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As far as my daughter goes, she had a few. One would never answer questions. He would just tell her to read the textbook. Another was like something out of the movies. He would show movies and read the newspaper while the movie was playing. He did this constantly. A third was a screamer that terrified the students.
As far as my daughter goes, she had a few. One would never answer questions. He would just tell her to read the textbook. Another was like something out of the movies. He would show movies and read the newspaper while the movie was playing. He did this constantly. A third was a screamer that terrified the students.
And you consider this to be a bad teacher. Your daughter should read the textbook and then ask questions that weren't answered in the book. So a teacher was reading the newspaper when a movie was shown....and that is a problem. What if this teacher was looking for current events to discuss with the class. Sorry, sometimes teachers have to scream just like parents do. So I still don't understand why you consider them bad teachers
And you consider this to be a bad teacher. Your daughter should read the textbook and then ask questions that weren't answered in the book. So a teacher was reading the newspaper when a movie was shown....and that is a problem. What if this teacher was looking for current events to discuss with the class. Sorry, sometimes teachers have to scream just like parents do. So I still don't understand why you consider them bad teachers
My daughter did read the assigned chapters and had questions. She was simply directed back to the book. This happened on multiple occasions.
The screamer was eventually removed due to the screaming.
These weren't isolated incidents.
I should correct one thing. I don't think they were bad teachers. They WERE bad teachers. It's troubling that you think this behavior is acceptable.
My daughter did read the assigned chapters and had questions. She was simply directed back to the book. This happened on multiple occasions.
The screamer was eventually removed due to the screaming.
These weren't isolated incidents.
I should correct one thing. I don't think they were bad teachers. They WERE bad teachers. It's troubling that you think this behavior is acceptable.
You know what I find troubling....parents who send their kids to school thinking that the teacher will discipline your kids because for some reason you don't. I am from a family of teachers. This is their passion but they are burnt out because they get no support.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 06-15-2014 at 11:25 AM..
Reason: removed snide comment
You know what I find troubling....parents who send their kids to school thinking that the teacher will discipline your kids because for some reason you don't. I am from a family of teachers. This is their passion but they are burnt out because they get no support.
Sorry. You're right. I actually thought teachers were there to teach.
So being a teacher is easy and no big deal. I can do it. I just hand out the reading assignments. If there are any questions, I just direct them back to the book. Easy.
If you're an example of your "family of teachers" you should all do your students a favor and change careers.
I suggest something in the food industry like flipping burgers. At least there the damage you cause is minimized.
And when did I say I expected the teacher to discipline my child? Try actually reading the post next time.
Yeah. Tenure is a great idea.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 06-15-2014 at 11:25 AM..
Reason: removed deleted sentence
My daughter did read the assigned chapters and had questions. She was simply directed back to the book. This happened on multiple occasions.
The screamer was eventually removed due to the screaming.
These weren't isolated incidents.
I should correct one thing. I don't think they were bad teachers. They WERE bad teachers. It's troubling that you think this behavior is acceptable.
I agree that these were bad teachers. I had a few bad teachers growing up. In fact, I became a teacher because of my sixth-grade math teacher. She was so awful, I decided at the age of 10 that no one should have to have a teacher that bad. I forgot about that until years later when I decided that if you want something done right, you should do it yourself. So I became a teacher.
Destiny had in mind for me to end up in the inner city. As a teen, I read lots of books about teachers in challenging situations or with challenging students. Like Tabula Rasa, I seemed drawn to them. After five years in a relatively upper-middle class high school, I made the switch. I spent a semester in the alternative school, where I wasn't really unhappy. It was where I began to teach the Future Murderers of America students. After a year in a troubled school that went through reconstitution, I was transferred to my school where I have been for the last 21 years.
We have lots of bad teachers now and many more over the last two decades. We have "students" who are enrolled for non-academic reasons--juvenile justice, family benefits, etc. Our test scores are near the bottom of the state, which is at the bottom of the nation. We can't even attract enough incompetent people to fill all our positions, much less competent teachers who are striving to make a difference in the lives of the least of our children. The entire school, and to a certain extent, the city, is a mass of socioeconomic squalor. It can be a very depressing place to spend your career.
On the other hand, our school has a strong legacy from the Jim Crow era when the social network was much stronger than it is today and our school produced remarkable graduates. Before compulsory attendance, only those who could sacrifice income attended school. We still have a strong core of dedicated, experienced teachers who really do strive to make that difference. Unfortunately, that core is shrinking and is not being replaced with people who will disregard the working conditions to devote themselves to our children. We have a small knot of students who do care and who will go off to college to make something of themselves. It is a portrait of contrasts.
Because I choose to teach students at the lowest end of achievement in a non-tested subject, my evaluation is based on the math and English scores of students I don't teach. Nearly half of the students fail their state English test the first time in 10th grade, after having an hour-and-a-half block every day for two years of intensive test preparation with pull-out tutorials for the last few weeks before the tests. Of course, my class is one of those targeted for pulling students out, so I frequently have students miss a term of class in preparation for the state exams. In addition, almost none of the students come to get their make-up work, even though I post everything online. Some of our students fail every retest of the state tests and fail to graduate because they can't pass the exit exams.
As I said in a previous post, we have a huge absenteeism problem, despite the truancy laws and officials. I can't teach students who aren't there. The attendance problems are not isolated at the high school. They begin at the beginning. Our students mostly live very chaotic lives, with family members in and out of jail, unemployed, on drugs or alcohol, or just sitting on the front porch watching life pass them by. Our students need good teachers more than most children do. They can't make it on their own.
I don't consider myself a great teacher, but I constantly try to improve myself and to perfect the materials that I have adapted for my students and their atypical needs. According to the new evaluation models, I'm a bad teacher because the 10th-grade English students, many of whom I don't know, some of whom I will teach later on, overwhelmingly fail their tests. This development is what many non-teachers don't realize is the current evaluation model. So when Oldhag responded to your auto mechanic metaphor with all those extreme cases, she was actually describing my school. Nana talked about students absent once a week. I have students who don't come to school but once a month. We have A/B block scheduling, so missing a week equates to missing two weeks. Compound that with the pull-out tutorials that go on most of third and fourth term, and it is a recipe for failure.
How is that my fault? How is it the fault of the bad teachers? You see, there aren't enough warm bodies to fill all our positions. Only three of the four Teach for America staff came back for a second year, and none is returning for a third. We're losing our principal, and assistant principal, and probably 20 other staff members. It's a hard place to survive. Should I be punished because I choose to serve these children? Should I seek a cushier job in the suburbs where all the schools are rated high? That's not my calling. (I would probably be arrested if I had to teach Ivorytickler's students. I don't deal well with the entitlement syndrome.)
I appreciate your discussion on this matter. Too many people see the situation in black and white, when there are so many shades of gray.
I think the education system failures in this country extend well beyond just bad teachers. Parents, students and administrators should all share part of the blame. I remember reading about someone who came back from teaching in Asia and seeing how teachers are culturally respected there. But coming back, she was very discouraged to see that the students in her troubled school not only had no interest in learning, they didn't respect her as a teacher. This is a cultural norm that needs to change. What we have now is a culture that promotes stupidity.
I'm a teacher and agree with everything in this post.
You know what I find troubling....parents who send their kids to school thinking that the teacher will discipline your kids because for some reason you don't. I am from a family of teachers. This is their passion but they are burnt out because they get no support.
I taught and do consider this a bad teacher or at the very least a bad teaching technique.
If a child has questions after having read the chapter, it is important to answer the questions or to direct her to other resources which can help answer the questions. The very best teacher my kids had, often said that if he did not know the answer to their questions, he would help them research it and find out. Teachers don't have to know the answer to every question, but they have to be willing to help the kids find those answers. Of course, some questions don't have answers (especially in science) and for those you have to be willing to say that you don't know and that it is ok not to know.
Last edited by toobusytoday; 06-15-2014 at 11:24 AM..
Reason: removed deleted quote
My daughter did read the assigned chapters and had questions. She was simply directed back to the book. This happened on multiple occasions.
The screamer was eventually removed due to the screaming.
These weren't isolated incidents.
I should correct one thing. I don't think they were bad teachers. They WERE bad teachers. It's troubling that you think this behavior is acceptable.
I agree. Also, at least in CA, those would be teachers who it would be nearly impossible to fire because of tenure rules. Again, some protections are not a problem, but it shouldn't be as difficult as it is to fire a teacher.
I grew up going to low income schools and absolutely know that everything isn't the fault of the teachers, but there are bad teachers.
I had a History teacher who never taught history. He talked about football most of the time. The rest of the time he spent trash talking Bush and Republicans. He gave three tests that year that the school forced him to give, but he had never taught the material. That was his last year teaching because he had already planned to retire the next year, so I don't know if that was how he was in the previous years he taught.
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