Interesting op-ed piece here by a woman who thinks kids need to be held responsible more for their performance in school.
I mostly agree, but I don’t think she makes a good case in some places.
Yes, the teacher is largely responsible for what happens in a classroom. But there are limits, and in the end kids who don’t feel like learning won’t.
Seems to me most organizations only work with the cooperation of those within. Does a “highly effective teacher” do a better job? Absolutely - to a point. But if the kids won’t cooperate, there’s only so much learning that will take place.
This is a POV I haven’t heard much in the education debates of the last few years. Mostly it’s about “holding teachers accountable”, which I’m mostly OK with. But how about holding the kids accountable?
Some of them (many, depending on which school system we’re talking about) don’t give a rip if they get bad grades, detention or suspensions.
How do you hold a qualified and otherwise effective teacher accountable in that situation? Should we put more of the onus on the kids? If so, how?
Let’s not forget parents. Parents are at least as responsible as teachers & students. How about holding parents accountable for their children’s education, or lack thereof.
I guess it depends on the age of the kids. Can 5 year olds be held accountable? 8 year olds?
At some point kids reach a maturity to recognize cause and effect, and at some point they reach an age where they can be held accountable. I don’t think most “kids” could be held accountable. Some mature faster than others.
I don’t think it is the teachers faults though, I think it is more the system’s fault.
Speaking as an elementary school teacher, I can tell you that it’s an extremely complicated and difficult job. The fact that a student is not engaged in learning is generally regarded as an inability by the teacher to reach that student in a way that the student will respond. I only recently became a teacher over the last 3 years or so and have been taking education courses. From what I have seen, the trend is to be able to adapt your lesson to those difficult students who don’t seem to want to learn. In other words, if a student isn’t trying hard enough, you are not trying hard enough to reach them as a teacher. I work in one of the lowest-rated schools in the district. It’s in a low-income, urban area and the issues that come up that you have to deal with are pretty unbelievable. However, I believe one of the things that needs to be instilled in the students before learning can occur is a sense of self-worth. Many of my students don’t feel that an education is really worth it because they feel they will wind up in jail or a gang or dead anyway. One fifth-grader told a teacher last year that he makes $50 an hour just holding drugs while the cops search someone else. So, our job is to make education worthwhile for these students and to make sure that they see viable alternatives to life in the street.
And you are right that some students don’t care if they get bad grades, detentions or suspensions. The key is not to ignore those students, but to get them to care. As far as parents are concerned, yes, they are vitally important to the learning process. Unfortunately, given our clientele, it’s often more difficult to deal with the parents than with our students. My advice, for parents is that the simplest thing to do is to read to their children every day. So much student success deals with background knowledge or “schema” and kids are coming into school with very little background knowledge. They may not know what a farm is or what are traditional farm animals are. And it’s not like every child needs to go to a farm to gain this knowledge, but reading a book at home about these things greatly contributes to their schema.
Overall, the key is to make education worthwhile to these students.
(on a side note that may be pit-worthy for me one day, I find it really annoying that I see bumper stickers on cars like “My child can beat up your honor student” Or “My cocker spaniel is smarter than your honor student.” Sheesh, can we marginalize intelligence any MORE? It’s bad enough that intelligence is equated in the media with nerds and geeks and evil scientists, but do we have to put it down at every opportunity?)
I think that parents are the most responsible of the three groups. Parents need to socialize children, so that they will behave properly and are ready to learn. Kids who are accustomed to running around when they feel like it, ignoring any adult attempts to get them to sit down and listen, and who are simply undisciplined cannot learn much from even the best teacher. Parents need to prepare children by repeating colors, numbers, letters, and so forth, so that the kids can communicate with others. Parents need to make sure that all homework is done properly BY THE CHILDREN. Parents must enforce good diets and proper sleeping habits, to ensure that a child is well nourished and well rested in school. Parents should come to school functions, and otherwise show an interest in a child’s academic progress.
Last but not least, parents must set a good example in all their behavior towards others.
And have books for the kids in the house. And let thair kids see THEM reading for pleasure.
Speaking as a teacher of 20+ years, I tend to agree with this. There will always be the hard cases, but for the most part, if they aren’t learning, you need to do something different so that they are. That’s why they pay us the big bucks. That’s why we have the respect and thanks of a grateful oh who am I kidding? We do this miserable job because we love it, because someone has to stand alone and defend the gate from the barbarian hordes that threaten to engulf us. we do it because when you do reach that one kid, it makes all the rest of the shit, the parents, the administration, all of it go away.
One of my more insightful parents once observed that we do have one great advantage in our profession, in that when we stand before St. Peter and he asks us what we have done to merit entrance into Heaven, all we need say is “I’m a teacher.”
I’m a high school teacher (I sorta think I’m Silenus, slightly offset: he’s AP Euro/Ap Gov/Debate. I’m AP Language/AP Econ*/AcDec) There is plenty of responsiblity to go around, I think it’s like being an oncologist: half my patients are doomed, but since I don’t know which half, I have to treat them all as if I can inspire them. I am not going to have a hundred percent success rate, and I know that a lot of that is due to factors outside my control–not least, the student’s own acceptance of thier responsibilities. I can’t learn for them. As a parent, I’d put the responsibility on my kid: as a teacher, I try to teach them that they are the ones responsible for their education. For myself, I always assume that it’s my job to reach them all and that there is a way to do so, if only I can find it. I fail as much as I succeed, and I forgive myself pretty quickly, but I have to believe success is possible in every single case, or else I’d give up on all the wrong ones.
The real kick is when one of the kids you thought you missed comes back years later and tells you that you made a difference. I wouldn’t trade that for anything.
Ah, but those that want to start finding new ways of holding teachers “accountable” are not likely to be so forgiving.
I said earlier I’m mostly OK with holding teachers accountable. But I realize now I probably don’t mean it in the same way many others do. I think in terms of the professionalism that Manda Jo seems to have in spades. She holds herself to a high standard, and I think that sort of accountability goes further than any peer review or administrator’s observation.
But now people are throwing around the idea of rating teachers according to the test scores of their classes. How do you do that when the kids don’t care about their schoolwork, and don’t respond to discipline? Are we seriously going to fire or transfer teachers who are saddled with class after class where half the kids fall into that group?
In my state the teachers have to get Master’s Degrees to be permanently certified. I’m told they are routinely observed and critiqued by administrators, and frequently attend professional development seminars. Damned if I know how to reasonably improve the accountability of this group of teachers - seems to me they’re already expert professionals. But putting more of the onus on the kids sounds reasonable to me.
How? I don’t know. So teachers: In a perfect world, what would you do with the kids who don’t give a rip that isn’t already being done?
And in response to Epimetheus’ question about kids’ ages: I’m thinking mostly about middle school and high school kids. I agree that nobody should expect elementary school kids to be completely accountable for themselves.
If a student doesn’t care about schoolwork or discipline, then there are ways to document that sort of thing. If you can show that you made the effort to educate them to the best of your ability then, I suppose you’ve done what you’ve could to reach them. Does being accountable as a teacher mean that all students have to show that they are gifted? Do all of them have to score 100 percent on all statewide tests? Or do they have to show some sort of improvement from one assessment to the next?
I suppose one logical conclusion to Mach Truck’s scenario is something like this:
Class with half the kids performing low. Fire or get rid of teacher. Get new teacher. Get same results. Fire or transfer teacher. Get new teacher. Get same results.
At some point, you would hope that the “powers that be” would realize that the variable they are modifying is not the cause of the problem and they’d try another approach. Alternative schooling. Something like that.
In a perfect world, let’s see, in a perfect world… we would not have students like that!! Ha. Problem solved!
Oh wait, okay, let’s see…um. What would I want done with these students? Somehow they need to be shown the importance of an education and it has to be instilled in them. Jerry Springer would be cancelled. Their parents would have to serve as teachers for a week. They’d have to hear about the “tossed salad man.” You’d have to show them that you get better results from having an education than not having an education. You have to deal with discipline problems by having them have an intrinsic reason to want to do well. Punishment is not going to do it. They are going to have to want to succeed. And, with hope, slowly but surely, a teacher can bring more and more students around.
Story time - This one is told by Roger Welch in his book “Old Tractors and the Men That Love Them”: One day a father discovered that his high school-aged son wasn’t trying in school. So dad, a plumber by profession, took the kid out of school and took him to work with him. Gave the kid every single dirty job he could find, and as a plumber, there were plenty of them. Said it only took a week before his kid was back in school, Dean’s List for his remaining semesters.
Seems to me that there are a lot of really dirty, nasty, ugly jobs out there that could very easily be done by our discipline problems. Unfortunately, our NannyState™ government has decreed that we can’t make the little darlings break a sweat anymore. So it’s up to the parents.
Except how do you document smiling at them in the hall and telling them you were looking forward to seeing them later that day? Coming up with a spin on an assignment? Being just sarcastic enough with this one and just sympathetic enough with that one?
Frankly, anyone can come up with a lot of bullshit evidence that such-and-such objectives were “covered”: I don’t know how you prove that you made enough effort–especially since you always could have done more.
