Posted on 01/30/2007 5:45:59 AM PST by wintertime
(snip)
1. The practitioners know and can do things the public in general cannot do. They have a specialized body of knowledge.
2. The specialized body of knowledge practitioners have takes an extended period of time to learn.
3. The educators who prepare the practitioners are experts who agree upon the specialized body of knowledge practitioners must have.
4. Admission to a professional training program is highly selective.( snip).
6. Only members of the profession set the standards for licensure and certification.
7. The primary responsibility and loyalty of a professional is to serve the client and not simply the institution or governmental agency in which the practitioner may be employed.
8. Neither the public at large nor an employing institution may control the way in which professionals relate to their clients, or the treatments, methods or procedures they use.
9. Neither the public at large nor an employing institution may set the purpose, goals or objectives for the practitioner’s practice with clients.
10. The public at large does not decide how to evaluate professionals.
11. Only members of the profession can determine malpractice and dismiss or disbar practitioners.
12. Professionals determine the cost of their services.
19. Professionals are trained to serve clients with problems. By definition “professionals” do not seek to perform services to clients without problems.
21. Professionals share a code of ethics to which they commit and adhere. They cannot be directed to perform or not perform services for clients which conflict with their professional code.
The case that teaching does not meet any of these twenty one criteria can be readily made.
(Excerpt) Read more at ednews.org ...
Ah, so you're a spouse that sees how hard your teacher works and has ignoramouses always talking about how unintelligent and lazy teachers are, too? It's enough to make you want to scream, isn't it? We see bad teachers too, so it isn't that we are blind to the bad-teacher component of the education problem. But they do not represent the majority. And they just make my husband's job all the harder. Teachers deserve a lot of respect. Given what I read far too often on FR, it's no wonder that the little darlings in the classroom don't respect their teachers, making it all the harder for them to do their job.
My wife is a former teacher and now a principal. Many of those she has worked with and now has working for her are as you describe.
The teaching profession and teachers unions are essentially the new craft guild. Seeking to keep out of the profession those who they consider undesireables (conservitives).
Now as an administrator my wife thinks that tenure needs to be history as she has been saddled with incompetent to unwilling teachers from the previous administration. They have tenure, and it's hard to to get tid of them, but not impossible.
I told my wife that she needs to domument everything, and when the move to 30.20A dismissal action that they don't lose.
I spent 10 years in the IUE-AFL-CIO as a Shop Steward and Chief Steward. I have helped my wife in dealing with the union and have had the school district insert into the contract this language "the school administration retains exclusive right to manage its business".
After 15 years out of the union, let me tell you I will never join another one nor will I work where there is a union.
Absolutely. I get a class-full of 1st year University students, and about 5 out of 60 will have written a complete, researched term paper. Little wonder that they then grab stuff off the internet and plagiarize. I have to give very clear directions and expectations. But by the end of that first year they have learned either to research and write well or to fake it. My daughter had a teacher in Gr. 11 who had them write a paper a week... just short, but one a week. She worked hard, and she worked them hard, and the results were clear for my daughter.
Should have included you in my comment...
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1776041/posts?page=73#73
Not really, I am woefully undereducated compared to my lucky foreign or private-school educated colleagues. I manage to make it through on sheer tenacity.
As for paid very badly, in Baltimore a teacher just starting with only a BA makes 36k, 5 years in 40k. A teacher with 10 years experience and an MA makes over 50k. It goes up 1k a year of experience after that, plus cost of living adjustments. Coaches or department heads make an extra 3-4k. The work year is 10 months.
Okay, now I have officially heard everything!
==8^O
Getting through engineering school is one thing -- but it's hard to pass those P.E. exams if you slack off all the way through!
Agreed. Basic military requires at most 6 mos. of "training".
Go up to the highest pinnacle, and maybe it would be a true "profession" (besides perhaps the officer's corps).
Yes, I know that. But that is superficial, at best. No one can be 'developed' in 4 years -- or in 8 years of school. In Canada, a new engineer is 'mentored' for a period of time. I don't think the system is as productive as it could be, but it is in the right direction. Many young engineering students do their studies as 'co-op', whereby they intersperse classroom study with job placings. It prolongs the time that they are officially students, but it greatly increases their scope and on-the-job training.
"Ah, so you're a spouse that sees how hard your teacher works and has ignoramouses always talking about how unintelligent and lazy teachers are, too? "
You got it!!
And let me guess...might you be the spouse who hears her husband complain that since he is a male in a female dominated industry - he gets the honor of having "extra" duties?
are his classes strangely loaded with troubled boys as compared to his female counterparts?
Is he paid more for taking on these responsibilities?
"We see bad teachers too, so it isn't that we are blind to the bad-teacher component of the education problem. But they do not represent the majority."
It's like anything else. No one gets noticed for doing their job - for doing what they're supposed to do.
The ones that get all the attention are the pitiful incompetents - and when they're bad, they're REALLY bad.
"Given what I read far too often on FR, it's no wonder that the little darlings in the classroom don't respect their teachers, making it all the harder for them to do their job."
Yes. My hubby gets "talked down to" quite a bit by non-educators who know better.
They let him know how he should really be doing his job.
These folks don't work with children. They cruise the internet and think they know everything because they've read articles.
Of course - these folks are strangely absent during school board meetings, and even don't show up to vote during budget time.
My cap is off to you...
A properly written IEP delineates the needs of the child and some of the parents wishes. Some parents don't care, others want everything possible that can be done, will be done.
Noone cares about that much. If they did, everyone would be required to get at least an EIT nevermind a PE. But, millions of jobs exist for the "unprofessionals". There is no legal or even academic requirement for it (thank God - yet).
The PE stuff is icing and truth is, a tiny % of jobs actually require it. More ask for MS or PhD than ask for "PE".
You have got to be kidding! What medical condition could this be?
like every other profession there are good and bad. i know quite a few *very* good lawyers, yet lawyers get ripped on more than teachers.
up here, teachers are selfish and more interested in the pay than in teaching. come check out the school district up here where 98% of teachers voted against a proposition that would make them pay for 4% of their health benefits. they currently pay nothing. they're already facing a deficit, and can't afford to pay for all the supplies they need, but aren't willing to sacrifice anything.
nothing against your sister, or any of the other good teachers out there, but more often than not, teachers aren't worth much. have you ever asked your sister how many of her collegues she thinks are worth anything?
I'm sure you have it much worse than we do. My husband teaches college, but a lot of the issues are the same. He eats lunch with other teachers who left public school to teach college (which in our area is a significant pay cut) because they couldn't handle the situation there any more. There are changes going on (under the radar for the most part) in higher education that public education has been forced to reject because of parental demand, at least here in the state of PA. My only daughter is graduating from college this year. If I had children coming through the system, I would seriously rethink their higher ed options...
And believe it or not, the gender issues are here too. Men are more prevalent, but women are on a faster track to the top and neither good male teachers nor students are always beneficiaries of the new trend.
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