Posted on 12/02/2007 8:43:47 AM PST by shrinkermd
The LA times has been running a series on education. This is the opening paragraph of their commentary:
It's sad but true, as pretty much any parent can tell you, that white, middle-class schoolchildren are more likely to be taught by experienced, highly paid teachers. And it's particularly true in ethnically diverse districts such as L.A.'s. This is a predictable convergence, but one with dismaying implications for the "achievement gap" between white and Asian students and their black and Latino counterparts. Indeed, the achievement gap is at least in part the result of an "instruction gap," and closing it will require re-imagining the ways we evaluate, reward and deploy teachers...
...Finally, it's time for everyone -- unions, teachers, administrators and parents -- to acknowledge that districts must be allowed to reassign good teachers to low-performing schools. Wise administrators, of course, would avoid forcing teachers into schools where they would be unhappy or resentful -- and thus ineffective. But districts should have the option of sending their best teachers where they are most badly needed -- something that's now almost impossible under union rules. Police departments do this all the time. Crime spikes up in one area, and officers are deployed to that location.
(Excerpt) Read more at latimes.com ...
Some how we need to help our children learn they need to learn in a way they will want to learn.
IOW Translation: White Middle Class Students should not be allowed to have good or the best teachers as a matter of law to held the race diversity.
IOOW: Bring EVERYONE to the lowest level.
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Funny thing. I TEACH in a low income school. We are a comprehensive high school in Georgia, so we get everyone.
I do teach the thugs, the English-Language learners, the students that many don’t want to teach. They want the top, cream of the crop, perfect kids. Not I.
I want the students who struggle, who think a 70% is a crowning achievement, that by GOD need some TLC with a firm hand. I had a kid this year, Gang-Banger, come up to me and thank me for keeping it real and laying down the law for what was expected and what I was going to do to help them achieve their best. I reached that kid, and countless others.
I would not relish the idea of teaching in metropolitan inner cities. I know someone who taught in S. Dekalb county outside of Atlanta. In ONE semester, logged 500 instances of discipline and failures. Her #1 problem? No support from the administration, for after all, what can you do when a kid cusses you out in the middle of class? Send them to the admin, who then send him back telling YOU to deal with this in the classroom. I. DONT. THINK. SO.
I can see why veteran teachers would take serious umbrage with being forced to leave. At some point, point the finger at someone but the teacher.
As for me, I have a class of students in the AM who need me, and I need them.
Well, not altogether. Most of the school shootings have been perpetrated by white kids whose parents worked....
I've started a new thing this year where I send home a letter of congratulations every time a student scores an average of 90% or better on 10 comprehension tests. The feedback from the kids and parents has been phenomenal. Parents love being informed of steady progress and the kids WANT those letters badly and when there is any extra time during their day, they ask to come to my room and read. I have more kids in my room during lunch than most classes. There is no other compensation - just a letter to the tune of "Your child scored ____ on 10 assignments. I am very proud of him/her and wanted you to know." Plus a few other kind phrases. Plus, once they get 10 at that level, they go up 1/2 a grade level. I have some that came in at the beginning of their 6th grade year struggling at a 2nd grade level now in 5th and moving up with a bullet.
Now I'm hearing from the kids how much easier science and history is and how much more fun school is than ever before. Discipline issues are gone, not just down, but g-o-n-e with these 12 kids during their entire school day.
All because of a simple letter.
Thanks for being a great teacher!
Now I'm hearing from the kids how much easier science and history is and how much more fun school is than ever before.
Dang, who'd have thought that being able to read made a difference? *grin*
How *dare* you cut into these childrens’ all important socialization skills by encouraging them to come to your room and do something insane like read!
Do you realize that you may have to ask one of these people for a job one day? Are you aware of the serious reprecussions and consequences of doing exactly what you are doing?
I am personally appalled that you would encourage your students to be the best they can. I bet you even talk them up in class!
This is almost as preposterous as the group of kids I had the other day talking, in class, about poetry, without me throwing it down their throats.
I had best hear of these wonderful things happening more frequently!
;)
Ask people who have never succeeded what the key to success is and most will tell you "education".
Ask successful people what the key to success is and most will tell you "hard work".
Until failing people get off their asses, stop making excuses, assimilate into successful society, and work hard, well, they fail. Don't sit there in your drug-addicted hell, all pierced and tattooed up, hating on successful people, and whine about how unfair life is.
And here in America, even still, you have the right to fail all day long if that's really what you want to do. Unfortunately, I do not have to right to not pay for your failure, but it's not as bad as those socialist tards want it to be.
I like how they set-aside “Asians” (and, increasingly, blacks actually from Africa and from the Caribbean) because they do not fit neatly into the “non-white = failure” models they construct.
F those tards.
Because there are guns to shoot back at minority schools. BTW, every school shooting was by kids on drugs.
It’s so good to hear of the job you’re doing to reach those kids. The *trouble makers* really just need a firm hand and to know that someone really cares. If no one else cares if they make it, why should they?
Although, I’m not one to coddle kids and the self-esteem propaganda simply for making them feel good makes me ill, what you’re doing is going to boost their self-esteem way more than any feel good program.
Perhaps you could have them learn about Ben Carson.
http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/2001/americasbest/science.medicine/pro.bcarson.html
Good teachers want to teach where they will be valued. I am a former teacher. I did student teaching at an inner city school in Durham, NC, and taught in private schools. I felt more appreciated at the inner city school, but then again, this was nearly 30 years ago.
The problem today is not so much less intrinsic ability of the students, but a lack of desire to learn, born of parents’ lack of appreciation for education. Until that changes no good teacher with other choices will opt for teaching where he is banging his head against a brick wall.
Question, will this approach work in schools where kids bring in guns and knives, or threaten to terrorize the teacher and damage his property while he is not looking? I think the articles approach will work in blue collar working districts which deals with wise off kids who thinks the system will do nothing to punish them. However the inner cities deal with gangs and criminals.
An intact nuclear family, (aka daddy staying home), trumps a phalanx of gilt-edged “elite” teachers.
This is nice. Where do the bad teachers go? It seems to me that they are to take the places of the good teachers. This is like trading A-Rod even up for some hitless wonder whom should hsve been unconditionally released a long time ago. The motivated students will suffer and those that have no intention of learning anything will bomb out as usual. Sheer pointy-headed liberal madness!
ITA. Students need to want to learn and value education. Parents have to stop viewing school as daycare and be responsible for their kids behavior. Teachers need to freakin teach and it would help if they were educated and smart. Most education majors in most colleges have mickey mouse classes. Anyone with a heartbeat could get a degree in education. The state boards, now Praxis tests, are ridiculously easy. Even in grad school, the classes are so easy, it’s pathetic. I graduated from Penn State with a different major then went to grad school, 2 master degrees later and the one in education was a breeze. A few years ago I had to take the Praxis tests to be certified in NJ and barely studied, after 20 years, yet still aced them. And, so many fail the praxis. Most ed majors are the bottom of the barrel and that’s a fact.
Then there’s the teachers’ union. A thug organization. We need to get rid of the union before we even try to change puplic education in this country.
I send/sent my kids to catholic school until high school and fortunately I live in an affluent area so the puplic high school is exceptional. But it’s still the same crap only here they don’t want parental involvement or being questioned because it shows the many flaws.
I grew up in the inner city and taught in inner city philly as a young teacher. I also taught in an affluent PA town and now live in one. It will be a cold day in hell when I’d ever again teach in the slums or the city or any area where I have to deal with lowlifes.
We have to stop allowing the unions and the government to run the schools.
Thank you.
Your becoming my favorite “poster.”
“There should be zero tolerance for violence and thuggish behavior.”
Agreed, but if I have to pay for it, I’d rather they be behind bars, as an example to their progeny.
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