Race to Nowhere vs Waiting for Superman

[Ivorytickler]

Originally Posted by stepka

I've done a lot of thinking about this today and bounced ideas off colleagues and I'm writing this between baking batches of cookies for the debate tournament this weekend.

The movie Waiting for Superman talked a lot about bad teachers and how difficult it is to get rid of them and I agree that this is a huge problem--I'm esp resentful these days when the market for teachers has dried up and I work in the classrooms of teachers who I know don't teach nearly as well as I do.

But here's the thing--I've almost never seen someone who was awful across the board. I've almost never seen a teacher who's given up entirely. I"ve seen them with classroom control issues, but maybe they just got a bad class--happens to the best of them. I've seen gifted teachers who were terribly disorganized. I've seen poor teachers who were gifted in the mothering realm, and with our emotionally disturbed sped kids, that's a gift that is much needed. All of them have their strengths and weaknesses, and the only ones I've thought were truly harmful were the abusive ones, like the ones I discussed above, and those who are no more emotionally mature than the kids they teach--they're still trying to be popular and it's disturbing, b/c the last one I saw that was like that, slept with a student. Maybe that's why they have such a hard time weeding them out--it's really hard to decide whether a teacher is good or bad for the kids and principals usually have to rely on their own gut feeling, which may not be very reliable. (The one who slept with the student is out though!) I've subbed in some inner city schools too and have met some extremely great teachers, so it's a myth that these schools can't get good teachers.

Compare teaching with every other profession--there are good and bad and average doctors, lawyers, nurses, account execs, plumbers, etc. Why are teachers expected to be superhuman? And what exactly has changed about them in the last 30 years anyway? I still think it's the system that is broken--that and the fact that schools are still trying to teach what they taught 30 years ago, and the students believe that much of it is not relevant to their future lives.

I agree with much of what you said and I believe students don't see relevance in what is taught but I do think that we still need to teach what was taught 30 years ago. I teach chemistry and I don't have a ghost of a chance of teaching you the advances that have been made in the last 30 years until I get you to where we were 30 years ago. Kids still need to learn to read and write, they still need to learn history (only 30 more years of it), they still learn to play musical instruments the same way, they still need to learn the same math, etc, etc, etc... I'm really puzzled when schools are accused of teaching what they did 30 years ago or 50 years ago for that matter, what should we have thrown out by now? And what would the effect be of throwing that material out?

What we need is a longer school year to fit in the new stuff we have to teach on top of the old stuff. Or maybe we just need to get back to basics and leave the additional material for later?

In this day and age, do we really need to teach computers? Or should we simply teach with computers? When I first learned computers, we had to do our own programming so we had to learn computers. Now, everything it point and click. If you need something, you buy a program. Do I really need to take instructional time to teach kids how to use a program? I've watched my dd's learn to use programs on their own when required to use them.

Seriously, what do you think we should be teaching today that we are not and what do you think we taught 30 years ago that isn't needed today?

[Bhaalspawn]

IMHO both documentaries (neither of which I've watched) really just act as a smokescreen. The basic premise is probably the notion that, "People will get better jobs and our nation's economy will be better if people are better educated." However, in reality the vast majority of jobs are low-wage jobs that don't make use of college education--retail clerks, etc. If everyone goes to college then we'll end up being the nation with the world's most highly educated Walmart and McDonalds employees.

Presumably both documentaries just reinforce the dogma that education will magically solve our nation's economic and employment problems.

[antredd]

Originally Posted by Ivorytickler

I wonder if we had the same 4th grade teacher. Mine was a nut case who knew nothing about children. She kept sending notes home saying I wasn't paying attention because I kept asking questions. She and I went toe to toe one day when she put the numbers 1-10 on the board and asked which ones were divisible by 2 and I answered "All of them". She asked me "Ok smart aleck, what do you get when you divide 5 by 2?" and I answered 2 and a half. She then asked "You mean if you have 5 kittens you'd cut one in half?". At this point, I was so frustrated and angry (I really liked kittens and didn't like being accused of being mean enough to cut one in half) I yelled "YOU DIDN'T SAY KITTENS!" and ended up in the principals office yet again.

She once gave everyone in the class a piece of gum, at the beginning of the day, for being so good for the sub the previous day and then lined us all up and paddled anyone who didn't have their gum left at the end of the day because it was against school rules to chew gum in school. She was a whack job.

I almost went to her retirement party to tell her off but decided I'd, probably, do something stupid and end up in jail and she wasn't worth it.

Wow! I am a 4th grade teacher, and I would have been amazed if you were my student and said that all of those numbers are divisible by two. You were right, your teacher was wrong, and she should have realized that you understood the concept of dividing numbers to the point of the answer being a decimal. I would have applauded you for doing that, explained why all of those numbers are divisible by two, just for the sake of having a teachable moment that was definitely above and beyond 4th grade curriculum, but still emphasized that the even numbers divided by two result in an answer that is a whole number. I am sorry you had such a bad experience.

I remember my 7th grade geography teacher asked us what city were we born, and I told her Compton. She got mad because my city didn't have any hospitals at that time, but it did when I was born. She was thinking that because I lived in Compton that I was dumb enough to think that I was born in Compton. I went home and told my mom. My mom gave me my birth certificate, and I brought my birth certificate to school to show my teacher that the hospital where I was born was indeed in Compton, CA, Dominguez Valley Hospital before they closed it. All she could do was look at me molded or green.