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Defending Teachers

green grenades

By green grenades,
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green grenades Newbie

green grenades

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MWB Newbie

MWB

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No offense gg but I think the structure of our education system has failed everyone including teachers and the unionization of them has destroyed their work ethic in terms of earnings vs results (not exclusively but including teachers). Also I think sattellite installers should be paid more than anyone else.

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green grenades Newbie

green grenades

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**** that they failed because they dont gwt the funding they need and the freedom they deserve. You use to be able to teach however the hell you wanted now you have.to do a certain thing at a certain time and drill the same boring **** into their heads its not the teachera fault at all. And yes they should be the highest paid. I was working part time and making more then an elementary school teacher if that isnt a kick qhen your down I dont know what is.

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Timber King Newbie

Timber King

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To preface what I say, I would like to say that I have tremendous respect for individuals who decide to pursue a life in teaching. In addition, having said that, I would like to say that being a teacher is not hard, being a good teacher is hard.

There used to be a time in our society where certain low paying positions had other perks such as clout; pastors and teachers would not make lots of money but their views were very well respected and they held positions of importance within their respective communities. I feel that teachers no longer have that social status, which is wrong. When I was in high school, for example, the parents of trouble-making or underperforming kids would first question the teacher and their prognosis of the situation rather than the behavior of their child. Teachers are no longer held in such high regard and are treated like second-class citizens, which is wrong.

Why have teacher's lost this respect they once had? I don't know if I have an answer to this question. What I can say , though, having graduated from high school not too long ago, is that the new teachers I had in school certainly lacked the integrity that my older teachers had. For example, my trigonometry teacher in 10th grade was in her mid/late 20's and a complete ****. She would often times write things wrong (there was a formula for an exam that we found out she had taught wrong on the day of the exam), it was common for her to take Fridays off on a regular basis, and she hated it when students asked questions (she yelled at me once saying I hadn't been paying attention when in reality I wasn't understanding a damn thing she was saying, which is saying alot because I graduated 5th in my class and had a GPA above 4.0). My point is that it was clear that teaching was simply a job to this woman. She didn't care about helping kids learn. It was a paycheck with lots of personal days and benefits (which I'll get to later). So, grouping ALL teachers into an entire category of people that strive for excellence and go the extra mile to help children learn is a bunch of nonsense.

Furthermore, standards for teaching have gone down, in my opinion. My senior year of high school I took a College In High School calculus course through Pitt. I had to make up one of the exams after school (I think I had gone on a feld trip that day) so I was in the Special Education room next door. The new Special Ed teacher, a man in his mid/late 20's took a break from teaching another student basic geometry to take a peak at what I was being tested on. He chuckled to himself. Puzzled, I looked over my shoulder and ask him what he thought was so funny. He then replied saying "I never had to learn this stuff in college" and then walked away. I was stunned! This guy was teaching math in a high school and he had never taken a calculus course in his entire life (including college)!? ARE YOU ******* KIDDING ME!? It 's one thing to have not taken calculus and teach elementary education but being a high school math teacher and not know calculus is absurd! In addition, my senior year of high school in my Economics class (which was a complete joke, I'm an Economics major at Pitt and the stuff they taught was rubish) we went around the room saying what we planned on doing with our lives. A kid in my class said he wanted to be a Physics teacher. This sounds nice and all, but the same kid failed to take the "normal" physics class in high school (he basically took "slow" kids physics that focused on making dumb projects and not learning). So, he wanted to teach a subject in which he was nowhere near proficient in!? It would be like if I was graduating undergrad and said that I wanted to teach Torts law having absolutely no concept of what law school entails.

Now, about the money. Should teachers be payed more than some otherprofessions (like GG's part time job example), definitely! They provide a priceless service to this country. Having said that, I don't believe teaching should be a high paying job. Why? It compromises the reasons for pursuing such a career. Teachers become teachers because they love to help children learn and it makes them happy. Making it a more lucrative position opens the doors to more people like my trig teacher, people not interested in helping children learn but teach for selfish reasons. It's a basic incentive system. We want good teachers who do what they do because they love their job. Increasing pay will increase interest amongst individuals who don't share the same passion for the profession. THIS is why lots of people think pay should be based off performance. Good teachers who love their job should be payed more and often times their performance will demonstrate their ability, but saying all teachers should be payed more will just compromise the integrity of those who enter the profession. My calc teacher in high school was the greatest teacher I ever had (he is now a professor at Pitt) and he deserved to get payed a high salary! I can't say the same fr many of my other teachers.

Also, teachers can and do get payed higher salaries. The teacher's union basically arranged for a loophole in the system where the state will pay for them to go back to school to earn higher degrees in their field and then they will receive a pay raise upon completion. So, not only do my tax dollars pay for their tuition, but they get a pay raise afterwards as well! For example, my aunt is a kindergarten teacher. She is an amazing woman and one of the sweetest people I know. She has a doctorate in math that the state paid for her to complete. She now makes *drum roll* 6 FIGURES. Now, I know you're all wondering why I would be upset about this since I was so angry that the other teacher I mentioned earlier hadn't completed a calculus course, but how is a superlative knowledge of calculus relavent to a 6 year old!!!? IT'S NOT!!! How is a doctorate in ANYTHING beneficial to a 6 year old's education? I love my aunt to death but there is absolutely no reason why she should be making that much money teaching children to know the difference between colors. That does not mean I don't value her service, but the pricetag is ridiculous.

Finally ,the benefits. As much as you may think teachers don't make that much (they don't), their benefits are top notch and more than makes up for their lack in pay. After they put in their 20 years, they'll get full pay and benefits upon retirement (to the best of my knowledge). I wish I could talk more about their benefits, but I don't know too much more, I wish I did. I can assure you, however, that despite their lack in pay, their benefits more than make up for it.

So, how do I summarize all of this? I guess I'll repeat what I said at the beginning. Being a teacher is not hard, being a good teacher is hard. I think a system with higher pay and lower standards (which is what the teacher's union wants) enables a system that promotes normalcy and, in my opinion, provides more incentives to pursue a teaching career which will increase the number of teachers who truly don't care.

Lastly, about the debate over standardized testing and funding. Every kid hates it, but how else can you truly measure the education a child has received? If you don't provide the same exact test nationwide, how can you adequately compare the education each child is receiving? Answer: you cannot. Furthermore, I never understood the "we need more funding argument." You know what my school district spent their money on? A football field. Making the school "look" nicer. Rarely did the school board decide to buy new books. In addition, how can education be a reflection of money spent? I'm too lazy to do it (I know a common lying with statistics trick is saying that the US spends less on education than a dozen or more other countries but the catch is that it is percent of government spending, not actual numbers, so if it were just the raw $/student figure I bet we would be top 5 for sure) but the US does spend a significant amount on education. John Stossels did a special on 20/20 a few years ago showing the SAT scores of a high school in Missouri or some state in the midwest and how their scores FELL, not increased, after a huge boost in spending in their school district on education. The problem is not funding! The problem is motivation! A lot of kids I know that I went to high school with cared more about MTV, ipods, popularity, dating, etc. than their performance in school (and many of them are realizing the mistakes they made right about now as I begin to enter my senior year at Pitt). Many kids in school don't realize the rammifications for their performance, or lack thereof, in public school on the rest of their lives! A big part of this failure lands on the shoulders of parents! The book Freakonomics briefly touches upon this showing that it wasn't the availability of books that led to better test scores (as studies showed) rather than the parents encouraging their children to read.

Well, this post is just a mashup of random things I decided to talk about. I'm more than happy to elaborate on anything I mentioned or have a healthy debate on the topic. To conclude, once more, there are amazing teachers out there who deserve millions for their services, but the amount of people who fit this are increasingly disappearing and their work does not justify a pay increase across the board.

tl;rd Being a teacher is not hard, being a good teacher is hard.

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eminutia Newbie

eminutia

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Wow TK, you know your stuff. I'm impressed.

My opinion on teachers is almost the same as yours, which is that there are good teachers, not-so-good teachers, and straight up bad teachers. Good teachers get involved with the class. Not-so-good teachers teach what is necessary to pass the course. Bad teachers have a higher frequency of absence, which kids love; supply teachers rocked, don't deny it. They all need to be paid equally, right? So yeah, that answers some of the question, but not all of the question of Why teachers are looked down upon. I could be a teacher, but not in school. More of a teacher of concrete morals. I wouldn't ask for any pay, except for that my students remember that I taught them something they could use in life. Even just one little thing...I could use it to sleep at night.

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Timber King Newbie

Timber King

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tl;dr

Teaching is easy, being a good teacher is hard.

Teaching standards have gone down. I knew more math in my senior year of high school than a teacher on the pay roll.

If teachers had a higher wage, more people would want to be teachers and the amount of quality teachers would decrease. Money shouldn't be a motive for teaching.

Teachers CAN make lots of money. My aunt makes 6 figures as a kindergarten teacher.

Teaching benefits (i.e. healthcare, retirement) more than make up for the low pay.

Standardized testing is the only way to measure intelligence across the board (and teaching).

More funding does not mean higher test scores. This has been proven. There is no correlation. Better parenting/motivation is the key.

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Timber King Newbie

Timber King

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I'm gonna start reading that blog post. It started because the teacher's union has been holding rallies protesting the use of standardized testing as a measuring stick for teachers and their job performance (under No Child Left Behind, funding is based off scores on standardized tests and teachers can possibly lose jobs). I'm sure the facebook stuff is in response to or promoting the rallies (or protest against them). This has been getting lots of attention due to the Matt Damon incident too (I saw it on Anderson Cooper).

EDIT: Really good blog post. I agree with what he said, especially about parenting. It's hard to place all of the emphasis on teachers when parents are also a crucial component of learning. Also, I agreed that funding shouldn't increase rather than it needs to be reevaluated and reallocation. In addition, in regards to standardized testing, it's true that schools are starting to focus primarily on those subjects. For instance, a guy I go college with, his brother is a principal at a school in San Francisco that teaches primarily low income children of immigrants (primarily Oriental children) and they drill them on the subjects that are covered in the SATs. Lots of kids from this school have been accepted to schools such as Harvard, Stanford, and other prestigious institutions, but they're certainly lacking the well rounded education that we want kids to possess.

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Timber King Newbie

Timber King

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She teaches at a public school. She also got her doctorate in math I believe which inflates her pay grade. However, I will concede that she teaches at a public school in arguably the nicest school district in Western New York, a state that has the strongest union power more than likely.

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lostassassin13 Newbie

lostassassin13

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I'm gonna start reading that blog post. It started because the teacher's union has been holding rallies protesting the use of standardized testing as a measuring stick for teachers and their job performance (under No Child Left Behind, funding is based off scores on standardized tests and teachers can possibly lose jobs). I'm sure the facebook stuff is in response to or promoting the rallies (or protest against them). This has been getting lots of attention due to the Matt Damon incident too (I saw it on Anderson Cooper).

EDIT: Really good blog post. I agree with what he said, especially about parenting. It's hard to place all of the emphasis on teachers when parents are also a crucial component of learning. Also, I agreed that funding shouldn't increase rather than it needs to be reevaluated and reallocation. In addition, in regards to standardized testing, it's true that schools are starting to focus primarily on those subjects. For instance, a guy I go college with, his brother is a principal at a school in San Francisco that teaches primarily low income children of immigrants (primarily Oriental children) and they drill them on the subjects that are covered in the SATs. Lots of kids from this school have been accepted to schools such as Harvard, Stanford, and other prestigious institutions, but they're certainly lacking the well rounded education that we want kids to possess.

Thanks. I have been around on previous iterations of the site, I just registered as I saw this response to my blog post.

Education is a big thing in our country, and yet it seems to be ripped and torn every which way because people keep trying to force the existing system to do something more than what it is designed for. I'm working on my master's in educational technology right now, so I'm having to learn a bit more about educational policy than I ever have before (all my other degrees are computer related) and the consistent touting of standardized testing is a joke. I had to do them when I was in school, but my inclusion in more advanced classes wasn't based on those scores, it was based on the potential that teachers saw in me.

It's good to see a discussion going on this topic.

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eminutia Newbie

eminutia

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Hey, can you post that blog link please someone?

Anyways I'm watching this movie on Netflix, called Waiting for Superman, precisely documenting this exact topic we are discussing. I don't know what decision I made to watch it, but it is quite a reveal. The same guys who did that Al Gore masterpeice did this movie.

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