but, as in any profession, the superstars are far and few between. The one thing I see making a difference is the student's attitude. The ones who try, usually, succeed. The ones who don't, usually, don't. And I would love to figure out how to turn the latter into the former.
I love your last line. So true. When kids fail, it's our fault. When they succeed, we had nothing to do with it. And people don't see the teaching profession as under attack here? We're the scapegoats when things go wrong but just happened to get good kids when it goes right. Please pick one and stick with it. Prefferably the latter because that's closer to the truth. The outcome of my classes depends more on the quality of the students entering my class in September than it does me. I'm a minor player at best and I know it. A needed one but any individual teacher is unlikely to be a major contributor in how a child turns out when everything is considered.
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Somehow, I'm supposed to individualize education for the 30 kids in my room in 45 minutes a day and teach them 143 CCE's in a 180 day school year so well that they know them all when they take the state tests.
