Public School Teachers

It took some doing, but I managed to slip through the net - and that was twenty two years ago...

I can't imagine how tough it is to get between the liberal vanguards now! The NEA is recommending that a VALUES test be included for screening of teachers - and those "values" must include the endorsements of gay marriage. This is not really surprising, considering that past president of the NEA, Bob Chase, is a member of the board of directors for GLSEN...

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/column.aspx?UrlTitle=the_curious_case_of_nea_priorities&ns=AlanSears&dt=08/25/2006&page=full&comments=true

If these NEA recommendations for screening new teaching candidates are adopted, conservativw teachers will indeed have an insurmountable obstacle in their career path.

That is unfortunatel, because I really do love teaching. I'm homeschooling my son now, because I love teaching children so much I wanted to teach my own. In the ten years taught in public schools, I was an award winning teacher who had consistently high ratings. I wrote and designed my curriculums with reading as my highest priority, followed by mathematics. By the end of their prekindergarten year, 75% of my students were able to read at a pre-primer level, and many were able to do first-grade math.

However, I am also a Christian who believes that children should be allowed to learn without being drugged by authoritarians, threatened by peers, or indoctrinated by leftists. This brought me much unwanted attention from administrators during my last year as a contracted teacher.

They wanted me to sign a three-year contract - and they also wanted me to completely abandon the curriculums and methods of teaching I had used with such success. They also demanded that teachers stop saying "Merry Christmans" to each other and the children, (even though our demographic was almost 99% Christian) and they continuously changed our teaching methods to meet the lastest drivel put out by the NEA.

I stayed with my students and finished out the year, but I did not sign the contract. Rather, I opted to quit teaching in public schools. It was a hard decision.

Considering my vocal opposition to the NEA's agenda, I doubt that they would even let me enter the profession now...

ping

Thank you for your feedback goldfinch.

I urge all parents homeschool or look for a
good private school for your children.

Parents who want to improve the public school
system -- great. Many homeschool parents are
very civic minded and are involved in community
activities.

My daughter in law teaches in a have/have-not school. She got stuck her first year with the "loser" kids. The first two weeks she called me every day crying that she was NOT prepared. She's now worked there 3 years and is the most loved and respected teacher in her school.

It CAN be done. Hang in there!

Dang, I can't type tonight! Coffee, here I come...

I don't have enough of an understanding of the values of those kids in order to succeed at teaching them.

Not only are the values of many kids warped, they believe some of the strangest things, and they DON'T believe some of the most obvious things. And if you try to convince them, they look at you like you are the one who is nuts. It's a totally different world. But there are a few gems hidden among them. Kids who have both parents and who have a rock solid set of good values.

I am studying to be a teacher. I don't find it that difficult to deal with the liberalism of the School of Education, because my entire family's liberal except for me and my liberal arts college was a liberal paradise. I'm used to it. Almost everyone I know is liberal. Why do you think I joined FR? To talk to people who actually held the same opinions I do.

My job isn't hard, neither do I claim it is hard. Programming is office work, intellectually challenging but fun.

Teachers already are paid big money and it makes no difference. Performance is negatively correlated with pay, as is obvious from the fact that teachers are paid vastly more than they were 2 generations ago yet educational performance has fallen dramatically.

And no, the problem is not parents, parent have been the same from time immemorial, with the same distribution of brilliant and involved, brilliant and uninterested, loving but uninformed, and uninformed and uninterested. The thing that has changed dramatically is that teaching has become a major politicized body, selected and indoctrinated in educational programs at liberal universities, committed to state supremacy and beholden to unions and bureaucracy etc.

Modern educational theory is uniformly utter nonsense, the worst ideological pseudoscience and claptrap, mere rhetoric and political posing. It is utterly unsurprising that academic also-rans recruited for their willingness to swallow such bilge are utter failures in the classroom.

Occasional good teachers occur because occasional good anythings occur, and because it remains one of the callings, and some seek it out because they have an actual gift for it. They would prosper under my smashed system at least as much as they do under the present socialist fiasco.

The liberals have already blamed everything else under the sun for their overwhelming failure. They never have the slightest willingness to even consider their own patent failure. They are the problem, they need to go. Not be compromized with, not be pandered to, not be placated. Run out of the job on a rail, with prejudice.

You have no idea how livid average Americans are at the utter rot in the schools.

It is easy.

The least liveable aspects of the job are the stupidity of the theory one is expected to parrot and political crap from the bureaucrats. Both of which are utterly unnecessary. You could fire a quarter of those in the education business (above the classroom level especially) and quality would improve.

If anybody thinks it is hard, then let anyone with a bachelor's degree start a school for vouchers anyway they like. If all that centralized crap actually helps, they will fail. But they won't fail, and absolutely everyone involved knows it. (See charters). That is why the left won't even allow the attempt.

Here's an excerpt from a letter from a friend of mine. I've posted it before in it's entirety, it says it all: (the original topic was an accusation of elitism against homeschoolers) *Hsing means homeschooling, in this article

However, the underlying premises to this accusation are quite troubling to me. First, there is the assumption that if hsing parents were to become involved in the public school system that we could somehow save the system. That assumption is based on facts not in evidence. In fact, if the experience of many parents who have abandoned the system is any evidence, not only is there no evidence to support the assertion that committed parental involvement would save the public schools, there is evidence that parental involvement is neither valued nor desired by the educational bureaucracy. Many parents abandon the public school system only because their efforts to make a difference are rejected and they realize that while they can't save every child, they can save their own; so, they do.
The second underlying premise is even more disturbing and it is this: somehow other people's children are more entitled to my efforts on their behalf than my own children are. In other words, I owe it to the children of my community, other people's children, to try to effect change on their behalf, even when it is detrimental to my own children.
So, if someone were to make that accusation to me I'd say, "If by elitist you mean that it creates an elite group of people who can read and write and cipher and reason, then you're right it is elitist. It shouldn't be elitist. There is no big secret here and public schools used to do the same thing. You know, schools used to educate kids so that they, too, could read, write, cipher, and reason. Schools do know how to educate, but they choose not to. Just because you choose to subject your children to a failed system which is committed to social change at the expense of education doesn't mean that I must subject my children to the same system. If you want your children to be able to read and write and cipher and reason and you believe that the public schools can be changed in order for that to happen, you should feel free to put your efforts there. When you decide to stop casting your pearls before swine, I'd be happy to help you start homeschooling."

There might be some sense in saying that we owe something to our communities were it possible to change the public school system, but it isn't. So, all that will happen is that I will use up all my resources and no children, not even my own, will be better off. I reject the demand that I immolate my children on the altar of community service. God gave each child in every public school a parent. If those parents fail in their duty to their children that is a tragedy, but the only children whom I have a duty to educate are those that God gave to me.
Besides which, were you to say to the state senator, "All right, I accept your challenge provided that you fire every educrat and let me rebuild the system from scratch and that I determine the curriculum, I determine the state standards, I determine the criteria which constitutes passing and failing, and I determine the rewards and consequences for passing and failing." he'd refuse. They want us to play by their rules, even though their rules guarantee failure.