The great majority of my teaching was wonderful. The two students with IEPs that I mentioned were in my first class, so I really didn’t know what I was doing. Perhaps it would have gone better if I had had some experience.
I think a lot of my stress came in dealing with other people’s children. As a waitress, or when I worked in an office, if I made a mistake it might upset a patron, or a client, but people aren’t quite as patient or understanding when their child is involved (and as the parent of a wonderful, almost perfect child :D, I’ve been on the other side of the desk, too). Something small could blow up because a child misunderstood something, or repeated part of a conversation to his parents. When I first started teaching, most parents might call and ask for clarification, but by the end the parent would just be furious before asking what happened. People, and I include myself in this, can be very sensitive about their kids.
I enjoyed most of my time teaching. I would not encourage any young person to go into the profession, though. Perhaps it’s because I’m in Illinois, where the state hasn’t made its contribution into our pension system (the same as if you found out your boss had never paid his share into Social Security), so now they don’t want to pay our pensions.
This was one of the things that made teaching an attractive job 20 years ago. Sure, you didn’t get paid a lot of money - but you did get almost three months off in the summer. And, after 25 years, the pension in a lot of states and/or districts was very nice - I remember teachers retiring at 50 with full salaries. Benefits were good, too. The pension situation and benefit situation have really changed. The teachers I know who have taught for 20 years or more now say that the kids have changed a lot - a lot more discipline issues than they had when they started. Class sizes are a lot bigger for them as well.
Absolutely I do. For one, my methods differentiate. For another, my methods give students authentic audiences, which research shows leads to higher engagement and better results among all students but especially among low-income students.
Absolutely I don’t. How would that study even work? Seriously, are you going to design a study that controls for demographic shifts, changes in use of technology at home, economic fluctuation, changed grade-level standards, and other variables over the course of 25 years in order to judge student performance in this manner? It’s hard enough to do an apples-to-apples comparison of two concurrent classes. I’d be interested to see your proposed study design.
That question is only “bigger” in the sense that it’s “even more ridiculous.” Seriously, this is what you think a good question looks like? Try again.
Teachers have access to educational research, you know.
But the longer answer is that teaching is a lot like managing people. There is research around it, but it’s not one size fits all. You need to find the intersection between best practices, your own management style, and the people you are working with
The best schools build in collaboration. Teacher work together to share what works and what doesn’t, develop sophisticated materials, and provide feedback on each other’s work. That’s how effective and innovative ideas spread. But it takes time and money to do that, so it’s pretty rare to see it done right.
One thing about teaching - your room is your castle. You can put up all kinds of things on the walls or hang from the ceilings that reflect your personality, hobbies, or what you want to emphasize in the classroom. for example a science teacher might put up alot of sci-fi stuff. My sons 4th grade teacher was nuts about football and his college so he put up a lot of stuff about that. I know an art teacher who set up a full loom.
When you teach if your more knowledgeable about a certain subject-you emphasize that. My 4th grade teacher was into cooking and did alot of cooking demo’s. Another teacher might be into certain books.
Some teachers slip their religion in.
Now it can get out of hand and that is where the “no” comes in.
Point is it makes the job more interesting for the teacher. Nobody would want to work at a school that forbid any personal effects.
“Authentic audiences” means that when I do a writing unit, I try to arrange for an audience for the writing that’s not just me. At the very least we’ll do a bulletin board of the educational posters students create. We might invite other students in to the classroom to teach them about what we’ve learned, or share it with our reading buddies. We’ve sometimes written pieces that are performed before the whole school, or a section of the school. We’ve written letters to the mayor. Once we even wrote letters to businesses asking for their support for a service project we were doing (planting trees along a river). There’s decent research showing that all learners, but especially low-income learners (who generally come from a less academic family and therefore practice fewer academic skills outside of a school setting) are more motivated and engaged in their learning when they know that their products have an audience that’s not just the teacher.
“Differentiating” means that I try to adjust assignments to account for different skill levels of my students. In writing, this might mean that everyone writes a three-paragraph narrative about the field trip that we took to a business, but the more advanced students include four extra paragraphs discussing the business’s history, its source for raw goods, and its target customers. This is some Vygotsky stuff, where students learn best in their Zone of Proximal Development: if you teach everyone exactly the same material, it’s boring for some, perfect for some, and inaccesssible for some.
In addition to having accessed research in the past that supports my preferred pedagogical approach, I am, in a fairly loose way, engaged in conducting this own research myself, through a fellowship that compares this kind of writing to a default district writing curriculum, comparing the written products of students from both approaches. It’s loose because my main job is teaching, not research, but I certainly know how a more rigorous study could be designed, given more time for conducting the research.
That’s often not the case, and often what it means to “cover” a subject is open to legitimate debate. As someone who professionally has written tests and diagnosed program assessment systems, I would say that many tests are problematic and some solely serve as the instrument of greatest convenience for the program, rather than a valid measurement. In one case I have have studied, a particular single test has come to critically shape a whole area of of education, which wants to change, but can’t, because that test is the only one available for accountability toward federal funding. Tests are not neutral things–they have all kinds of historical, political, and circumstantial biases which eventually come to be taken for granted and effectively invisible. This isn’t to say that they can’t be effective, because obviously they often are, but I’ve seen many bad tests that programs blithely use without even stopping to consider their real value.
There are no “Common Core tests” per se. Common Core is a set of standards. The state or the district adopts its own tests. They may or may not accurately reflect the Common Core Standards, and they may do so to varying degrees, one way or the other. They may be good tests or they may be terrible tests. The fact that the test themselves are high stakes has nothing to do with any particularly standards; whatever standards they have, they’ll still have to “teach and prep the kids” for whatever tests they have.
Like this thread, I am a zombie, retired for nearly 20 years. University professor, it was a great job when I started. I had a lot of autonomy. But over the years, the administration took a lot of it away, just gradually, like boiling a frog. Even so, in my day, I never had a parent complain. I did have one student who went a lawyer around, but that student needed a shrink, not a lawyer. And one other, an Argentinian whose mother got the Argentinian consul to phone my chairman. Still things have changed more and not for the better. Everything is more bureaucratic and I told my children to avoid the profession.
There are two sorts of people who go into teaching: Those who have a calling for it, and those who think it will be easy. Those who have a calling will find it worthwhile. Those who think it will be easy, won’t.
Weren’t you a professor of mathematics? Plumbing the fathoms of the universe, as the centuries of human thought gently washed against your office door - a mouthpiece of God. Who nevertheless had to teach a couple of one hour tutorials every week.
This is Holy work and hardly the same thing as being a classroom teacher in a school.
My best friend is an elementary school teacher in CA. He loves the job, says it’s the best he’s ever had. He teaches science to 1st thru 6th grades, so he has 6 years with most of the kids.
The closest I ever saw to a teacher thinking it would be “easy” are the ones who saw themselves as coaches first - teachers second. And who can make good money running camps and doing side instruction in their sport. This allows them to pursue their passion like basketball or football all their lives.
I’ve certainly seen teachers who came from some other line of work, and bought into the whole idea of “Only 7 hours a day! 5 hours, after breaks! Summers off!”, and who thought it wouldn’t take any particular skill. They generally last a single year.
You know, I don’t like sports in school. I’m in a school with no athletics, and it’s like a miracle. Over the course of my career, I have had so many negative encounters with coaches–I’ve found many that are dishonest, dishonorable, excessively competitive, appallingly negligent in the classroom, and in some cases personally odious.**
I have never, ever, ever known one who was lazy. As much as teachers bitch about how much we work, coaches invariably work schedules that are insane by anyone’s standards. Late, late nights. Every weekend. It’s not just practice; it’s prep, and a take-down, and strategy meetings, and individual help, and, honestly, dealing with the social and emotional needs of their kids. It’s fund-raising, glad-handing, community-building. It’s paperwork. Tons and tons of paperwork. And they also have to be in the classroom at least part time, with lesson prep and grading (however shitty of a job they may do)
I don’t agree with the whole goal of their existence, but I can’t deny they put heart and soul into it. I’m sure they love it–they couldn’t do it otherwise–but that doesn’t make it easy.
** I have also known some lovely coaches. Who also worked very hard. But even the jerks were hard workers.
I used to be a PE teacher, and in that field you are generally expected to coach. I hated it, partly for the reasons you list - stupidly long hours etc. But more importantly, I don’t see how it’s possible to be a good teacher while coaching.
I would stand up at conferences after they’d tell us about all the new teaching stuff coming down the line and I’d say, “That’s great, I’m all for it. But who’s going to coach? Because if you want me to devote myself to teaching - and I’m all for it - I’ll need to be a full-time teacher.” This was usually met with muffled grumbling and an admonition that, well, we need coaching too.
Not many schools with no athletics, but I’d be for that too. Ideally, I’d like to see school-wide recreational programs but no actual athletics. Plenty of opportunities for that outside of school, never mind how sports have gotten a completely out-sized place of importance in education.
I wish I’d been given the chance to work hard at being a teacher, but in PE that’s not generally considered the important part of the gig, unfortunately.