Am I the first teacher to reply?

NCLB- I personally find NCLB a crock of crap. It's all great in theory to "leave no child behind" the problem is there is absolutely no funding behind it. How can I possibly not leave a child behind when it is just me in a class of 21 first graders. I have 2-3 speds (1 is about to be tested that is why I say three). I have about 7 ELL's. I have 8 kids who are low-low. I have 9 or so below or at grade level and only 8 above grade level. I'm by myself. I can honestly only do so much. The only time my kids get any one on one time with me is when I have to progress moniter them on DIBELS (ORF-oral reading fluency). It's so sad. Then the sped kids. According to NCLB ALL kids must be at grade level. That is a retarded thing to want considering there is a population of students in our country who have IEP's (individualized education plans) and they will NEVER be on grade level. To hold that expectation of them and the teacher is insane! One of my sped kids will NEVER be on grade level. He doesn't retain the knowledge. He can barely sing his alphabet. He is at a pre-primer level (that is below kindergarten and I teach 1st).

Funding- Well I just happen to live in the state that is number 50 when it comes to teacher pay and funding. Enough said. I can't do much when the state doesn't spend what it should on kids. As a teacher I get $50 at the beginning of the school year to buy supplies. 50 dollars, that doesn't buy jack. I've probably spent more than 2 grand of my own money in the last 3 years of teaching. That is the only way to get the supplies for my kids that they need. 99% of the stuff in my room, I've bought from my own money. Which sucks because I get paid pretty damn crappy in the first place.

Pay- The notion that my eduction isn't as much as others is dumb. To keep our certificate a teacher has to do professional development hours. These are graduate level courses in the education field. These courses have to be approved by the district a teacher works at for professional development so that you can move up on the pay scale. While I did start out making 40K this year my raise is .05% which is down right pathetic. The only way I make more money is to get more and more education. But the increase in pay will be NOTHING compared to the money I will be spending on my education. Yes, I'm going to persue my education because I want to, but teachers shouldn't have to keep paying for graduate education so that they can get more money. Why is it that I'm supposedly teaching the "future of America". You know those future basketball, football, baseball players, yet I can barely make enough to live on my own? What is that about?

Support: I do have some great parents this year but administrative support could be better. My school is a school that hasn't made AYP for the last two years. We are in warning that the state might take us over. My principal and assistant principal try their hardest but they walked into a school that has problems. There are teachers who are more interested in causing dissention and non-cohesiveness. The middle schoolers have absolutely no discipline and will not hesistate to cuss out any teacher that comes within their path and they are told to do something they don't want to do. The kids suffer absolutely no consequences for their wretched behavior. The district is totally pacifist with how they treat the kids. The parents pretty much "own" the district. If a parent doesn't like what an administrator has told them they can walk right into district office and file a COMPLAINT!! I can't even do that as a teacher! These parents have more power than me! I don't want to sound like a bitch, but who has the education? Who is here to teach your child? If it wasn't for me, there wouldn't be a teacher in this room. The same goes for other teachers.
Now its not to say that this is a statewide problem it probably isn't. But I'm sure other teachers and other districts in my state are suffering from the same issues.

Don't get me wrong there are definately bad teachers. Hell I work with a bad teacher in my grade level and there are at least 4 more in my school alone. The problem is these people have been teaching forever and the district, up until this year, would have to go through tons of hoops to get rid of a teacher. The superintendent just made it easier for principals, this year, to fire teachers that aren't doing their jobs or bringing morale down at the schools. We shouldn't keep teachers for the sake of keeping teachers.

Nope. I'm a teacher.

“My son is eighteen and he can’t read.”

Who the hell would blame a teacher for this? My mother taught me how to read at age three. If your child can’t read blame yourself not a public educator.

May I say.....Thank YOU!!!!!!!!!!

When I was in kindergarten my mom would com on Fridays to help out. She ended up teaching my classmates how to tie their shoes. Some things you learn at home. School should not be the place where learning starts and stops.

To think that there is any one simple solution is ludicrous. Sure, there are some bad teachers, sure, there are some bad administrators. There are also bad parents and kids who live in conditions that hinder their ability to learn. We can't address only one of these issues. They ALL have to be looked at.

I have two kids who are two years apart and who went to the same elementary school. They only had one teacher the same. My daughter's experience was wonderful. She's very bright, her teachers recognized that and they gave her many opportunities to excel beyond her grade level. She got 8th grade vocabulary words in lieu of 4th grade spelling, for example. She was encouraged to spend a lot of time doing Accelerated Reader and Accelerated Math on the computer, at her own level. My son, who actually IQ tests higher than her, is bored out of his mind. His teachers all say he's the brightest boy in the class, but doesn't always do all his work. He's the kind of kid who, if bored, will find things to do like .. create his own "science" experiments. It just isn't appropriate in school to try to see how thick of a paper clip his scissors can cut or what things he can mix together to use like glue, etc. However, only one of his teachers ever gave him anything to do above his grade level. He was in 3rd grade that year, in a 3/4 split class and that teacher gave him the 4th grade work after he finished his own 3rd grade work. She's the only teacher that never had trouble with him being bored, not turning in assignments, finding "non-productive" activities to busy himself with, etc.

I do know that it's tough for a teacher to try to meet the needs of each individual student at their grade levels, but there are programs in place in our schools to do it.. the AR and AM mentioned above. My son isn't given time to work on these things and isn't allowed to do them when he finishes his regular work while my daughter was encouraged to do it. So yes, two kids, same school, very different experiences.

Our state test is called the MEAP (Michigan Education Assessment Program). We can look up any school's results, compare among school districts, etc. Within a district, demographic data is given. The data is given in two ways, one including special ed and then separated from special ed. The ONLY factor that made a difference in our school.. a statistically significant difference, was not race or gender, but was poverty level. The kids who fell below poverty level could not pass this test. Is this because their parents are probably uneducated and therefore, are living below poverty level? Or, perhaps those kids aren't getting good nutrition? Or good sleep? Are they more sickly because they possibly don't have heat or electricity?

There are so many factors that it could be. The teachers unions in Michigan are probably stronger than in most states, because ALL unions are so strong here. They also get paid a lot more than in most states. Most of the teachers I've encountered were excellent. My son has a mediocre one this year. He got really messed up in 1st grade and in 4th grade when, due to maternity leaves, he had super incompetent long term subs who had no control over the classroom. The second grade teachers the next year were appalled and very upset that all the kids in that one class were so far behind. Over 70% of them hadn't learned to read. My son makes his numbers really strangely because they never worked on that. Yeah, he can make them, but to watch him do it, it looks very odd. Anyway... neither of the long term subs that were awful got hired by the school district full time, so that was good. However, it's tough to get back a 5 month loss of learning. Thankfully, my son was reading at 2nd grade level at the beginning of 1st grade, so he wasn't behind.

My mom and I both did a lot of things with my kids to enhance early learning. But then, I was trained as an Occupational Therapist and child development was my focus. So yeah, I was doing reflex testing on my babies before I ever fed them for the first time, just to make sure :) .

There's an old saying "It takes a village to raise a child" and I fully ascribe to that. A parent can't do it alone, neither can a teacher. And, I typed a lot of words to get to that point.

AMEN!!!!!

I wish more parents would get that I'm not a frickin' miracle worker. I see these kids only 4 days for 6.5 hours and 1 day for 4 hours. They have them all night, all weekend and all summer. WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING WITH THEM!?!?

I can seriously only do so much!

No, I am a teacher as well :D

Is this "those who can, do. Those who can't, teach"??

hey, you're from rome right, have you ever eaten at Harvest Moon? My sister doesn't shut up about it.

No, that's not me who is in Rome. I'm in the Atlanta suburbs a lot closer in than that. I think you may be thinking of Carnation, but I'm not 100% sure if she is in Rome.

Maybe, but probably not, and this is a much a response to GA Beta's points too.

Likely I'm defensive because I'm a teacher, but if you think about it, in most k-12 education fields, there's not much opportunity for direct "doing" anyway. (I mean, what job is it that a high school history teacher is teaching instead of doing? Publishing non-fiction historical best sellers? Are all high school English teachers failed fiction writers by this theory? In a lot of high school content fields, teaching is the only "doing" of that kind of work for the most part, and teaching can't really all start at college.)

And although it's certainly true that the average test scores are among the lowest for ed. majors, I'd like to remind people that any given individual teacher could be an exception. I assure you that my scores were not among the lowest, nor were many of those of my colleagues.

Education may be the major of last resort, but it doesn't mean the worst folks actually end up teaching or that every teacher falls into this pattern.

Would education be better is smarter people were teachers? Maybe: some studies have linked teacher intelligence and student success, but there might be drawbacks too. I think really smart people are bothered even more by the flaws in the system and if they weren't empowered to make systemic changes, it might lead to more turnover and volatility. Who knows?

You can be darn sure, though, that you aren't going to get smarter people without A) paying a lot more, which I think is unlikely to happen OR B) the rest of the job market starts stinking so bad that teaching looks better by comparison, which I think has happened in a certain fields and overall with health and retirement benefits.

Wait, what?

This is clearly false - no teacher is "likely" to be an exception unless you can prove some systemic issue whereby there is some small number of abysmal numbers that drag down the mean . . .

Now, any given teacher might be an exception, but on the whole, any particular individual teacher is actually likely to NOT be an exception. Sorry for the nerd rant.

I'm sure what you meant was more like "there are teachers who score well, so don't give up on the whole" - this is a valid point as well, but since most students (or parents) don't have control over this element, it seems somewhat moot. In most places, you get what you're assigned - nothing more or less.

I agree with you here - I think our expectations of teachers (intelligence-wise) are a little high. I may have been slightly terse before with my MENSA example, but I think the point is sound: most smart people can make easier money doing something else.

One solution here is to severely limit teachers' classes to only those things they have mastered, especially at the middle/high school levels - increasing specialization could help. This would also allow the 'continuing education' criteria to focus on interpersonal skills work, etc. I'm not sure how you can help in elementary education, however - it seems there a large number of empathic or nurturing personality types gravitate to the work, which may not create the best pool to draw from. I don't really know.

You were absolutely right about your first point, and I've edited to reflect it. My point was don't assume what is true for the average is true of every individual member. (And honestly, at my school, the "likely" to be an exception is true because it's a desirable place to teach and the applicant supply way exceeds the demand.)

(I do think that there may be a problem with using scores from people who study a subject to project about people who practice in that field: I suspect that the absolute dumbest of the students never pass the certification exams. I concede though even if you reviewed the scores of employed teachers, their average scores would likely be lower than the average scores of people practicing in most other professions.)

A large enough group of people who have mastered the skills doesn't seem to exist for this to work, especially of people who would work for the pay.

(Unless maybe you are thinking of the same international students who dominate the TA positions in college. )

I think that you need empathetic and nurturing people to teach elementary schools. I'm not sure that people without these traits could do the job. But there's no reason why you couldn't find intelligent, and empathetic, nurturing people at the right price.

I think changes to the system are much more important right now than teacher recruitment because a great teacher at a school that won't allow him or her to be effective won't produce student learning gains. Even mediocre teachers are likely to be able to teach more effectively if the system is better and more effective methods are embraced by colleges of education, states, and school systems. If we make changes to the system, and we plateau in student performance, then we should start throwing more money at teacher salaries to attract better people.

For a minute I thought you and I were in the same school but then I see that you're in Phoenix. Things are the same all over! For me, I say forget parental support, cause some parents need some support themselves. Just because they had babies doesn't mean they know how to properly parent. What I would like is administrator support. I'm so sick of the teacher-bashing. Just like you said above that there are bad teachers, there are bad administrators. I'm tired of hearing the same tired old speeches regarding NCLB and not making AYP (adequate yearly progress). I just say let the state take over then. :rolleyes: That is not a threat nor does it scare me. We as teachers can only do so much in a day and not too many people want my job anyway -- that's why we have all these shortages. If administrators and the public too were more supportive of teachers, we could keep the good ones who want to do their jobs regardless of the hoops and hurdles to become certified, highly qualified, and whatever the hell else they want us to do.

I am on a mission now to start programs on parenting and the education process. A lot has changed since we and our parents were in school and people need to know so much more on how to assist their children. A lot of parents are ignorant as to how to help. As a special educator, I would like to assist parents in what special education means in regards to their child and their disabilities, going to high school, receiving a diploma vs. a certificate, etc.

Regarding the intelligence of teachers... I think most of us have experienced college professors who were so brilliant that it hindered their ability to teach. They simply didn't comprehend that others didn't have the background or ability to understand some abstract concepts or they couldn't explain things in any way other than the one that they understood. I certainly work with some statisticians who are this way. They are so far into another universe intellectually that they can't relate to others. There's got to be a balance of empathy, intelligence and nurturing.