Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I very much get it. This isn't a game and I know how very difficult it is not to fill a position. Much easier to leave a poor performer in a position than to have a vacant position and perhaps lose it so you have no position. Yet I've made that decision anyway. Not once but multiple times. The stakes are too high. We can't afford to have poor performers in those positions.
Before I go further, I want to say this isn't addressed to you personally but toward education in general. You and I may disagree on many things, but you are on here willing to debate and I recognize that much is lost in a text debate that wouldn't be lost in person. So, when I use "you" in the following, it isn't mean as you personally, but the generic you of the education system.
What do you say to those kids and their parents when the teacher they got isn't effective? How do you tell them "Well you didn't learn as much as the kids in X's class, but we had to hire somebody to fill the position and you drew the short straw. Here's your diploma, you can always take an extra year in college to make it up." I just don't understand how those inside education don't see that poor teachers have a negative impact far greater than just their percent of the workforce. Just one year of a poor teacher can take years of good teachers to undo.
But you have not answered the key question. What do you do with those 125 or more math students for whom there is NO teacher?
I had just that happen one year. No decent math candidate. I took the best I could find. And it was fairly bad...but certainly better than a substitute. I made every reasonable effort to coach her, brought in coaches from outside, and then began the same sort of evaluation that you do when you're thinking you're going to have to fire a teacher. At the end of that year, she left when I had finally found a better candidate.
Schools are no different than life in general. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.
But you have not answered the key question. What do you do with those 125 or more math students for whom there is NO teacher?
I had just that happen one year. No decent math candidate. I took the best I could find. And it was fairly bad...but certainly better than a substitute. I made every reasonable effort to coach her, brought in coaches from outside, and then began the same sort of evaluation that you do when you're thinking you're going to have to fire a teacher. At the end of that year, she left when I had finally found a better candidate.
Schools are no different than life in general. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.
When we had a math class with no teacher, we asked the other teachers to take an extra class. That meant paying each teacher extra. There were 5 sections of that class so each of 5 teachers took one section. I actually had one of my best geometry classes that way since the parents were very supportive and the kids were tired of being without a teacher (they had subs for almost 6 weeks).
But you have not answered the key question. What do you do with those 125 or more math students for whom there is NO teacher?
I had just that happen one year. No decent math candidate. I took the best I could find. And it was fairly bad...but certainly better than a substitute. I made every reasonable effort to coach her, brought in coaches from outside, and then began the same sort of evaluation that you do when you're thinking you're going to have to fire a teacher. At the end of that year, she left when I had finally found a better candidate.
Schools are no different than life in general. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.
Out of curiosity, beyond your position, what were the rest of the administrative positions at your school?
When we had a math class with no teacher, we asked the other teachers to take an extra class. That meant paying each teacher extra. There were 5 sections of that class so each of 5 teachers took one section. I actually had one of my best geometry classes that way since the parents were very supportive and the kids were tired of being without a teacher (they had subs for almost 6 weeks).
One of our math teachers has been deployed to Afghanistan for most of the past three years. The first year she was gone, we had a new principal who saw math on my teaching certificate. He scheduled me to take two geometry classes even though it had been more than twenty years since I had taught math, and I had never taught geometry.
One of my students from that year who took both French and geometry and who is now in his third year of French told me last week that he thought I was a pretty good math teacher, even though I had been freaking out. I was helping him with a project for his senior math class that was based on one of the topics I taught him. It turned out that he didn't really need my help at all, once I pointed out to him that he knew everything already.
I thought it was very nice of him to tell me that. He knows what I went through that year, what with my eyebrows and eyelashes falling out and me waking in tears in the night because I couldn't wrap my head around being a math teacher. More than once, I completely lost my train of thought and couldn't continue, something that almost never happens in my French classes.
If I had been asked to do it again, I would probably retire. The only thing that got me through was a couple of great friends, a great spouse, great kids, and repetition of the mantra "I'm better than a sub." I was never able to keep up with the pacing guide, but a few of the students did learn a lot and demonstrated that when I gave the math section of an ACT test right before the final exam.
There aren't enough people available from which to choose. There is no one in the pipeline. Sometimes the only "choice" is between bad or none. Schools have to offer required courses even when they have to be staffed with emergency license holders. And then they get cited for having too many emergency licenses. It's a losing proposition. Our district needs 300 teachers for next year. Our school needs 20. I don't know where the principals are going to find them.
I've only got a few more years left in me and there is no one to whom to pass the torch. That's one of the things that is keeping in the classroom now. Once I'm gone, students choosing a foreign language will essentially have no choice at all. It will be Spanish or nothing but virtual classes. Few French teachers are coming out of schools, even though French is still extremely useful globally.
What do you say to those kids and their parents when the teacher they got isn't effective? How do you tell them "Well you didn't learn as much as the kids in X's class, but we had to hire somebody to fill the position and you drew the short straw. Here's your diploma, you can always take an extra year in college to make it up." I just don't understand how those inside education don't see that poor teachers have a negative impact far greater than just their percent of the workforce. Just one year of a poor teacher can take years of good teachers to undo.
As I read your comments, I notice you make everything out to be black and white. A teacher is either effective or not effective. You seem to focus on the damage that one bad teacher can have on a student. I wonder what level of teacher you are referring? Do your comments apply to elementary, middle school or high school, or all of these?
We all look at situations from our own perspective. When I think back to the teachers I had, it is difficult to rate most as effective or ineffective. My elementary teachers had to teach to a diverse group of students. They were probably all effective, so maybe I don't have the experience of a really poor teacher in the most formative years.
Junior high and high school were a different story. Looking at English for example, my teachers ranged from awful to extraordinary. My 9th grade teacher was extraordinary and my 12th grade teacher was excellent. My 8th and 10th grade English teachers were awful and should not have been teaching. I had tho think for a minute what their names were and I remember little of what they attempted to teach. How much of a negative impact did these teachers have on me? I would have to say, not much. It is probably more of an opportunity missed. I could have read more literature and developed better writing skills in those years. But to say that it took years of good teachers to undo just one year of a bad teacher is an exaggeration.
I'm in Pennsylvania and we have an oversupply of teachers in most areas. PA has graduated more teachers than it can employ since the 1960s. Many of these people move to Maryland, Florida, and Virginia to find jobs. In Western PA, most school districts have a shrinking enrollment so many teaching jobs are not replace when a teacher retires. There are still situations when districts can't fill jobs. I sub in various districts so I'm aware of these situation. Most of them are in foreign language. My local district used to provide Latin and German but they have been dropped. I'm aware of a couple situations where they could not find a long term sub for German and Spanish. Another district could not find a permanent teacher who was certified to teach physics. In the one situation, the district has bought an online module to teach Spanish to replace a teacher on long term disability. The students currently have a different sub everyday.
One of our math teachers has been deployed to Afghanistan for most of the past three years. The first year she was gone, we had a new principal who saw math on my teaching certificate. He scheduled me to take two geometry classes even though it had been more than twenty years since I had taught math, and I had never taught geometry.
One of my students from that year who took both French and geometry and who is now in his third year of French told me last week that he thought I was a pretty good math teacher, even though I had been freaking out. I was helping him with a project for his senior math class that was based on one of the topics I taught him. It turned out that he didn't really need my help at all, once I pointed out to him that he knew everything already.
I thought it was very nice of him to tell me that. He knows what I went through that year, what with my eyebrows and eyelashes falling out and me waking in tears in the night because I couldn't wrap my head around being a math teacher. More than once, I completely lost my train of thought and couldn't continue, something that almost never happens in my French classes.
If I had been asked to do it again, I would probably retire. The only thing that got me through was a couple of great friends, a great spouse, great kids, and repetition of the mantra "I'm better than a sub." I was never able to keep up with the pacing guide, but a few of the students did learn a lot and demonstrated that when I gave the math section of an ACT test right before the final exam.
There aren't enough people available from which to choose. There is no one in the pipeline. Sometimes the only "choice" is between bad or none. Schools have to offer required courses even when they have to be staffed with emergency license holders. And then they get cited for having too many emergency licenses. It's a losing proposition. Our district needs 300 teachers for next year. Our school needs 20. I don't know where the principals are going to find them.
I've only got a few more years left in me and there is no one to whom to pass the torch. That's one of the things that is keeping in the classroom now. Once I'm gone, students choosing a foreign language will essentially have no choice at all. It will be Spanish or nothing but virtual classes. Few French teachers are coming out of schools, even though French is still extremely useful globally.
I had it a little easier, but I (science teacher) was asked to teach a history class one year. I didn't know how to teach history, although at least history was somewhat of an interest to me.
But you have not answered the key question. What do you do with those 125 or more math students for whom there is NO teacher?
I had just that happen one year. No decent math candidate. I took the best I could find. And it was fairly bad...but certainly better than a substitute. I made every reasonable effort to coach her, brought in coaches from outside, and then began the same sort of evaluation that you do when you're thinking you're going to have to fire a teacher. At the end of that year, she left when I had finally found a better candidate.
Schools are no different than life in general. Sometimes you have to make the best of a bad situation.
I would redistribute those students across other math classes or have some of the other teachers take an extra class until the issue was resolved. I can't picture a school that has that many students without a teacher that doesn't have other qualified math teachers in it. Even my little rinky dink high school that had less than 150 students total had enough math teachers to cover the situation you described if by some miracle we had 150 students show up the first day of school. Not enough science teachers, but plenty of math, English, and history teachers.
The real question is an analysis of why there are no qualified candidates. I get it; I've read a thousand resumes to make 10 interviews and no viable candidate selected. Do I need to sweeten the pot a bit? Moving bonus, pay bump, etc?
Quote:
Originally Posted by villageidiot1
As I read your comments, I notice you make everything out to be black and white. A teacher is either effective or not effective. You seem to focus on the damage that one bad teacher can have on a student. I wonder what level of teacher you are referring? Do your comments apply to elementary, middle school or high school, or all of these?
….
How much of a negative impact did these teachers have on me? I would have to say, not much. It is probably more of an opportunity missed. I could have read more literature and developed better writing skills in those years. But to say that it took years of good teachers to undo just one year of a bad teacher is an exaggeration.
....
My comments do apply to all grades. I'm not seeing it so much as black and white, but as impact to students, esp in today's standard focused education. A topic is only taught in certain grades, though knowledge of that topic may be expected in follow on classes and college. Let's use the example from above of 150 math students. The teacher doesn't cover all topics or doesn't cover them well enough to create understanding. Those 150 students move on to the next grade where they are expected to already know this material. But they don't. Now what do you do? Go back and teach them over, not covering the new material or expect them to somehow catch up on their own? Hold everyone else back until they catch up? Or they get to college where the stakes are much higher and discover they were expected to come in knowing things that they were never taught but the students around them, who went to different schools, were? So yes, a bad teacher can do a lot of damage.
Quote:
Originally Posted by villageidiot1
We all look at situations from our own perspective. When I think back to the teachers I had, it is difficult to rate most as effective or ineffective. My elementary teachers had to teach to a diverse group of students. They were probably all effective, so maybe I don't have the experience of a really poor teacher in the most formative years.
Junior high and high school were a different story. Looking at English for example, my teachers ranged from awful to extraordinary. My 9th grade teacher was extraordinary and my 12th grade teacher was excellent. My 8th and 10th grade English teachers were awful and should not have been teaching. I had tho think for a minute what their names were and I remember little of what they attempted to teach.
....
Agree, we are all shaped by our perspective. From my experience as a student and as a parent, I don't define teachers by a normal distribution. I saw a very different distribution, essentially bi-modal in shape. Using the typical school grading system, there were a cluster of A's, more than a normal distribution would provide, may be 20%. Very few, but some, B's and C's. Then a large cluster of D's, maybe 60%, and the remainder, being F's with varying degrees of badness who should fired immediately but never were. So when I'm drawing that line between effective and ineffective, we're already somewhere in the large group of D's.
Think about the implication for a minute. We're not talking about the difference between an outstanding teacher and a mediocre teacher; we're talking about degrees of mediocrity. The reasons why they were mediocre vary. Some just didn't know the material and taught wrong "facts" (it's really bad when as a 4th grader you know more science than the science teacher). Some just hated students (why were they in teaching?). Some were abusive and bullies. Some couldn't pour water out of a bucket with the instructions written on the bottom. Some were pretty good in the classroom, but seemed to have a bit of a problem in the bedroom with female students.
Well, it's certainly failing the taxpayers.
Back in the 90's, everyone wanted to work for the Chicago system; 3 of my friends did just that.
All 3 took early retirement before age 50, and moved to Florida.
My fitness center is chock full of retired teachers in their 50's, one just returned from Punta Cana.
They seem to have it better than most in my town, of which the majority are still working.
As some of you may know, Illinois is in huge trouble due to pensions.
Even with the fiscal mess, the minimum teacher salary will be raised in July.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
