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Yes, it all does START at the home. And you're right in what I think you're saying that there are some pretty dysfunctional homes/parents.
Discipline is, no doubt, an issue. I've worked in schools where discipline was way too lax. I've worked in schools where discipline was way too tight. And I've worked in schools that have it just about right. And when it's not right, even as a former principal, I blame the principal.
I agree with tracking...within reason. I think it can be overdone. For example, in the junior high where I grew up, we had 5 or 6 levels in each grade. Too much.
Now, when you say "let the teachers teach"...it seems as if you're assuming that all teachers teach well. And, if we want students to value learning, then we need teachers to value learning...including when it means that they (or at least some of them) need to be open to new techniques.
Yes, but. Since you've been out it seems that there are new techniques introduced every year replacing the ones you were instructed to use last year.
When we went to an A/B schedule from a traditional one we had a twenty minute inservice on the best practice to use in the now 90 minute periods-Classroom Jeopardy.
When someone asked, of course it had to be a smart ass, if the presenters had any other techniques I, I mean we, just got that stupid look.
I think part of the failure of public education is that as a society, we've been actively discouraging kids with strong math skills from considering the field of education for decades now. There definitely seems to be a trend of decision makers with weak analytical reasoning abilities to be attempting to read statistical data and make policies on it. On a number of occasions as a parent, I've found myself just shaking my head at some of the logic fallacies that end up getting used to justify something by a school's principal or assistant principal. This results in whatever the new hot idea that will improve the school's numbers being implemented. Then in less than a decade, that school's principal has been replaced (unfortunately the assistant principals usually aren't) and a new one with new ideas on what they want to do to turn the school around comes in.
I know both my husband and I were both told by math teachers that we really liked to forget about going into education and just go into engineering because the rewards of being a teacher were being bureaucratized away along with the pay being lousy. I recently re-watched Mr. Holland's Opus. I had watched it not long after I graduated from high school and other than the lax dress code, it did seem to portray what high school had been like for me in the 1990's. Re-watching it several decades later, it really drove home how toxic that mentality has been for learning. William H. Macy does a good job of being the bad guy in that movie. Our education system probably needs more Mr. Holland's, and fewer of William H. Macy's role of assistant principal turned principal. I suspect way too many of the teachers that teach because they love inspiring students them have been driven out and into other careers, which was how that movie ended.
Yes, but. Since you've been out it seems that there are new techniques introduced every year replacing the ones you were instructed to use last year.
When we went to an A/B schedule from a traditional one we had a twenty minute inservice on the best practice to use in the now 90 minute periods-Classroom Jeopardy.
When someone asked, of course it had to be a smart ass, if the presenters had any other techniques I, I mean we, just got that stupid look.
Well, there are plenty of teachers who want to teach like they were taught and never try anything new. That's not good, either.
If an educator doesn't believe in lifelong learning -- including for themselves -- then I question their whole philosophy of education.
I think part of the failure of public education is that as a society, we've been actively discouraging kids with strong math skills from considering the field of education for decades now. There definitely seems to be a trend of decision makers with weak analytical reasoning abilities to be attempting to read statistical data and make policies on it. On a number of occasions as a parent, I've found myself just shaking my head at some of the logic fallacies that end up getting used to justify something by a school's principal or assistant principal. This results in whatever the new hot idea that will improve the school's numbers being implemented. Then in less than a decade, that school's principal has been replaced (unfortunately the assistant principals usually aren't) and a new one with new ideas on what they want to do to turn the school around comes in.
I know both my husband and I were both told by math teachers that we really liked to forget about going into education and just go into engineering because the rewards of being a teacher were being bureaucratized away along with the pay being lousy. I recently re-watched Mr. Holland's Opus. I had watched it not long after I graduated from high school and other than the lax dress code, it did seem to portray what high school had been like for me in the 1990's. Re-watching it several decades later, it really drove home how toxic that mentality has been for learning. William H. Macy does a good job of being the bad guy in that movie. Our education system probably needs more Mr. Holland's, and fewer of William H. Macy's role of assistant principal turned principal. I suspect way too many of the teachers that teach because they love inspiring students them have been driven out and into other careers, which was how that movie ended.
I think that is the problem in many fields. The smartest people don’t necessarily want to go into the field. I have a master’s in education and the people in my measurement/educational research courses were awful at math. I think I got something like a 99% in both and I wondered how on earth these people had a bachelor’s degree already.
FWIW I am decent at math. I had teachers who were excellent at math (one had worked at NASA), but they couldn’t teach it worth anything. I did poorly, but I don’t generally have problems with math. For the most part, you need people who know how to do the mask AND know how to show others with different learning styles how to do it. That is the same in other subjects.
Yes, it all does START at the home. And you're right in what I think you're saying that there are some pretty dysfunctional homes/parents.We
Discipline is, no doubt, an issue. I've worked in schools where discipline was way too lax. I've worked in schools where discipline was way too tight. And I've worked in schools that have it just about right. And when it's not right, even as a former principal, I blame the principal.
I agree with tracking...within reason. I think it can be overdone. For example, in the junior high where I grew up, we had 5 or 6 levels in each grade. Too much.
Now, when you say "let the teachers teach"...it seems as if you're assuming that all teachers teach well. And, if we want students to value learning, then we need teachers to value learning...includingcom when it means that they (or at least some of them) need to be open to new techniques.
IF there's really a new technique, then okay. Usually it's just another gimmick though and it's a waste of time and a waste of money. I was mentored by a teacher who had started teaching around 1920 and after one of those after school meetings where some guy stood there telling us about a "new" teaching method, this wonderful lady said to me, "Don't pay any attention to them. They do this every year. BUT THE TRUTH IS THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN."
She was one year away from retirement and was the best teacher I have ever seen. Her kids were the best at everything and she was strict yet the kids were happy and relaxed.
She told me another little secret: one year they'd have us teaching phonics, next few years we'd have to teach reading by sight. We'd pretend to do what they said but we'd hide our teaching materials in the closet and use them as needed. Then they'd have us back to teaching phonics again, then sight, then phonics. This woman had seen it all. She knew each kid learns differently and you have to tailor your style to their needs. There is NO perfect teaching method. She thought most of it was bunk.
She was one of those teachers who never yelled, never lost her temper but somehow she had stage presence and just by standing there with her hand raised a bit, the kids would notice and calm down. When kids are calm they can listen and learn. She scoffed at the teachers who had no discipline in their classrooms with kids climbing all over the desks, as well as the teachers who would ask the kids what they wanted to do today. Nope. The TEACHER was in charge. The kids knew the rules and that made them feel safe and calm. Her students loved her, really loved her. "There is nothing new under the sun."
(Sorry, I just felt a need to talk about this wonderful person. I was lucky enough to be teaching my first year in a room directly across the hall from hers.) BTW, I was reading recently about parent discipline that there is authoritative and there is authoritarian. It said authoritative is the good one; authoritarian is the bad one. I'd never thought about the distinction but one is bossy and controlling while the other one sets the rules and explains them but the rules are still the rules. (more to it than that but I'm sure you know.)
Another mode is permissive and that's not a good way either, of course. Hoping teachers and parents drift away from this permissive, do whatever you want, we'll have conversations about everything so you don't really have to follow any rules, etc.
IF there's really a new technique, then okay. Usually it's just another gimmick though and it's a waste of time and a waste of money. I was mentored by a teacher who had started teaching around 1920 and after one of those after school meetings where some guy stood there telling us about a "new" teaching method, this wonderful lady said to me, "Don't pay any attention to them. They do this every year. BUT THE TRUTH IS THERE IS NOTHING NEW UNDER THE SUN."
She was one year away from retirement and was the best teacher I have ever seen. Her kids were the best at everything and she was strict yet the kids were happy and relaxed.
She told me another little secret: one year they'd have us teaching phonics, next few years we'd have to teach reading by sight. We'd pretend to do what they said but we'd hide our teaching materials in the closet and use them as needed. Then they'd have us back to teaching phonics again, then sight, then phonics. This woman had seen it all. She knew each kid learns differently and you have to tailor your style to their needs. There is NO perfect teaching method. She thought most of it was bunk.
She was one of those teachers who never yelled, never lost her temper but somehow she had stage presence and just by standing there with her hand raised a bit, the kids would notice and calm down. When kids are calm they can listen and learn. She scoffed at the teachers who had no discipline in their classrooms with kids climbing all over the desks, as well as the teachers who would ask the kids what they wanted to do today. Nope. The TEACHER was in charge. The kids knew the rules and that made them feel safe and calm. Her students loved her, really loved her. "There is nothing new under the sun."
(Sorry, I just felt a need to talk about this wonderful person. I was lucky enough to be teaching my first year in a room directly across the hall from hers.) BTW, I was reading recently about parent discipline that there is authoritative and there is authoritarian. It said authoritative is the good one; authoritarian is the bad one. I'd never thought about the distinction but one is bossy and controlling while the other one sets the rules and explains them but the rules are still the rules. (more to it than that but I'm sure you know.)
Another mode is permissive and that's not a good way either, of course. Hoping teachers and parents drift away from this permissive, do whatever you want, we'll have conversations about everything so you don't really have to follow any rules, etc.
Sorry, but I just don't agree with you.
Would you like to have a doctor or a surgeon who never wants to learn and try new things? A lawyer that hasn't kept up with modern trends in law? A car mechanic who started out working on 1970s cars and have him work on your 2021 Volvo...with no new training? Not me.
The same old stuff has never worked for all kids. And learning about new approaches to teaching and learning helps a PROFESSIONAL teacher have a bag of tricks he or she can pull different techniques out when the SOS [same old ...] isn't quite working. And the reason this is important is that teachers ought to be flexible enough to adapt to the way different children learn, instead of focusing only on how they enjoy teaching the most.
If teachers and principals, and guidance counselors don't want to learn new things...why should they expect students to want to learn new things? Either one values learning, or they don't. And learning is not just for humans under the age of 17.
I think part of the failure of the US education is the shift to phonics. When that happened, less emphasis was placed on learning how the English language works, and ... more emphasis was placed on reading ... fluently. When it comes to fluency and accuracy, phonics shows success but it is limited by its failure to increase comprehension. I believe the introduction of phonics caused grammar to stop being taught in schools. Grammar, such as inflectional and derivational affixes, helps teach the system of the English language.
... and they read inane useless stories to boot. Waste of time!
I know a child who studies grammar, both English and ancient Greek, mathematics, and music.
So, grammar, grammar, and grammar.
As for reading, science and history, the child studies the history of human technology, which also includes archaeology, geology and geography.
The child leaves the history of political theater (which is the usual "history" curriculum) for what it's worth: last. Not first. Last. Dead last.
No extra credit for guessing in which school this curriculum is offered.
Traditional schools teach curriculum that is lopsidedly asssideways and assbackwards.
Society has come full circle in the pre-industrial/industrial cycle, also in terms of education, by now chasing its own tail and pretending that it's a perfect circle.
I understand, to a point, helping the lower performing kid. But only to a point. How much time per class is spent repeating the same information multiple times for the lower performer, while the rest of the class waits? Repeat that day after day for a year and how far behind is the rest of the class from where they should be? Now you have the whole class starting the next year behind where they were expected to be. Spending so much effort on those few helping them has actually hurt the majority of the class.
Back to the "showing off" discussion, I still don't understand why teachers think smart kids asking questions is showing off. I sat in class and watched Billy Bob Trouble and Mary Jane Hawkins and their friends ask the same silly question, one after the other, for the sole purpose of derailing the class. Everyone in the class knew it. Except the teacher who dutifully explained the same trivial point over and over. Repeat the next day. And then the whole group goes to the next class and repeats the act. But let one of us ask a real, deep thought question, and the response was that we don't have time for that.
Exactly my experience.
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Well, wearing my management hat, the first thing is I know the assumption is false. Seldom do applicants for a job have equal competence. So I'm going to hire the highest competence person I can get. Because the reality is competence and pain in the ass are not coupled and low competence results in a pain in the ass far more often than high competence. If nothing else from the rework that someone else has to pick up.
This is what I think is going on. Most people were not high achieving students, so, in any field, most people working are not high achieving students. High achieving students see the world differently from the more average students, and often don't understand each other. So, the current and former average students just label the current and former high achieving students as "having bad social skills", and decide that's an acceptable reason to discriminate against us. The posters in this forum are a perfect example of that. Constantly bashing somebody for having bad social skills does nothing to help anybody involved.
I think that any teacher (or principal) who really connects with kids (as opposed to some teachers who really only connect with their content area) has 'favorites'. In my career I never lived in my school's community, so I never knew -- in advance -- any of the kids who went to my school. So on day one each September, 125 (or so) kids walk into a teacher's classroom (or a thousand kids walk into a principal's school). New unknowns to the teacher. Some of those kids care about learning; some don't. Some kids like interacting with adults; some don't like interacting with adults; and some kids interact too much with adults and not enough with their peers. Some kids have a sense of humor; others don't. Some kids do their homework; some kids don't. Some kids behave in class; some kids misbehave, sometimes to an extreme. Some kids are fine human beings, even at the middle and high school level; and some kids are jerks. So I think it's natural that teachers are going to have favorites. We're not required to like all of our students equally; that wouldn't even be human. But we are required -- morally (and legally) -- to give every student equal opportunities to learn, to be liked, to be treated fairly.
That all makes sense. But my point is that teachers don't treat every student fairly (I usually try to avoid use of words like "fair" or "fairly", but in this case I'm using it since it's the word that you use. I've mentioned about my AP Chemistry teacher. When I asked him why he gave me a C+ when I got an A on every assignment, his answer was "because I don't like you". In any other profession, you have to learn to get along with clients, bosses, coworkers, and subordinates that you may not like. My AP Chemistry teacher may not have liked me, for whatever reason, but, like it or not, I was on his roster for the year, so he needed to treat me fairly. Even if you feel that teachers should be allowed to reduce grades based on personality conflicts (I don't agree), it should require more than "I don't like you", and include real examples of why my behavior was problematic.
On the other hand, I had an excellent teacher for AP Calculus. I was very obviously not one of his favorites, but he always treated me and other students fairly and with respect. I may not have agreed with all of his policies, but he applied them fairly and consistently.
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Some kids want more attention. Some kids need more attention. Some kids get those needs fulfilled elsewhere with other people. Every kid is different. Every teacher is different. There just needs to be equal opportunity.
What do you suggest should be done with students, such as myself, who asked questions beyond the curriculum? Again, I understand if the teachers didn't have time to answer such questions, especially if it required learning other material first. But instead of being mean about it, they should have maybe encouraged me to do a research project on that topic, perhaps in lieu of some of our busywork homework. That would have allowed me to pursue a topic I was interested in at the time, would have instilled a love of learning, and would have avoided taking time away from the students who were struggling.
If they were irrelevant why did you include them as examples?
You really need to let go of what happened, if it actually did, in a 7th Grade class over thirty years ago. You'll have much more to agonize over as you get older.
My point is that I understand and accept that if there are 36 students qualified for honors science, and the can only accommodate 24, then whatever method is used to determine which 24 get priority is going to see unfair and arbitrary to the 12 who are not accommodated, no matter what the method is. So, I was not complaining about the method that was used. As for the elementary school gifted and talented program: my only point was, there is at least one poster on this forum who has pointed out that "gifted" has a precise meaning, and I was pointing out that in that program, "gifted" was not being used in that way, and it was essentially a busy work, teacher's pet program. Not complaining about it, just giving an explanation.
My point is that, no matter what method was used to determine which 12 could not be accommodated in honors science in 7th grade, there had to be some way to accommodate us. Putting us in a class with a mean teacher who resented our existence, and expecting us to just shut up was not the answer. Also including in that class a lot of students who really belonged in a remedial class was not the answer. It was not in the best interest of the 12 who should have been in an honors class, it was not in the best interest of the students who should have been in a remedial class, and it was not in the best interest of the teacher.
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