A student's point of view (mathematics, history, cost, bachelors)
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This is the problem with the attitude that if we make it relevent kids will WANT to learn. What we teach often isn't relevent for years to come or it's in preparation for that which is relevent.
We really need to get out of this thinking that it's the teacher's job to make kids learn and start thinking that it's the students job to learn whether they want to or not. If not, let them do something else.
I think this is very true. I remember not liking geometry because I kept thinking how I would never ever use it and it was a waste of my time to try to learn it. When I got to college, not having done well in math limited my choice of majors. That's why when I had kids, we encouraged them to take the most rigorous classes they could do well in so there would be more choices for majors/careers. But, my parents had not gone to college and really didn't explain the consequences. Not blaming them, but I understand why some kids do not try harder.
When my daughter taught in Harlem, she said that the biggest obstacle she had was that her students had no motivation to learn. Their parents, for the most part, were just scraping by and going to school had not rewarded them with much at all. They saw no bright future.
I think this is very true. I remember not liking geometry because I kept thinking how I would never ever use it and it was a waste of my time to try to learn it. When I got to college, not having done well in math limited my choice of majors. That's why when I had kids, we encouraged them to take the most rigorous classes they could do well in so there would be more choices for majors/careers. But, my parents had not gone to college and really didn't explain the consequences. Not blaming them, but I understand why some kids do not try harder.
When my daughter taught in Harlem, she said that the biggest obstacle she had was that her students had no motivation to learn. Their parents, for the most part, were just scraping by and going to school had not rewarded them with much at all. They saw no bright future.
I agree. I don't have issues with my students whose parents went to college and did well. They, clearly, see the path they need to take. Even if they don't see the relevence of what they learn today, they understand that how well they learn today determines their future options and they want to keep those options open. It's the students who don't see this I struggle with.
I will be forever grateful to the counselor who told me to repeat my senior year at CC before taking college level courses. My friends said it was a waste of time but it was my second chance. I didn't see the relevence in high school. I didn't see it that first year in college either but I was paying for those classes and by golly I was going to get my money's worth. I didn't know that would lead to an engineering degree (seriously, I thought engineers drove trains back then...)
I wish I knew what to do with bright students who just don't apply themselves. I had one this year who I could have deep conversations about the material with but he failed to learn enough of what was taught to pass the tests and didn't do enough work to pass the class. I don't feel bad failing him because he can do this and I know he can. AND he NEEDS to do it. Hopefully, next year he will.
Ivory, you don't need to do anything with them. They'll figure it out, just like every generation has done before them. If somehow not getting As in high school physics impacts them for the rest of their lives, which I strongly doubt it will, they can always go audit a course as an adult. This is really not a big huge deal in the grand scheme of things... think of all of the students who don't even TAKE high school physics! It was an elective in my high school, and I can't imagine that all of the students who didn't take it are flipping burgers due to their poor choices. (Heck, I only took high school physics because my high school crush was taking it and I wanted to be his lab partner, as I was in chemistry during my junior year. Talk about long-range goals! LOL)
when one of my daughters was in high school she barely scraped by in english,.. apparently more than 50% of the class regularily, every year, was failing this teachers class.....(Why they kept her I'll never know)..... the next year she was getting A s....and when the school shut for a few days (necessary repairs) her teacher offered his class in a church basement for whoever wanted to come...I seriously doubted anyone would......amazingly ,all his students came...they loved learning, and this teacher made it so interesting and so much fun to learn that his students not only enjoyed and WANTED to attend his classes....they all passed in flying colors....I agree that SOME students really don't want to learn...but I believe the majority do...it's probably just really hard when the course is sooooo boring and irrelevent to any interests the student may have.
Last edited by purehuman; 07-10-2012 at 10:57 AM..
If a child aspires to be a heavy duty equipment operator, or a longshoreman, or a carpenter, or an appliance repair man,.....why is it soooo important that they learn all about shakespeare in english?...THAT'S the turn-off,..... and why so many kids just don't want to learn in school
....Unfortunately, for people like me, who answered the call to put teachers with actual degrees in the math and science into the classroom, this made us worse than useless to most districts which would perfer flexibility in scheduling to subject matter expertise.
Isn't a secondary school ed degree considered a subject matter degree?
My degree is in music education. I had to take all the classes that every music major had to take and music ed majors were considered both music and education majors. All music majors had to take the same core curriculum which consisted of the basic fundamentals of music:
Music Theory (5 courses)
Sight Singing (4 courses)
History/Culture (4 courses)
Private lessons on your instrument (every semester)
Music ensembles (every semester)
After that there were different programs for:
Perfomance
Education
BA Music (general music degree)
Commercial Music (creative and business tracks)
There were a different set of classes for the program. Education majors took pedagogy classes (and education classes in the college of ed). Performance majors took more classes in literature and stage presence. Commercial music majors took more classes in business and recording technology. All music classes were open to all music majors and each degree had a different final project but they were MUSIC projects. We all had to pass the same exit exam, given by the music department, to graduate.
However, we were all considered music majors and there is nobody who will tell you that music education major is not considered a music degree.
Is it different elsewhere? I consider a math education degree a math degree.
My wife teaches high school math, grades 9-12. She's taught everything from algebra 1 and geometry to statistics. She loves her job, and there are students who really want to learn - especially in the upper level math classes that are electives.
However - the required courses are a different matter. The high school she teaches at does not pull from the cream of the crop in our county. There are a few good neighborhoods, but there are also bad ones, with more kids coming from the bad ones. The schools overall test scores bear this out, with all sections generally doing bad. The schools in "better" sections of the county do far better.
She has students who simply don't show up to school at all and don't care. Their parents don't care. On the flip side of that, she's had students who turn in zero work, show up for maybe half the classes, then whine to their parents because they realize they're not going to graduate. We've gotten calls at home from these parents trying to force her to give these kids extra credit in the last month of school so they can graduate, then go to the AP and principal when she refuses. 99.9% of the time, her hand is forced because the administrators want the kids out of the school, caring only about numbers. The state forces them to do this. Bad numbers = administrator loses their job.
The students that really do want to learn are a dream. They excel at what they do and ask for more, coming after school to get help on what they didnt' understand. They are the only ones that do. When she offers to let kids retake a test, she might get a few. The rest don't care. When she posts grades, it's a sad mix. You'll have the same kids getting As and Bs, then up to half the class fails - there isn't much of a middle ground.
Ivory, you don't need to do anything with them. They'll figure it out, just like every generation has done before them. If somehow not getting As in high school physics impacts them for the rest of their lives, which I strongly doubt it will, they can always go audit a course as an adult. This is really not a big huge deal in the grand scheme of things... think of all of the students who don't even TAKE high school physics! It was an elective in my high school, and I can't imagine that all of the students who didn't take it are flipping burgers due to their poor choices. (Heck, I only took high school physics because my high school crush was taking it and I wanted to be his lab partner, as I was in chemistry during my junior year. Talk about long-range goals! LOL)
I agree that students should be left to learn the lessons taught by the consequences of their choices BUT adminstration and parents disagree. It is not the student who is blamed for failure but the teacher even when the failure is due to lack of participation on the part of the student.
BTW, I teach high school chemistry. Which is now required for graduation . Apparently, making kids who lack the gray matter to pass chemistry take chemistry (and pass) raises the bar??? Don't the morons who make these choices get that the only way this can happen is if we LOWER the requirements to pass???
LOL on your reasons for taking physics. Those were the days...
Kids really don't get the ramifications of their choices and there is little I can do to convince them otherwise. As many here will recall, we KNEW IT ALL at 17 and no one could tell us we didn't. I think students are like those little root bound plants you buy in the spring. The plant is convinced that it's little plastic pocket is all there is. So much so that if you don't break up their roots, they'll still be in that root bound shape in the fall when you dig them up. I think life has to smash a student's root ball before they'll realize that they don't know it all....they hardly have a clue.
My wife teaches high school math, grades 9-12. She's taught everything from algebra 1 and geometry to statistics. She loves her job, and there are students who really want to learn - especially in the upper level math classes that are electives.
However - the required courses are a different matter. The high school she teaches at does not pull from the cream of the crop in our county. There are a few good neighborhoods, but there are also bad ones, with more kids coming from the bad ones. The schools overall test scores bear this out, with all sections generally doing bad. The schools in "better" sections of the county do far better.
She has students who simply don't show up to school at all and don't care. Their parents don't care. On the flip side of that, she's had students who turn in zero work, show up for maybe half the classes, then whine to their parents because they realize they're not going to graduate. We've gotten calls at home from these parents trying to force her to give these kids extra credit in the last month of school so they can graduate, then go to the AP and principal when she refuses. 99.9% of the time, her hand is forced because the administrators want the kids out of the school, caring only about numbers. The state forces them to do this. Bad numbers = administrator loses their job.
The students that really do want to learn are a dream. They excel at what they do and ask for more, coming after school to get help on what they didnt' understand. They are the only ones that do. When she offers to let kids retake a test, she might get a few. The rest don't care. When she posts grades, it's a sad mix. You'll have the same kids getting As and Bs, then up to half the class fails - there isn't much of a middle ground.
Elective courses are always better. I LOVE teaching physics. All of the students who are there chose to be there. Their reasons may be different but they are there by choice. That makes the class a whole different animal from my chemistry classes which are required for graduation. There is a subset of students who are angry over being made to take chemistry in those classes. These students will disrupt the learning process any way they can because they think they'll have to learn less if they succeed.
I agree with your wife. The ones who want to learn are a dream. I also see kids not bothering with retakes on tests. I had kids email me arguing about their failing grades who didn't even bother trying to retake tests or submitting the remediation packets I let them do to pull up their grades. These kids won't help themselves but boy are they mad when YOU fail them.
I also see little middle ground. I don't see a bell curve, I see a bathtub curve. More A's than anything, then a bunch of B's, a few C's and D's and a bunch of E's. I'm told the E's are my fault and the A's are just the really good kids who would have done well anyway. Funny how I get blamed for the E's but don't get credit for the A's.
When I offer retakes, about 1/4th of the kids who fail will try but most will do just as bad or worse on the retake. I, usually, get one or two who come in and do much better on the retake. I can't make them care.
Isn't a secondary school ed degree considered a subject matter degree?
My degree is in music education. I had to take all the classes that every music major had to take and music ed majors were considered both music and education majors. All music majors had to take the same core curriculum which consisted of the basic fundamentals of music:
Music Theory (5 courses)
Sight Singing (4 courses)
History/Culture (4 courses)
Private lessons on your instrument (every semester)
Music ensembles (every semester)
After that there were different programs for:
Perfomance
Education
BA Music (general music degree)
Commercial Music (creative and business tracks)
There were a different set of classes for the program. Education majors took pedagogy classes (and education classes in the college of ed). Performance majors took more classes in literature and stage presence. Commercial music majors took more classes in business and recording technology. All music classes were open to all music majors and each degree had a different final project but they were MUSIC projects. We all had to pass the same exit exam, given by the music department, to graduate.
However, we were all considered music majors and there is nobody who will tell you that music education major is not considered a music degree.
Is it different elsewhere? I consider a math education degree a math degree.
No, it's an ed degree. I have a masters degree in chemical engineering and a master of arts in teaching. There are ed majors and minors. For example, I think 30 credits would be an ed major in chemistry (I have 87 credits for comparison but they counted chemical engineering courses as well as chemistry courses. Mine is a stand alone degree.) and 16 or 20 credits would be a minor. My major in math is an ed major (30 credits in math including my methods course. I have more but they didn't count because they were either too high or too low. Most of my associates degree in math did not count and most of my graduate enginereing math did not count.) and my physics minor is an ed minor (16 credits in physics. Given that engineering is applied physics, I really have a lot more but they don't count engineering courses as physics courses.).
Outside of education, I could not claim to have either a math major or a physics minor. I don't meet the criteria either. However, I'd justify teaching either with the fact that math is an engineers first language and engineering is applied physics. So even though I don't have a stand alone degree in either one, I'd still consider myself highly qualified.
For science there's another cert called the DI (old DX). It's 36 credits in science, 12 in physical science, 12 in life science and 12 in earth science and holders are considered highly qualified to teach any science class in grades 6-12. This is the high demand certificate. Most schools don't want you if you can only teach one or two subjects no matter how much of an expert you are.
I have no idea how a music ed major compares to a bachelors degree in music. You'd know more about that than I. I know that outside of education I don't even come close to having either a math degree or a physics degree. I might be able to pull off a minor in math with the courses I had to take to get my ed major in math. I'd need 3 or 4 more physics courses to have a minor but I have a major in engineering.
Last edited by Ivorytickler; 07-10-2012 at 12:39 PM..
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This is the problem with the attitude that if we make it relevent kids will WANT to learn. What we teach often isn't relevent for years to come or it's in preparation for that which is relevent. 
. Apparently, making kids who lack the gray matter to pass chemistry take chemistry (and pass) raises the bar??? Don't the morons who make these choices get that the only way this can happen is if we LOWER the requirements to pass??? 
