"See the animal in his cage that you built..."

[alexr_rwx]

- Camp makes me want to teach highschool. Something is deeply, deeply wrong, and I think I could do better. It's not just that kids seem to be trained to tune out teachers, teachers are trained to tune out kids. People can't see when they've stopped saying words and started being background noise, at least not some of them -- at Maclay, even, O Tallahassee people! You remember a few classes like that, I'm sure! No more highschool-as-holding-pen. Teaching shouldn't be thought of as this quixotic endurance sport, either... it doesn't need to be hard. It's just people. Kids are just people. Teachers are just people. Maybe after the MS, I'll go back to highschool for a while... (Christin scottiegirlc, what do you know about this?)

- Some of our campers this session turn out to be pretty l337 :) We'll make them l337-er, perhaps.

- Also: "Right Where It Belongs" is totally a ska track waiting to happen. A ska track with heavily solipsist overtones!!

Comments

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

TAing made me want to stop TAing.

[agonistes]

...perhaps it isn't going to surprise you overly much when I say that this isn't the fault of the teachers, but rather the fault of administrators, the school system, individual states, and the federal government -- with fault increasing, in that order.

The feds make noise about teacher accountability, but consider the life of an average American public high school teacher -- bus duty, hall monitoring, six classes a day, twenty minute lunch, forty minute planning period, faculty meeting, and grading. Sometimes as many as a hundred and seventy-five students, daily. Most teachers never see time to discuss teaching techniques.

How many professionals do you know who don't collaborate with their peers? What if surgeons never consulted with their peers before doing a procedure that they maybe weren't so familiar with? What if lawyers couldn't do research for legal precedent? And why do teachers not have this time?

And if you want statistics on what teacher collaboration can do...at Mom's elementary school, the CRCT scores (3rd-8th grade test on QCCs, or the core curriculum mandated by the state) skyrocketed this year. Overall passing rate for 03-04 was 82%; this year it was 93.2%. ESL kids had a gain of 35.2%, and special ed was 27.5%. Why? Because Mom got the administration to agree to try the Learning Focused School model -- which has a huge emphasis on staff development and collaboration.

The entire school community -- which includes parents -- has to buy in to the idea of making a school successful -- and it's got to start from the top down. You'd be surprised and horrified at how many administrators treat their teachers like peons who don't know anything, or like cattle to be driven around. Like technicians, in other words, instead of professionals.

If you want to make kids happier, and make high school a less painful experience, change the outlook of the administration at all levels.

(Yes, my mother has sought and is seeking multiple graduate degrees in education; and yes, I read her papers and some of her assigned readings. Why? Is it obvious?)

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

And why do teachers not have this time?

i gather the distinct impression that you've somehow come up with the idea that schools should be for learning.

[agonistes]

Yes, rather.

What should they be for, if not learning?

[rusty42.livejournal.com]

subjugating the proletariat into docile laborers.

[oniugnip.livejournal.com]

It's true.

Only it won't be true after the Revolution.

[zip4096.livejournal.com]

Alex, I think you'd be a fantastic teacher of any sort :)

A lot of the classes in HS I found to be less than inspiring... I'd be curious to hear which ones you found particularly problematic, though.

There was definitely a sore lack of school-caused computer learning in HS, for me... I mean, I loved Mr. Taylor but he wasn't able to teach us much, although I'll forever be appreciative of his kindness (eg driving us to Orlando).

We learned quite a lot just on our own regarding computers :)

I found almost all the technology integration stuff to be obnoxious- when Stejskal came to my Discrete Math class one time and passed out these laptops, it was a real waste of a day. And our poor teachers who had to stay so very late to put their grades into this not-so-easy-to-use FoxPro based system...

Ah, I'm just rambling now.

Point being I think you could totally make a difference teaching at any level :)