Is there some way we could reward parents and students for academic success?
We “reward” teachers by giving them time off, tenure, salary, etc, if they choose to stick to the profession.
We “reward” students by giving academic scholarships, insurance discounts for good grades, knowledge that will be useful in life, etc.
Maybe we could offer tax incentives for parents of students who get good grades. Or hell, maybe we could actually cut checks to students and parents who make good grades. Money is motivation in this world, sadly. I don’t know of any good answer, but I really feel that the solution to our education problem is getting students and parents to accept more responsibility, and to support teachers more.
I don’t know if you were being sarcastic or not, but by the end of summer of my first year of teaching, and the summer between student teaching and actual teaching, I was eagerly looking forward to it as well. I did enjoy my time off, but I was certainly ready to get back into the classroom. I wouldn’t say that I got TOO MUCH time off, but I was certainly happy to be back to work when summer was over.
I’m not a teacher, but I know plenty of them, and was reasonably heavily involved in the schools when my kids were in them. I also live across the street from an elementary school, and see how much some of the more local teachers are in their classrooms in the evenings and weekends.
If your average sales guy sells a person something which they then go home and misuse and break, they usually don’t come back to yell at the sales guy. On the other hand, if parents never check to see if kids are doing homework, or run down the whole education process, and the kids don’t do well, it is the teachers’ fault. In our district schools with similar facilities, similar teaching staffs, and identical $ per student have very, very different outcomes, with parents being the free variable.
When I was a kid our teachers grew up during the Depression, when teaching was the one job immune from layoffs. (Not now, alas.) Today with relatively mediocre pay when starting and lack of respect, why would anyone in his or her right mind get into the field? For the love of it, I know, and thanks to that the teachers my kids had while far from perfect were far better than we had the right to expect.
When I was in school no one spoke the kind of crap about teachers you hear today. But the right is a problem. If they hate any successful government program, and would like all schools to be private, what better way to accomplish this than cutting school funding and trying to convince parents that if it weren’t for bad teachers their kids would all be stars.
High school. Suburban/rural Southern California. My smallest class is currently at 33. My largest is at 43. That one I don’t mind, because it’s my debate class. drew, I wasn’t being sarcastic in the least. I’ve been a teacher for 25 years, and I wouldn’t want to do anything else (except wallow around with excess millions as a result of a massive lottery win. Let’s be realistic!)
Gotcha. But don’t you still need to work in your off time? I can totally get wanting to be in front of the class and be actively teaching, but how much of your summer time is given over to prep work versus actual vacation?
I asked myself that the entire 2nd year of teaching, “How in your right mind can you guys be doing this for 10, 20, 30 years?” My colleagues who were stellar, stellar teachers were given the same level of disrespect that I was. In fact, my department chair, who had been teacher of the year a few years back, got WAY more disrespect than I did. I actually almost cried when I heard about the stuff admin did to her this year. It is disgraceful.
I feel bad for the students though, for being held to unrealistic expectations. My department chair, let’s call her Katrina, said it best. Expecting these students to do really well in 4 years of math and science, would be like expecting a scientist to be able to learn how to sing an opera, in italian, for 4 years. No matter how hard we might try, there are VERY few people who have operatic singing voices. And then to learn an entirely new language on top of that just compounds the problem.
Would it make sense to force all of our students to sing Italian operas for 4 years? No. So why are we forcing them into advanced physics and math? A year or two exposure is fine, but we are expecting mastery of a subject that is outside the grasp. Back in the great depression, we weren’t expecting this level of success from our students. Hell, not even in the 60’s.
Thank goodness there are people like you silenus. I am really happy that there are people who can deal with all the crap and still love the job 25 years later. Of the colleagues I worked with who had been teaching that long, the only motivation they had was pension and summer vacation. They hated teaching.
I feel bad that I didn’t have the patience or resolve to stay in teaching, but I certainly don’t feel bad that I am making a lot more money now in the private sector!
I submit that for most of this country’s history the right wing was just fine with education. But now we live in a time when many kids don’t have two parents at home and the parents they do have won’t discipline them, the schools’ hands are tied and they can’t discipline them either, the notion took hold (at least at one time) that flunking kids harmed their self-esteem so they got passed whether they learned anything or not, and schools are being used more and more to indoctrinate kids to ensure they grow up with the right PC attitudes instead of teaching them useful skills.
Two things are primarily responsible for all this: the societal upheaval of the late sixties with the permissive attitudes that followed in its wake, and the federal government’s usurpation of the nation’s school system via the Dept. of Education.
So I wouldn’t go blaming the right wing for problems in education if I were you. And while I suppose it’s typical that you would attack them for seeking to get their kids into private schools where they can get out from under the system you’ve created and be educated properly, you really shouldn’t be doing that either.
I suppose you are right… it would also probably be seen as racist and classist by many groups.
I just feel like parents need to be rewarded some how for their student’s performance in school so that they can have more motivation to encourage good grades. I’m only 25 and have no idea what it is like to have a kid, so I’m highly unqualified to be making suggestions. But when I do have children, you can bet your ass I’m going to bust their ass to perform well in school, and make their life hell if they aren’t performing their best. That’s not saying I expect all A’s; if a C is their best then I will support them. If my student is failing or acting badly, I will accept the responsbility and deal with it appropriately instead of trying to pawn it off onto teachers.
Teachers unions pushing these items put teachers in a bad spot politically. It gives the appearance of wanting to avoid responsibility for their own performance. I can suck at my job and not get fired, and not even miss out on a raise.
We also hear about kids doing poorly on tests, a general lack of academic skills (real or imagined) and a workforce with the above benefits being in charge of my kid’s education. Add in an ever increasing school tax bill and you can see why some people put targets on teachers.
I believe it is possible to have a pay-for-performance model that isn’t complete crap, or at least matches the level of crappiness found in the “real world”.
I agree that a teacher’s pay should be based on their performance… but people have it stuck in their heads that their pay should be based on their STUDENT’S performance. Huge difference.
Here’s the problem. Say you are a salesman. Your performance-pay comes in your commission, or gradual raises and promotions in retail, if you are doing a great job. Your pay is NOT dependent on how well your customers take care of the products, how well the products are made, how long the product lasts, how happy the customer is with the product, etc. Your job as a salesman is to sell, and your pay is based SOLELY on that. The metric is sales.
A teacher’s pay should be based similarly, on their job, which is to teach. It is NOT the teacher’s responsiblity to sell “learning,” which is the student’s responsiblity. Teachers should be assessed on how well they are teaching by administrators, colleagues, or even independent review boards who come in to observe them. Are they creating and posting lesson plans that are well thought out, reflective, etc? Are they getting papers graded on time with adequate feedback? Are they implementing lessons that engage the students, challenge them, and encourage discussion? Are they implementing novel teaching techniques and materials? Etc, etc, etc. It is not hard to create a check list of things a teacher would be responsible for, and get paid to do. The metric is the quality of the teaching. Whether students want to learn and take it all in, is entirely up to them. It’s unfair to hold teachers accountible for something that is out of their control.
There is NO other career in this world where your pay is based on how well SOMEONE ELSE performs, and teaching should be no different. It is not fair to hold a Salesman accountible for an engineer’s mistake. It is not fair to hold a teacher responsible for a student’s.
Oh, yeah. I really never turn off during the year. It’s a disease. You can try to ignore the itch, but it never goes away. Even doing curriculum work all summer doesn’t scratch it. By the time August rolls around I’m lecturing to the cats and trying to get my wife to research debate topics. This is when she starts throwing things.
Don’t ask about weekends and “vacation time” during the school year. Debate coaches don’t get those things. Our choice, of course. But Saturdays are a myth to me.
Yeti - You know you need to get back to work when you start lecturing the pit boss on the history of blackjack.
I get so pissed off people the general public sees teachers as useless lazy fucks sucking up taxpayers’ money. Teachers are as important as health care professionals, who get bitched at way less (at least around here, the wage/benefit debates seem to revolve around education and health care).
I know someone will come around here and say teachers do jack shit for too much money and benefits and they could do better, but they’re always just thinking of educating their own special little snowflakes. Yeah, if anyone had a 3:1 ratio of students to teachers they could be awesome at teaching. But try educating 30 kids at once, some with learning difficulties and others with behaviour difficulties! Try having to be their counselor, their confidant and their surrogate parent.
I think every person who bitches about teachers having an easy job needs to spend a day subbing at the worst school in their district.
