@blankfist

Research that purporting that teaching is a difficult job based on 6 criteria. I suggest the whole document but here's the jest of it.
______________________________________________
---------->Societal Attitude:
The participants in this study believed that the attitude of society toward the teaching profession was unfair and detrimental to their overall functioning. They did not believe that they were valued, despite their advanced levels of education. In a recent nationwide survey of over 11,000 teachers and teacher candidates, Henke, Chen, Geis, and Knepper (2000) found that only 14.6% of the teachers surveyed were satisfied with the esteem in which society held the teaching profession.

--->Denise, a high school English teacher addressed the issue of respect:

"There is a lack of respect for teachers. It's not just the money, but also the attitude I get from administrators and politicians that teachers are trying to get away with something. We have taken these cushy jobs where all we have to do is stand up in front of a bunch of kids and BS for a few hours, and only work ten months of the year, at that teachers have it easy! Every time we ask for something (like, in my county, that the county pay our contribution to the state retirement system, for example), they make us out to look like whiners - give 'em an inch; they'll take a mile. The truth is, though, that teachers care so deeply and work SO much beyond our "contract hours." I can't tell you how many come in for weeks during the summer, as I do, and take on clubs after school (for which we are not compensated), and work during vacations. This lack of respect for teachers gets me down."
______________________________________________
---------->Financial Issues:
On top of the perception that they are not being valued by society, teachers are notoriously underpaid in our country. Four years after their graduation, Henke et al. (2000) surveyed a large sample of college graduates between 1992-1993. They found that the teachers were tied with clerical staff and service workers for the lowest salaries. A recent report from the American Federation of Teachers (AFT, 2000) found the following to be the case for the 2000-2001 school year:

For new teachers, the $28,986 average beginning salary lagged far behind starting salary offers in other fields for new college graduates. For example, accounting graduates were offered an average $37,143; sales/marketing, $40,033; math/statistics, $49,548; computer science, $49,749; and engineering, $50,033.
The $43,250 average teacher salary fell short of average wages of other white-collar occupations, the report found. For example, mid-level accountants earned an average $52,664, computer system analysts, $71,155; engineers, $74,920; and attorneys, $82,712.
The majority of the participants in this study related that they were simply not paid enough to live comfortably. They drove old cars and lived in inexpensive apartments. Others struggled to save enough money to buy a home.

--->Calvin, a high school science teacher, talked about his pay:

"I love teaching, but I don't know if I love it enough to deprive my family and myself of necessities. I have a baby and another on the way. I can't see how I can ever save enough to make a down payment on a house, even with a second job in the summer."
______________________________________________
---------->Time Scarcity:
Many new teachers were physically and emotionally fatigued to the point of exhaustion. They reported that they worked long days at school, and then took home lesson plans to create, papers to grade, and parents to call. They also worked nights and weekends on school-related work.

--->Jessica, a high school math teacher:

"I work 70 hours a week, and after 3 years it's not getting any better. When Friday night rolls around, all I want to do is fall asleep at 8 p.m.! Obviously that doesn't lead to a very exciting social life, or much of a "life" at all, if I can hardly stay awake long enough to go out to dinner with my friends and family. Even at holidays there are always papers to grade."

--->Fred, a high school English teacher also had difficulty with the amount of time required to do his job, pointing to the effect the time constraints had on family relationships:

The time commitment is the worst. During my first two years of teaching I worked 70-80 hour weeks, including time worked during the school day, in the evenings and over the weekend. Time commitment varies with the subject taught and with experience, but this aspect of the job nearly ran me out of teaching on several occasions and I witnessed one great new teacher leave teaching for this very reason. "It's my job or my marriage," she explained. "I never see my husband, and we're living under the same roof."

______________________________________________
---------->Workload:
The data reveal that it is nearly impossible for a conscientious teacher to complete all that is expected of them in one school day. At the high school level, teachers were teaching five or more classes in a traditional school, and three in a block schedule school. For each class this meant that the teacher's task was to design a complete lesson lasting at least one hour. This lesson had to follow the state curriculum, be engaging and interesting to students, and include various components as required by the school district, such as a warm-up, class activities, and homework. The teachers wanted to use outside resources such as the Internet to connect the material to real world applications. Additionally, they reported that there were often several special needs students in the class, and each of them needed some special accommodation. They found that planning was not a trivial task; it took several hours to design one effective instructional plan.

According to the teachers in this study, class sizes were another difficult feature of the teacher's day. In public high schools, most class sizes ranged from 25 to 35 students for a total of 125-175 students in a traditional school, and 75-105 in a four period block school. Henke et al. (2000) reported that the average number of students taught by secondary teachers each day is 115.8.

--->Abby, a high school history teacher explained the effect of large class sizes:

"Imagine any other professional trying to deal with the needs of this many "customers" at one time. If a physician were seeing patients, and grouped this many together, it is readily apparent how ridiculous it would be to expect her or him to address the needs of each person. The same is true for teachers.
Each student is an individual, with needs and issues that must be addressed. In a class period, the teachers expressed frustration because they could not address the needs of 25 or more students. "

--->Gina, a former high school science teacher described the variety in her workload as well as in her students' abilities:

"What I least expected was the amount of paperwork I had to do. Grading papers, progress reports, parent conferences, English-as-a-Second Language, exceptional students, ADD paperwork, and even work for absent students seem to take more time than "teaching."

To compound the issue, teachers also related many learning issues, where students had questions or misunderstandings that could easily have been cleared up with a few minutes of one-on-one time. They also reported discipline issues that got more serious when they were not addressed. Some students were bored. Some lacked basic skills and could not perform without help. In general, the teachers expressed being frustrated because they are educated professionals who could address these issues, if there were time to get to everyone. There was simply not enough time to address the variety of issues that simultaneously too place. Farkas et al. (2000) reported that 86% of new teachers report that the change most likely to improve teaching is reducing class size.

--->Eva, a high school English teacher summed up her frustration with large class sizes.

"This was not a matter of poor time management; it was a matter of too many students with too many needs and one harried teacher trying to be superhuman. There were times that I had a great lesson plan, only to have it totally derailed because of one or two students who needed individual attention and could not get it."

The total number of students that this professional was expected to evaluate, plan, and care for each day was as many as 150.
______________________________________________
---------->Working Conditions:
School administrators varied in their support of young teachers, and many teachers reported that this support was inadequate. The new teachers felt that they were evaluated and judged, but they would have preferred real feedback and suggestions for improvement of their teaching. They felt that they were often not supported in discipline issues or in conflicts with parents.

--->Carol, a former high school math teacher:

"I was very frustrated with the lack of support from my principal/administration in that after three observations I never got any feedback either in written or verbal form. I never really knew how I was doing. I felt I was doing a good job, but did not think the administration cared one way or the other."

--->Fran, a high school mathematics teacher expressed a need for more funds:

"Teachers should be given all the supplies that they need - $25 is not enough! At all other jobs that I have worked at, whatever you need to do your job is provided."
______________________________________________
---------->Relationships with Students and Parents:
A common problem reported by beginning teachers was student apathy. Many of the novice teachers reported that students had no interest in learning. In addition to attendance problems, a number of students often came to class without pencil, paper, and textbook. It was difficult to force or entice them to participate in classwork, and virtually impossible to get them to do homework.

--->Owen, a former high school mathematics teacher, was frustrated by his students' apathy:

"The vast majority of my students had no interest in learning math and I quickly tired of trying to force them (or entice them). They refused to bring paper or pencil to class, refused to do homework or classwork, and frequently came to class late or not at all. Most of them, to my great surprise, were not at all belligerent or confrontational about their refusal to do anything in class; they just had no intention of working at anything."

--->Mattie, a former high school history teacher, could not deal with the frustration:

"I just became very frustrated teaching to a class of 20 students and about 5 were interested or at least concerned with their grades. I decided not to return, because I was so exhausted and depressed at the end of the year. I just couldn't see "wasting" my time in a classroom where the kids don't care about themselves or what you're trying to accomplish."

--->Eugene, a former high school math teacher, also reported problems with apathy:

"I was frustrated with the apathy of the students. Many days I felt as though I was standing up there talking to myself. It was the longest year of my life. I was an emotional wreck because I felt as if the kids/parents didn't care enough to try or participate."

^Yeah @enoch, perception is a funny thing. While you saw a powerful argument, I saw basically two vague-to-the-point-of-meaningless arguments repeated ad nauseum. Those arguments were:

1) It's all a distraction.
2) You are all a bunch of (adorably misspelled insult here).

His ideology is slim enough to fit on a bumper sticker.

I don't think anyone would disagree that the corporate media distracts us from issues that are potentially damaging to corporations. They love issues like gay marriage and abortion, which have few financial ramifications for big money. But you know what? There is plenty of quality reporting out there. Foreign policy, health care, the bailouts and other meaningful issues have been covered at great length and with impressive depth.

The major undoing of choggian bumper sticker politics is the fact that the media he tends to criticize is often the more honest and progressive reporting of people like Rachel Maddows. And when he does decide to lay into Rachel, he does it with the intellectual heft of a flea, with dumb ass comments about her sexual orientation and the way she styles her hair. I've never heard any kind of in depth, insightful or intelligent analysis from choggie beyond the vague and redundant bumper sticker refrains: It's all a distraction, she's a dyke cunt, you are all monkeys.....

If you have a problem with Rachel, then by all means speak up, but an argument requires some bare modicum of substance before it can be taken seriously.

Lastly, do you know what lies at the end of choggie's yellow brick road? Do you know what we are all being distracted from? Satanic UFOs, the illuminati, Bildaburgers, New World Orders among other conspiracies. Say what you will about Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Greens, but at least their belief systems don't play like an episode guide of the X-Files.

Anyway. I enjoyed the choggie freak show as much as anyone else, heck, I even voted to bring him back (sorry nr, kp, bf and bt), but he has been nothing but a bile spewing asshole ever since he's been back. I won't make that mistake again. He's lost my support for good.

>> ^blankfist:
>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
^Feeling a bit frisky, are we, Mister Fister?

Hey man, you asked for Obama's progress, and I think showing the blood on his hands is the best kind of progress report. And, yes, I do feel frisky when my Democrat brethren claim to be the party of peace and the party of anti-war but their actions smell of repulsive contradiction. That does make me frisky.


I wish his withdrawal timetable was shorter too, my peace loving friend.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
^Feeling a bit frisky, are we, Mister Fister?


Hey man, you asked for Obama's progress, and I think showing the blood on his hands is the best kind of progress report. And, yes, I do feel frisky when my Democrat brethren claim to be the party of peace and the party of anti-war but their actions smell of repulsive contradiction. That does make me frisky.

Hey videopeeps. I'm out of town for the week and haven't much time to sift. I'll be back next week.

KP, sounds like a good idea, but many of the best games aren't embeddable. Would it be beneficial to the site if we were to play desktop tower defense on VS as opposed to kongregate? Also, I accidentally voted no instead of yes. oops.

Here are a couple of ideas I've had for sometime, but they might not be practical.

-I'd love to have an audiosift, where we could exchange songs and playlists. If we were to do this, we'd want to suspend the self link rule, so that we would all have the ability to upload the kinds of eclectic and obscure music that you don't find on youtube. Is there another type of embeddable media format that would work better than flash videos?

-I'd also love to have an Obama progress report page, where we could list his activities and accomplishments in office, both good and bad, so that we could have a broad overview of how he spends his time in office. We'd have to be careful to use basic neutral wording so it doesn't become an adoration/hate page.

>> ^zombieater:
She hits the nail right on the head. Good for her! We need much, much, more of this progressive reporting in the news.
Unfortunately, it matters because, as she alluded to, many Americans equate "Muslim" with "terrorist" in our post-9/11 world.
Ignorant? Yes.
However, what this boils down to, and what the larger issue is, is asking this question:
"Does religion play too big of a part in politics?"
I would unequivocally say "yes", but that is my own humble opinion...


Religion contributes to core beliefs which in turn have a profound effect upon one's political beliefs. So religion could have an effect on politics? Imagine! And then we should make religion play less a part, and thereby remove any convictions a person has. Wait, no...

She hits the nail right on the head. Good for her! We need much, much, more of this progressive reporting in the news.

Unfortunately, it matters because, as she alluded to, many Americans equate "Muslim" with "terrorist" in our post-9/11 world.

Ignorant? Yes.

However, what this boils down to, and what the larger issue is, is asking this question:
"Does religion play too big of a part in politics?"

I would unequivocally say "yes", but that is my own humble opinion...