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I teach other classes also at this vocational school, and I have a great reputation for being a dynamic teacher and get many people who contact me after the classes who tell me how much help I provided them.
Its funny how if people disagree with others on message boards they always like to personally attack the person they disagree with.
Funny, seems you're doing the same thing to your students. They didn't develop the life skills they need now in the course of their lives, they come to you to teach them said skills, and you not only think of them as stupid...you go onto a forum to tell others you think their stupid...who is worse? Me or you?
A few years ago I was hired for a part time job teaching low skilled, poorly educated and disadvantaged adults how to find a job and how to be successful in their new jobs. It is connected to a school program popular with immigrants, welfare to work and lost soles who have struggled with their working life since they graduated from High School.
The good side is because everyone is an adult and they signed up for the program, there is no attendance or discipline problems.
The bad side is a realization on my part that America is full of people who have little if any smarts, common sense, work skills, or knowledge about how society and the workplace operates.
Most of the students have a resume that they developed but when I review it, I am shocked how terrible it is. Misspelled words, poor grammar, terrible formatting, misleading information and in some cases pages and pages of unnecessary information.
The students lack of information and skills related to how to interview for a job and how to be successful once they start is shocking.
All are High School Graduates. Why wasn't this type of information taught in High School. To much time with advanced math?
Anyone who also teaches disadvantaged adults who can give me some advice and support?
I have to say, I'm going into teaching myself.. What you wrote is pretty horrible. Why is there a need to say everything you said ?
To quote you from your post...
" misleading information and in some cases pages and pages of unnecessary information. "
It's great that you're teaching uneducated adults, You don't need to put them down on a public forum. Some people just haven't had the same advantages or breaks that other people have had. As for the " how did they graduate high school ? " question, I would say for more people my age or between 18-25, It would probably have to do with No Child Left Behind.
Personally, I'd rather have a teacher say to me "Sorry about your shi**y schooling/upbringing but you are woefully unprepared for the work world and here are your options and these are my high expectations which you must meet..."
This is not a put-down, just honesty. Nowadays it seems to be more important to protect the "fragile ego" of the disadvantaged (hence all the entitlement). Many times though, they need a drill sargeant not a cheerleader...
BTW, did I mention that I had shi**y city schooling/upbringing but this is exactly what my best teachers did for me to get me on the right path to a good college education and career....
Location: Visitation between Wal-Mart & Home Depot
8,309 posts, read 38,779,335 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by GoCUBS1
Personally, I'd rather have a teacher say to me "Sorry about your shi**y schooling/upbringing but you are woefully unprepared for the work world and here are your options and these are my high expectations which you must meet..."
This is not a put-down, just honesty. Nowadays it seems to be more important to protect the "fragile ego" of the disadvantaged (hence all the entitlement). Many times though, they need a drill sargeant not a cheerleader...
BTW, did I mention that I had shi**y city schooling/upbringing but this is exactly what my best teachers did for me to get me on the right path to a good college education and career....
Just my 2 cents...
I like this post. Direct and to-the-point instruction is a lost art. I think that the pervasive notion of absolute FAIRNESS and "Everyone is a winner" is akin to enabling.
I want to know where are these high schools that supposedly teach these skills? I never had any type of class in high school that adressed these topics, and neither did my kids. I'll wager that most of these adult students didn't either.
Why would you expect people who have never had any exposure to these types of work situations to have any idea at all about the the correct way to deal with them? The sort of skills you are talking about are a totally foreign concept, not the sort of thing you learn while standing in line at the welfare office, or while waiting at the public clinics, or running the register at the local dollar store.
Being ignorant about a subject isn't the same as being stupid. The lazy ones will probably still be ignorant even after going through your class. Hopefully the rest will gain some useful knowledge and then maybe everyone can quit referring to them as stupid.
I just don't get it.When you took this job, you did realize you would be teaching these skills to adult learners, correct? And speaking for someone who has been on welfare, I am neither lazy nor stupid. And I find your comments to not only be offensive, but they show YOUR lack of intelligence and YOUR ignorance.
Not everyone who is on welfare is there because they don't want to work.Some are there because of something that has happened to them or because of circumstances that they could not prevent.But the mere fact that these people want to better themselves and learn the skills they lack shows initiative on their part. And for you to sit there with your holier-than-thou attitude and call them names makes me really angry.Maybe it's because of teachers like you that they made it out of high school without these skills in the first place.
And by the way, there is a difference between stupidity and ignorance. These people are ignorant of the skills they need. Ignorange means you don't have the knowledge, it doesn't mean you don't want to learn, it just means you have not mastered a particular skill yet. The official meaning is:The condition of being uneducated, unaware, or uninformed
However, the official meaning of stupid is as follows:
Slow to learn or understand; obtuse.
Tending to make poor decisions or careless mistakes. Marked by a lack of intelligence or care; foolish :
In my book, with your attitude, you qualify as stupid.
There is so much research contrary to this.... However that is not the purpose of this particular thread. But here are just a few articles on this. Also search this forum to find more opinions/research on why "bright" kids ARE bored in school and why the US education system and NCLB are failing them.
None of these articles are research-based. Time magazine is hardly an educational research mag, the about.com articles simply references the Time article, and the other two articles are editorial opinion pieces. I didn't read them all deeply, but they seemed to be more about failing gifted students, spending too much money on special ed and so forth, than about bright students being "bored". Truly gifted people comprise a very small percentage of the population, and "bored" kids comprise a large part of the school population.
I like this post. Direct and to-the-point instruction is a lost art. I think that the pervasive notion of absolute FAIRNESS and "Everyone is a winner" is akin to enabling.
until one of the people that you just told that to pulls out a gun and kills the class... then it's probably going to have been said that you did the wrong thing...
I want to know where are these high schools that supposedly teach these skills? I never had any type of class in high school that adressed these topics, and neither did my kids. I'll wager that most of these adult students didn't either.
Why would you expect people who have never had any exposure to these types of work situations to have any idea at all about the the correct way to deal with them? The sort of skills you are talking about are a totally foreign concept, not the sort of thing you learn while standing in line at the welfare office, or while waiting at the public clinics, or running the register at the local dollar store.
Being ignorant about a subject isn't the same as being stupid. The lazy ones will probably still be ignorant even after going through your class. Hopefully the rest will gain some useful knowledge and then maybe everyone can quit referring to them as stupid.
I never expected they would be an expert in these things but everyone who is in the job market should have some knowledge of workplace dynmanics, resumes, interviewing and other issues. The library is free to everyone and full of books on the subject.
I never said anyone was stupid I just said many of the students were slow, passive and ill informed.
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