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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 a major problem with continuing professional education, not just for teachers, is that it's focused on checking a box, and getting enough credits in a certain period of time, rather than focusing on education that is useful for an individual professional's career.
I remember my 11th grade AP Physics (he taught 2 sections of AP Physics to 11th graders, and 1 section of regular physics to 11th and 12th graders) telling us about a superintendent's conference day. He said he had to attend a session about children with disabilities. He said the session was a video about how some children do not know the difference between the letters B and D. That is a completely useless video for a teacher who teachers physics to 11th and 12th graders. It would have been a very useful video for a 1st grade special ed teacher. My physics teacher would have been better served by a video about high achieving students, or about the types of disabilities some of his students may have, or even a video about teenagers in general, not about young children who would never be taking any of his classes.
I think a major problem with continuing professional education, not just for teachers, is that it's focused on checking a box, and getting enough credits in a certain period of time, rather than focusing on education that is useful for an individual professional's career.
I remember my 11th grade AP Physics (he taught 2 sections of AP Physics to 11th graders, and 1 section of regular physics to 11th and 12th graders) telling us about a superintendent's conference day. He said he had to attend a session about children with disabilities. He said the session was a video about how some children do not know the difference between the letters B and D. That is a completely useless video for a teacher who teachers physics to 11th and 12th graders. It would have been a very useful video for a 1st grade special ed teacher. My physics teacher would have been better served by a video about high achieving students, or about the types of disabilities some of his students may have, or even a video about teenagers in general, not about young children who would never be taking any of his classes.
I don’t think there are many jobs where you are going to be free from irrelevant training. Everyone has to take a few of those. Usually if you teach AP courses, you should be required to go to conferences just for AP teachers. I was in an IB program where teachers had to teach AP and IB. I got my education master’s degree and did my internship at a school where my French teacher “retired” and she told me the additional training required for AP and IB was intense. She no longer taught either in her retirement job. When I subbed for IB, I think one time I was subbing for a teacher who was doing her annual AP refresher conference. That said, awareness of stuff like disabilities, mental health awareness, drug use, domestic violence, etc. are general requirements for most fields.
I don’t think there are many jobs where you are going to be free from irrelevant training. Everyone has to take a few of those. Usually if you teach AP courses, you should be required to go to conferences just for AP teachers. I was in an IB program where teachers had to teach AP and IB. I got my education master’s degree and did my internship at a school where my French teacher “retired” and she told me the additional training required for AP and IB was intense. She no longer taught either in her retirement job. When I subbed for IB, I think one time I was subbing for a teacher who was doing her annual AP refresher conference. That said, awareness of stuff like disabilities, mental health awareness, drug use, domestic violence, etc. are general requirements for most fields.
One of the problems with the post you quoted is that so many people have no idea about what teachers have to do to stay certified or whether it's helpful. That's true in most, if not all, professions.
In the case of disabilities the drive for inclusion and mainstreaming has made it imperative for teachers to be trained in recognizing and modifying lessons for those issues. You may have a kid who's dyslexic in class but who is cognitively well qualified for AP.
My AP teachers fought tooth and nail to not go to AP trainings and complained mightily when their kids didn't do well. I had to tell them that a lot of the training dealt with test taking management to teach the students.
I don’t think there are many jobs where you are going to be free from irrelevant training. Everyone has to take a few of those. Usually if you teach AP courses, you should be required to go to conferences just for AP teachers. I was in an IB program where teachers had to teach AP and IB. I got my education master’s degree and did my internship at a school where my French teacher “retired” and she told me the additional training required for AP and IB was intense. She no longer taught either in her retirement job. When I subbed for IB, I think one time I was subbing for a teacher who was doing her annual AP refresher conference. That said, awareness of stuff like disabilities, mental health awareness, drug use, domestic violence, etc. are general requirements for most fields.
I attended two AP French workshops. I can attest that they were very rigorous and conducted about 95% of the time in French. One of the presenters told me that there are some workshops where the teachers are so ill-prepared that they can't keep up due to their own limited language skills.
One of the problems with the post you quoted is that so many people have no idea about what teachers have to do to stay certified or whether it's helpful. That's true in most, if not all, professions.
In the case of disabilities the drive for inclusion and mainstreaming has made it imperative for teachers to be trained in recognizing and modifying lessons for those issues. You may have a kid who's dyslexic in class but who is cognitively well qualified for AP.
My AP teachers fought tooth and nail to not go to AP trainings and complained mightily when their kids didn't do well. I had to tell them that a lot of the training dealt with test taking management to teach the students.
Valid points, but I don't think that there are very many students taking AP Physics in 11th grade that can't tell the difference between the letters B and D. Based on how he described the video, it was clearly intended for teachers of younger children.
It would have been better to teach about the different types of students taking AP classes. How to deal with the student who is passionate about the material and asks questions beyond the curriculum. How to deal with the student who doesn't really belong in an AP class but is there for whatever reason, and the teacher is still responsible for him / her. How to deal with the student who only cares about his/her exam score and has zero interest in the subject matter. Etc.
Valid points, but I don't think that there are very many students taking AP Physics in 11th grade that can't tell the difference between the letters B and D. Based on how he described the video, it was clearly intended for teachers of younger children.
It would have been better to teach about the different types of students taking AP classes. How to deal with the student who is passionate about the material and asks questions beyond the curriculum. How to deal with the student who doesn't really belong in an AP class but is there for whatever reason, and the teacher is still responsible for him / her. How to deal with the student who only cares about his/her exam score and has zero interest in the subject matter. Etc.
The issue is that the AP teacher may not always teach AP. Who teaches what depends on the needs of the school and the administration. Teachers have to maintain their overall certifications and maintain other certifications. I know where I worked for a while, the certification requirements were insane. Once you had one student with an IEP in your class, you were expected to get a supplementary certification in special education. It was the same with gifted (typically middle school and below), ESOL, etc. Again, the AP trainings are long and rigorous. They should be dealing with those issues at the AP workshops, not at the general district workshops. All districts have district-wide in service days.
I attended two AP French workshops. I can attest that they were very rigorous and conducted about 95% of the time in French. One of the presenters told me that there are some workshops where the teachers are so ill-prepared that they can't keep up due to their own limited language skills.
For several years I worked with a local university that offered continuous learning workshops during the summer where teachers could meet their annual requirements. These things stood out to me:
a. Teachers talked more in class than little kids. I understand, we're adults and should be treated as such. But, as professionals, they should understand what is and isn't appropriate.
b. Phones. They were on their phones texting all the time. To the point that one instructor asked them if they allowed students to have phones out in their classrooms. The irony was lost on them.
c. Lack of subject matter knowledge. I'm not even talking about deep knowledge of an expert, but not even knowing at the level that's been plastered all over the news. I won't give the specifics here, but think in terms of confusing Star Wars for Hubble Telescope.
Valid points, but I don't think that there are very many students taking AP Physics in 11th grade that can't tell the difference between the letters B and D. Based on how he described the video, it was clearly intended for teachers of younger children.
It would have been better to teach about the different types of students taking AP classes. How to deal with the student who is passionate about the material and asks questions beyond the curriculum. How to deal with the student who doesn't really belong in an AP class but is there for whatever reason, and the teacher is still responsible for him / her. How to deal with the student who only cares about his/her exam score and has zero interest in the subject matter. Etc.
As RamenAddict mentioned, very few schools have teachers teaching all AP classes as their class load (there will be exceptions for Science and Tech dedicated magnet schools that admit only AP students).
Most teachers classes will be a mixture (and not every teacher teaches an AP class anyway) in a comprehensive school.
My class load one year had two AP classes (World History and Psych), two multi-level classes (those are ones where regular and SPED are together) and three mixed ability regular ed.
The AP World class was every day, the AP Psych was every other day, the US History multi-levels were every other day as were the three regular World Histories.
It would have been better to teach about the different types of students taking AP classes. How to deal with the student who is passionate about the material and asks questions beyond the curriculum. How to deal with the student who doesn't really belong in an AP class but is there for whatever reason, and the teacher is still responsible for him / her. How to deal with the student who only cares about his/her exam score and has zero interest in the subject matter. Etc.
The first steps would be to start teaching valuable real-world skills and stop fixating on indoctrinating students with useless information that will never be used in the real-world.
That certainly is needed. I'm not sure that indoctrination is making the schools fail though. I think it's lack of parental support for the learning process.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Old Gringo
With 22 years of teaching HS science under my belt, I have a take on what's wrong. There are many factors involved, but the single biggest improvement would be:
End the high stakes standardized testing program that is the be-all and end-all in evaluating public schools.
The damage done by this program is deep, broad, but not irreversible.
Sounds nice, but how do you then evaluate who's teaching and who is learning.
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