How hard is it to be a teacher?

You're off again today? wrote:

the reality is that they're off more than they're at work.

0/10

If you're going to make stuff up, at least make it believable.

HRE wrote: "If it's such an easy job why can't they get enough people to do it?"

Bingo.

To answer that question, because they don't pay nearly enough for most intelligent or otherwise competent people to want to do the job.

HRE wrote:

But once more, if you think it's so easy and that you can do so much better than the people doing it now, there is no time when the doors to the profession are more open. I assume you really don't want to be a public school teacher and don't care to step through those doors. But you really should come up with an answer to a question like, "If it's such an easy job why can't they get enough people to do it?"

They get plenty of lackluster, uninspiring people to do it precisely because it's easy, predictable and undemanding. Sure parents are a bore and some kids are down right hostile about having to sit through useless drivel for hours on end. So make it worth learning. Make it interesting. The standards for teachers, including annual testing, observation and examinations, need to be raised and tenure needs to end. Pay for performance. If a teacher can't inspire or otherwise careen their students into learning the basics to qualify them as minimally literate in a particular subject that teacher should find another profession. Tenure is the antithesis to innovation and achievement.

You don't seem to understand that "they" are not even getting lackluster and uninspiring people to teach anymore and loads of ones they've had, lackluster or not, are quitting which makes it hard to believe it's easy, predictable, and undemanding.

The Clown Show wrote:

HRE wrote: "If it's such an easy job why can't they get enough people to do it?"

Bingo.

To answer that question, because they don't pay nearly enough for most intelligent or otherwise competent people to want to do the job.

You and others forgot to mention that teachers are the 3rd largest group of millionaires in the country. Dumb as foxes.

Meanwhile, Subway in my town is paying $17/hr to make people lunch meat sandwiches and cant get enough help.

Public schools do everything but educate. Just as successful as most other government programs based on the Nanny State. The left has no good ideas that actually work. The right are just as bad if not worse. At least the left tell you to your face how much they hate anyone who opposes their ism's.

Anything short of reversible sterilization at birth and having to prove you can be a functioning, productive member of society that can be independent of government handouts and capable of supporting a family probably wont work.

I agree

Daughter taught inner city Cleveland for 2 yrs pure hell, kids had no desire to be there, parents could not gis. School had her going to kids homes to make sure they did homework, kids living with mom's boyfriends. She went in with noble idea of 'saving kids that no one cares about' came out a racist -'parents don't care, kids are violent and disrespectful.'

Now teaches in Tx best job, great kids - parents are involved.

If kids don't want to be in school and their parent's don't see the value in classical education, why are taxpayers being asked to foot the bill to support said infrastructure and teachers' salaries/benefits/pensions? We should be move toward a dual track education system- classical education and vocational education. The brightest minds are tracked into the former (w higher education free of cost) and everyone else to the latter. The teachers unions have built up this facade of 'substitute parenting' and 'character development' masquerading as education. The vast majority of kids graduate with only minimal at best literacy in critical subjects like math, English, science. Because the schools don't want to hold themselves accountable for actually EDUCATING students.

Wuss alert wrote:

If kids don't want to be in school and their parent's don't see the value in classical education, why are taxpayers being asked to foot the bill to support said infrastructure and teachers' salaries/benefits/pensions? We should be move toward a dual track education system- classical education and vocational education. The brightest minds are tracked into the former (w higher education free of cost) and everyone else to the latter. The teachers unions have built up this facade of 'substitute parenting' and 'character development' masquerading as education. The vast majority of kids graduate with only minimal at best literacy in critical subjects like math, English, science. Because the schools don't want to hold themselves accountable for actually EDUCATING students.

We had this in many places but poor kids who didn't grow up with educated parents were being tracked into the vocational programs. Because many kids "of color" are poor they were the ones being placed in these programs while the white kids were in the academic track.

Good, track EVERYONE with substandard literacy levels into a vocation where they learn something practical from "doing". Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That's the epitome of stupidity and laziness. The whole system is built up around teachers doing what they've always done before because they're a lazy, banal lot of tax sucking leeches.

I don't get ALL summer off. I work at the end of June and beginning of September.

Like coach said on an earlier page, it's harder than most nonteachers will say, but easier than most teachers claim. A lot depends on your school and how long you've been at it. I'm a tenured teacher in my 13 year at a decent school. I don't get the top notch evaluations from my AP but my Regents scores kick ass so I'm always rated well at the end of the year. The first few years for a teacher are horrendous. That said, I am a career changer from a background in retail. Working in a mall store during back to school or holiday is a million times worse than teaching in the worst schools imaginable (which I've done).

Teaching is challenging when you first start and slowly gets easier to the point to where you are compensated for the headaches. Early on you get paid poorly and have little guidance in a chaotic world. Once you learn how to teach and as importantly deal with children, adults, parents, and colleagues it get's much easier and the paychecks get bigger.

Wuss alert wrote:

coach wrote:

We had this in many places but poor kids who didn't grow up with educated parents were being tracked into the vocational programs. Because many kids "of color" are poor they were the ones being placed in these programs while the white kids were in the academic track.

Good, track EVERYONE with substandard literacy levels into a vocation where they learn something practical from "doing". Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That's the epitome of stupidity and laziness. The whole system is built up around teachers doing what they've always done before because they're a lazy, banal lot of tax sucking leeches.

It's a political issue, you can't blame teachers for being lazy. How would you like to teach kids who barely passed a 9th grade science test AP bio? How would you like to teach AP US History to a kid who reads at a 5th grade level?

My colleagues are forced to do this because parents want their children in rigorous classes, they don't want them in vocational classes.

coach wrote:

Wuss alert wrote:

Good, track EVERYONE with substandard literacy levels into a vocation where they learn something practical from "doing". Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That's the epitome of stupidity and laziness. The whole system is built up around teachers doing what they've always done before because they're a lazy, banal lot of tax sucking leeches.

It's a political issue, you can't blame teachers for being lazy. How would you like to teach kids who barely passed a 9th grade science test AP bio? How would you like to teach AP US History to a kid who reads at a 5th grade level?

My colleagues are forced to do this because parents want their children in rigorous classes, they don't want them in vocational classes.

I absolutely do blame teachers for failing to do their job educating students and equipping them with the basic skills needed to be minimally literate. Your colleagues should take their outrage up with each other for passing kids to higher grades who clearly don't have the basic requisite skills. C'mon. Stop with ludicrous excuses

Get yourself a job as a public school teacher, say at ninth or tenth grade level where half of your students are reading and/or doing math at no better than the sixth grade level. Give your classes ninth or tenth grade material and only pass the ones who actually pass their tests and assignments. Hold the rest back and see how it goes. You'll have a mob of parents after you. You'll have administrators siding with that mob, furious at you because they need to deal with the mob and nearly everyone will say that those kids failed because YOU failed as their teacher. And the most likely outcome is that the administrators will simply change those kids' grades and pass them anyway. I've seen it more than once.

Wuss alert wrote:

HRE wrote:

Yeah, it's so cushy that a few schools around the country are closing because they can't get enough people to do it.

The US needs to move toward the European system of rigorous testing to separate the wheat from the chaff and only graduating the top percentage of each class to higher education.

I know a lot of teachers who agree with this to some extent.

Wuss alert wrote:

If kids don't want to be in school and their parent's don't see the value in classical education, why are taxpayers being asked to foot the bill to support said infrastructure and teachers' salaries/benefits/pensions? We should be move toward a dual track education system- classical education and vocational education. The brightest minds are tracked into the former (w higher education free of cost) and everyone else to the latter. The teachers unions have built up this facade of 'substitute parenting' and 'character development' masquerading as education. The vast majority of kids graduate with only minimal at best literacy in critical subjects like math, English, science. Because the schools don't want to hold themselves accountable for actually EDUCATING students.

This used to be the norm in Tennessee, and then Obama came into office.

Wuss alert wrote:

coach wrote:

We had this in many places but poor kids who didn't grow up with educated parents were being tracked into the vocational programs. Because many kids "of color" are poor they were the ones being placed in these programs while the white kids were in the academic track.

Good, track EVERYONE with substandard literacy levels into a vocation where they learn something practical from "doing". Stop trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. That's the epitome of stupidity and laziness. The whole system is built up around teachers doing what they've always done before because they're a lazy, banal lot of tax sucking leeches.

Blame the politicians, not the teachers. Teachers want a dual track.