People usually go into teaching because they had a great teacher who inspired them; they care about kids or believe that it’s a way to make a difference.
No one in their right mind will argue that teachers are underpaid.
Sadly, the politics, internal and external, the system, often working without even minimal resources or adequate textbooks combined with the grind of producing daily lesson plans that engage their students year after year takes a toll on their idealism and enthusiasm.
Teachers differ in their skills, strengths and creativity — as do people in every field.
Further, what if the cost was personally affordable, so that teachers didn’t have to find funds or get approval?
That’s the idea behind TeachersPayTeachers, a virtual marketplace where educators can buy and sell lesson plans just like an app store and similarly priced.
What kind of tunes do you think Iago, the villain in William Shakespeare’s “Othello,” would listen to if he had an iPhone?
That is the kind of question that Laura Randazzo, an exuberant English teacher, often dreams up to challenge her students at Amador Valley High School in Pleasanton, Calif. (…) “For a buck, a teacher has a really good tool that she can use with any work of literature,” Ms. Randazzo said in a phone interview last week. “Kids love it because it’s fun. But it’s also rigorous because they have to support their characterizations with evidence.”
The site’s been around since 2006 and is highly successful.
To date, Teacher Synergy, the company behind the site, has paid about $175 million to its teacher-authors, says Adam Freed, the company’s chief executive. The site takes a 15 percent commission on most sales.
Read the article; then share it with every teacher, or their relatives, you know; tweet it and share it as widely as possible.
Whether they sell or buy they’ll win.
And if your effort saves just one teacher from burnout or makes their life a bit easier then, you’ll deserve a pat on the back — whether you know it or not.
I once read that potty training is the last time you can actually train human beings and from then on you must teach, which means presenting the information for them to learn.
You never hear the education establishment, politicians or the media talk about training students, they talk about what they need to learn—even though the focus is mainly on what they need to learn to score well on standardized tests as opposed to critical thinking.
Training means “to develop or form the habits, thoughts, or behavior of (a child or other person) by discipline and instruction.”
Try that on anyone over two and see how far that gets you.
Business focuses on critical thinking, yet business talks about training—training leaders, training managers, cross training skills.
I think the more conceptual the subject the more it resists training and the more it requires the kind of teaching that leads to learning, which requires an open mind and a willingness to change.
The system calculates the value teachers add to their students’ achievement, based on changes in test scores from year to year and how the students perform compared with others in their grade.
The Newark teachers are part of a growing experiment around the country to allow teachers to step up from the classroom and lead efforts to turn around struggling urban school systems.
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts on these two out-of-the-box ideas.
You know the old saying, ‘damned if you do and damned if you don’t’; for kids it’s more like ‘damned when they do and damned when others don’t’.
Kids stand less chance of developing into strong, balanced, ethical adults now than in past decades; not just in the US, but globally—they are heading for mediocrity.
If you think I’m being overly pessimistic consider the following.
In yet another nod to the protection of fledgling self-esteem, an Ottawa children’s soccer league has introduced a rule that says any team that wins a game by more than five points will lose by default. …
“The new rule, suggested by “involved parents,” is a temporary measure that will be replaced by a pre-season skill assessment to make fair teams.” (Hat tip to Elliot Ross for leading me to this article.)
Great lesson to teach our future leaders—don’t excel, don’t try too hard, don’t strive too much, don’t field a winning team and, whatever you do, don’t follow in the footsteps of Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Magic Johnson, Dr. Jonas Salk or any of those who surpassed their peers by a wide margin.
Helicopter parents are nothing new, but their actions are getting more outlandish. And whoever said that life is fair?
Meanwhile, here in the land No Child Left Behind, the pressures have gotten so great that some teachers and administrators have turned to a repellent solution.
Experts who consult with school systems estimated that 1 percent to 3 percent of teachers — thousands annually — cross the line between accepted ways of boosting scores, like using old tests to prep students, and actual cheating.
Cheating ranges from accessing current tests and using the questions in test prep classes to tampering with tests by correcting incorrect answers.
Budget woes are disrupting state and local governments and everything they fund. Cuts are being made and what better place to cut than those things that don’t show up immediately? Things that are either out of site, like infrastructure, or that can be pushed off to when times are flush(er), such as learning.
As most CEOs will tell you how better to reduce costs than to reduce headcount? And that means firing teachers—more than 100,000 come June and that’s not all.
As a result, the 2010-11 school term is shaping up as one of the most austere in the last half century. In addition to teacher layoffs, districts are planning to close schools, cut programs, enlarge classes and shorten the school day, week or year to save money.
Politicians, especially local pols, tend to focus on supplying instant gratification to their constituency in order be reelected, so even as the economy improves you can’t count on the money being replaced and teachers rehired—assuming they are still available.
It’s far easier to use smoke and mirrors to show that kids are doing just fine in the brave new reduced budget world—smoke being standardized tests as viewed through the mirror of lowered standards.
Education offers little in the way of instant gratification to voters, rather it offers whining kids complaining about homework, tests and tough teachers who have the nerve to expect them to stop texting, pay attention and learn. (What nerve.)
The mass walkouts were inspired by Michelle Ryan Lauto, an 18-year-old aspiring actress and a college freshman, and came a week after voters rejected 58 percent of school district budgets put to a vote across the state (not all districts have a direct budget vote).
The full damage of cuts now won’t be felt for years to come, but the voting public has both long and short-term memory loss and the pols who did it will be long gone—or moved to a higher level.
And America will be left wringing its hands and moaning about its loss of world leadership and the incredible difficulty of finding good talent to hire.
Today’s post will be relatively short, because I want you to take time to read a NY Times article called Building a Better Teacher.
Education is an industry and from any viewpoint, it’s obvious that American education is in trouble—poor quality, low productivity, enormous turnover and bad press.
There is a raging argument about who are responsible—politicos (who hold the purse strings), administrators or frontline workers, i.e., teachers.
There is a move to shutdown underperforming plants and fire those frontline workers en masse.
Out with the old ad in with the new; the assumption being that “new” always means “better.”
In education as in any industry there are innovators and traditionalists—think Steve Jobs and the executives of the music industry.
Innovators: Deborah Loewenberg Ball, Michigan State’s school of education assistant professor, part time math teacher and originator of Mathematical Knowledge for Teaching, and Doug Lemov, teacher, principal, charter-school founder and author of Lemov’s Taxonomy. (The official title, attached to a book version being released in April, is “Teach Like a Champion: The 49 Techniques That Put Students on the Path to College.”)
Traditionalist: Jonah Rockoff, an economist at Columbia University, who favors policies like rewarding teachers whose students perform well and removing those who don’t but looks skeptically upon teacher training. [because]… no research he can think of has shown a teacher-training program to boost student achievement. So why invest in training when, as he told me recently, “you could be throwing your money away”?
Hmmm, there was no market research to show that a personal music player would sell before the iPod changed history.
Read the article, it points the way to changes that will affect you no matter your age or if you have kids.
Changes that will determine America’s future.
Image credit: St Boniface’s Catholic College on flickr
What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?
If your name is Tom Dunn and you spent 20 years, first as a defense counsel in the Army Trial Defense Service, then stints in Florida, New York State and most recently as head of the nonprofit Georgia Resource Center, you find a less stressful environment in which to indulge your passion.
You teach in a tough middle school in Atlanta, Georgia where “ninety-three percent of students are black and 5 percent Hispanic; some 97 percent qualify for free or reduced lunch.”
Dunn’s prior experience made him a passionate believer in what Frederick Douglass said, “It is easier to build strong children than to repair broken men.”
According to principal, Danielle S. Battle, middle school turns off many teachers because it’s where “students’ bodies and minds are changing, and disparities in learning abilities are playing out.”
Dunn found that amusing, “You can’t be a starry-eyed idealist and do defense work in capital cases for 20 years.”
Dunn is the type of teacher that every parent should want for their child, but, as proved in Dallas, teachers are fired for being good—good meaning tough enough to stick to their guns and require kids to learn.
We need more teachers like Dunn; teachers who care and environment that supports their efforts to educate.
What are line managers, AKA principals and teachers, supposed to do when the executive team, AKA, school district board, first gives tacit approval to shipping shoddy products and then formalizes the practice through its work rules and quality processes?
How stupid is it to tie funding to students staying in school and passing and then allow the bar to be lowered in order to achieve the goal?
Does the ability to pass tests accurately reflect an ability to think?
Kids are smart; they know when the system is gamed and how to leverage their power.
On September 25, 1957, 300 United States Army troops escorted nine black children to Central High School in Little Rock after unruly white crowds had forced them to withdraw.
In 1976, the shooting of a 13-year-old sparked a children’s uprising against apartheid that spread across the country to Cape Town, where students from a mixed-race high school, Salt River, marched in solidarity with black schoolchildren.
September 15, 2009, Seattle schools plan to lower the passing grade from C to D, partly match the rest of the state’s districts and partly to keep their funding by keeping kids in school.
On September 24, 2009, thousands of South African children peacefully marched to City Hall demanding better schools, libraries and librarians.
September 2009 a debate at Answers.com is hosting a wiki debate on the value of homework. (Read it and weep at the language skills that dominate the anti-homework crowd who are your future employees.)
Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.
I wonder what would happen if
school became a right that could only be earned by the child’s effort, not by the parent’s efforts or their money;
student performance, not attendance, was the criterion for funding;
being a ‘tough’ teacher by demanding performance was encouraged;
kids had to work at whatever menial job they could find when they chose not to perform in school
None of this will ever happen, but it is interesting conjecture.
Remember the old line “those who can, do; those who can’t, teach; those who can’t teach, teach teachers.”
It’s not true. Most people who go into teaching do it because they have a true passion—at least when they start.
But passion is hard to sustain when all you hear is that
you are too easy/hard;
you give too much/not enough homework;
you too often receive little-to-no respect from parents, kids, administrators and even your colleagues;
more time is spent on politics than lesson plans;
you spend more time teaching basic manners than educating; and
your de facto hourly pay rate is around minimum wage in spite of a 9 month work year.
Some manage it and they are the ones who truly leave their mark.
Most of us remember the teacher(s) who really touched us, who opened our eyes and helped us see the world differently.
And we remember the worst we had, but the majority fall in-between and become a blur.
some of the best come to teaching from other successful careers.
One of the highest profile of these is Tom Bloch, who left H&R Block (the family business founded by his father) after 18 years, five as President, and a salary of nearly a million a year to teach math at an inner-city middle school in Kansas City, because he wanted to make a difference—and he has.
Listen to this interview and then read his story in Stand for the Best. Share it; maybe it will inspire others to apply their passion to teaching, but if nothing else, perhaps it will encourage them reconsider their own attitude towards teachers.
Entrepreneurs face difficulties that are hard for most people to imagine, let alone understand. You can find anonymous help and connections that do understand at 7 cups of tea.
Crises never end.
$10 really does make a difference and you’ll never miss it,
People usually go into teaching because they had a great teacher who inspired them; they care about kids or believe that it’s a way to make a difference.
Kids stand less chance of developing into strong, balanced, ethical adults now than in past decades; not just in the US, but globally—they are heading for mediocrity.
Budget woes are disrupting state and local governments and everything they fund. Cuts are being made and what better place to cut than those things that don’t show up immediately? Things that are either out of site, like infrastructure, or that can be pushed off to when times are flush(er), such as learning.
Today’s post will be relatively short, because I want you to take time to read a NY Times article called 
What do you do and where do you go when you leave a high-stress career that nearly kills you?
Finally, I just received an email (thanks Sunie!) with this picture and comments on the spelling of “bokay.” Many florists use this spelling in their marketing, but one of the comments made me cringe, “I thought is was spelled bowkay” and the writer seemed serious.
