education-related rants
Jan. 3rd, 2003 06:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolin1) A while ago i thought teaching high school English was what i wanted to do with my life. The most common response i got to that was that, oh, i could do so much better. There’s a Newsweek editorial i have a photocopy of somewhere, in which the author points out that wouldn’t you want the best and the brightest teaching your kids? I love that article. And the issue of pay brings in a huge ranty-type essay about class and money and i'm just not up for that at the moment.
2) People suggest that perhaps i could teach at the college level. I understand the rationale behind this, but what i hate so much about teaching at the college level is the “publish or perish.” I understand that it’s important to keep abreast of the new developments in your field, but that doesn’t mean you should have to do research and publish articles. Particularly in fields such as literature, there often isn’t much new to say. And if you’re paying people to teach, you should evaluate them on their teaching . I understand that is difficult, but so is life, deal. I hate this in regular school, too, where salary increases are based only on seniority and how many often-useless professional development days (and their ilk) you have attended.
3) The situation which precipitated this (series of) rant(s) necessitates an introduction for most of you. My father, brilliant and wonderful man, has been substitute teaching for about 6 years. Mostly at the high school. The kids think he’s the best substitute ever. He’s nice and is able and willing to help the students with their work. The past few years he’s been substituting nearly every day and is usually the first to get called, meaning he gets his pick of who to sub for (by now he knows who has a lot of difficult classes, plus it’s nice when he has classes where he actually knows the subject matter). Oftentimes when one covers a study hall, many of your students have or ask for passes to go elsewhere. Sometimes when you issue a student a pass to one place, he or she ends up somewhere else. This is not your fault, and a regular substitute tends to learn which students can be trusted, but no one is perfect.
So anyway, around mid-November, my dad had a really bad class and the home ec teacher came by and said she was having a speaker and if any of the kids in my dad’s class wanted to, they could come. So my dad issued a pass to some kids to go down there. Later, one of the gym teachers is upset because they’re coming out of the boys’ locker room. My dad had been scheduled to be this teacher a couple other days, but that gets cancelled and my dad doesn’t get called much for the next couple weeks. Finally he asks what’s up, gets referred to the vice principal (who’s in charge of substitutes and also gets stuck handling many of the discipline problems -- my dad says it’s a position with a lot of responsibility and not much power, which is a very bad combination.) and the principal. Turns out he’s been knocked down the totem pole so to speak. A lot of kids end up the vice principal’s office for being places they’re not supposed to be, with passes from my dad (admittedly something he had mentioned to my dad a couple times before) and also, some teachers have said that they don’t want my dad subbing for their classes (which is the part that made me go WTF!!! ‘cause i don’t know who the hell that would be and am damn curious). Since it’s not like they fired my dad or anything, they figured it’s not like they had any obligation to tell my dad what was going on. I found this out yesterday (unfortunately after i had visited the high school, where i could have been all good and gossipy) because people forget to tell me things when i’m away at school and am much calmer regarding it than i was when i first found out.
[edited to add, while i'm griping, that honorary degrees irk me]
Unrelatedly, at dinner last night my mother randomly mentioned that she wants to have her body donated to a Body Farm. She says she read about it in Reader’s Digest. Apparently it’s where people learn how to do CSI-type stuff. She thinks it’s one of the cooler things one could do with one’s body after one is dead. And speaking of CSI, who else saw last night’s 9pm rerun and totally wanted to slash Julia and Claudia at the end?
2) People suggest that perhaps i could teach at the college level. I understand the rationale behind this, but what i hate so much about teaching at the college level is the “publish or perish.” I understand that it’s important to keep abreast of the new developments in your field, but that doesn’t mean you should have to do research and publish articles. Particularly in fields such as literature, there often isn’t much new to say. And if you’re paying people to teach, you should evaluate them on their teaching . I understand that is difficult, but so is life, deal. I hate this in regular school, too, where salary increases are based only on seniority and how many often-useless professional development days (and their ilk) you have attended.
3) The situation which precipitated this (series of) rant(s) necessitates an introduction for most of you. My father, brilliant and wonderful man, has been substitute teaching for about 6 years. Mostly at the high school. The kids think he’s the best substitute ever. He’s nice and is able and willing to help the students with their work. The past few years he’s been substituting nearly every day and is usually the first to get called, meaning he gets his pick of who to sub for (by now he knows who has a lot of difficult classes, plus it’s nice when he has classes where he actually knows the subject matter). Oftentimes when one covers a study hall, many of your students have or ask for passes to go elsewhere. Sometimes when you issue a student a pass to one place, he or she ends up somewhere else. This is not your fault, and a regular substitute tends to learn which students can be trusted, but no one is perfect.
So anyway, around mid-November, my dad had a really bad class and the home ec teacher came by and said she was having a speaker and if any of the kids in my dad’s class wanted to, they could come. So my dad issued a pass to some kids to go down there. Later, one of the gym teachers is upset because they’re coming out of the boys’ locker room. My dad had been scheduled to be this teacher a couple other days, but that gets cancelled and my dad doesn’t get called much for the next couple weeks. Finally he asks what’s up, gets referred to the vice principal (who’s in charge of substitutes and also gets stuck handling many of the discipline problems -- my dad says it’s a position with a lot of responsibility and not much power, which is a very bad combination.) and the principal. Turns out he’s been knocked down the totem pole so to speak. A lot of kids end up the vice principal’s office for being places they’re not supposed to be, with passes from my dad (admittedly something he had mentioned to my dad a couple times before) and also, some teachers have said that they don’t want my dad subbing for their classes (which is the part that made me go WTF!!! ‘cause i don’t know who the hell that would be and am damn curious). Since it’s not like they fired my dad or anything, they figured it’s not like they had any obligation to tell my dad what was going on. I found this out yesterday (unfortunately after i had visited the high school, where i could have been all good and gossipy) because people forget to tell me things when i’m away at school and am much calmer regarding it than i was when i first found out.
[edited to add, while i'm griping, that honorary degrees irk me]
Unrelatedly, at dinner last night my mother randomly mentioned that she wants to have her body donated to a Body Farm. She says she read about it in Reader’s Digest. Apparently it’s where people learn how to do CSI-type stuff. She thinks it’s one of the cooler things one could do with one’s body after one is dead. And speaking of CSI, who else saw last night’s 9pm rerun and totally wanted to slash Julia and Claudia at the end?
Teaching
Date: 2003-01-03 04:37 pm (UTC)From a students perspective I gave very little respect to my teachers because a) none of them seemed like they wanted to be there and b) they spent all their time with the honor students who didn't need them and totally ignored the troubled kids who did.
Not saying you would do either of those, it's just that it seems over time it's a natural progression for teachers to take. They get sick of helping for the low wages and tend to spend their time with the easy to manage kids who never give them a hard time to the detriment of the kids who might have trouble at home and just need a self esteem boost, someone to believe in them etc.
In my 25 years of life I can honestly say I've had 2 teachers I respected and admired. Both are women, first one was my 6th grade math teacher who came here from Sweden, the other a continuation teacher I had when I was going through hard times myself. Both teachers commanded respect by their very presence. Wendy, my continuation teacher had dealt with the toughest of tough and always came out with a new friend. She made the comment before she retired that my friend Rad (yes his real name) and I were her hardest students but also greatest achievments, even though I let her down quite a lot. Her confidence in me and willingness to listen is what ultimately changed my life, not via some great epiphany but by instilling the basic values I needed to progress.
I don't see this in other teachers. I had a teacher tell me to "tatoo D.S. on my forehead", D.S. standing for dumb shit. I even had a teacher in 7th grade stalk me because she thought I was a devil worshiper. She used to take pictures of me with all my friends and was constantly calling the cops on me trying to bust me, never successfully. I had another teacher who locked kids up in the closet when he got sick of them in class. I had an art teacher who flat out refused to teach me because she didn't like the way I looked. I had to sit in the VP's office every day for one period for an entire year. I have friends who went through much worse than I did. I had a girlfriend who was physically assualted by the same teacher who told me to tatoo DS on my head. He kicked her so hard she spent the evening in the hospital. She was to affriad to tell anyone what really happened so the school staff started rumors that "Todd the devil worshiping kid beats his girlfriend and almost killed her". I never did anything to these people, they singled me out because my older sisters were drug addicts. My sisters however are 10 and 12 years older than me, yet these teachers still held a grudge against them and took it out on me.
The high school system here in CA is evil. At least in the bay area where I went. Granted it's been 7 years or so since I was in school there so maybe improvements have been made. I just find it unlikely. I only bring all this up because you seem like a great person and I would hate to see what the system does to you. I've heard it said that all teachers start out enthusiastic and wanting to do a good job, yet here we are with one of the worst education systems in the free world.
Take care and good luck. Whatever you do I'm sure you'll be great at it as long as you stick to your guns.
Re: Teaching
Date: 2003-01-04 07:56 am (UTC)I've had probably a dozen wonderful teachers, but mine was a very good school system, and i was in accelerated classes from the time they began tracking students.
One of the reasons i wanted to go into teaching was to instill in kids a love of literature (I'm such an English major.) but i don't know if i would be able to deal with the vast numbers of high schoolers who just don't care. And given that one's friends are usually one's classmates, i don't even really have much experience with non-acclerated type students. But then everytime i read a story about some life-changing teacher i get all inspired again.
Thank you for your kind words. I'm so sorry that your education experience was so horrible.
Re: Teaching
Date: 2003-01-04 10:26 am (UTC)Anyway, you should do it, at least on a substitute level. Just to see how it fits. There are of course private schools in the state but if your are going to make such a huge commitment, the public school system needs you much much more.
Take care and good luck =)
Metta,
-todd