*promote

Promoting this video and sending it back into the queue for one more try; last queued Saturday, October 25th, 2014 11:09am PDT - promote requested by JiggaJonson.

*education

Adding video to channels (Education) - requested by ant.

seriously?

Something tells me he knew someone as a teacher. My Mother is a teacher (retired now) and let me say, that is one of the most selfless jobs in the world--IF you decide to make it that way. There are some teachers that truly do ride on the coattails of others.

But, the majority (especially Elementary) need a huge amount of preparation to get anything done. The digital age will help this, a bit. The real problem is lack of funds (along with not buying adequate resource materials), lack of pay, and BY FAR the biggest issue is classroom size...

He said his mom was a teacher.

Education channel includes "commentary about teachers", so he's right for once.

Meh. I don't even like that there is a cultural stigma associated with just admitting that teaching is a hard job and you can't mention that without attaching the disclaimer of "Well there ARE bad teachers who do _______ and that's bad."

Here's some food for thought: There is ALWAYS a self-check in place to guard against bad teachers, an army of people who will complain about said teacher constantly and actively work to remove that teacher from the position, the students. Students love complaining about teachers that they don't like, or they let it slip in different ways. "I love that sub, he let us do whatever we wanted."

Other professionals in education quickly zero in on comments from students and, with reliable accuracy, can identify problems with colleagues. I, myself, overheard a conversation students were having about another teacher stumbling around 'acting drunk and swearing' and went over to ask about it. I was shocked when I was shown a video shot from under a desk of this happening, stopped what I was doing, grabbed the principal who conveniently was in the hall, and that was the last day that person was in our building.

I'm fairly confident; in spite of morale being low, teachers being bashed in the news, students suffering from more problems than I can count, and being forced to teach to a standardized test; damn-near every person in my school is doing the best they can.

p.s. the pay sucks too.

@enoch caps and spacing matters...Initially I read the title as "black-america doesn't understand teachers"...

@mxxcon
fixed it for ya lover-lips

@kceaton1
@JiggaJonson

I think there's a big difference between instant fire-able offences (drinking on the job) and mediocre teaching. My mother is a teacher and she definitely talks about a dichotomy between those who try and those who don't.

Unfortunately the system they have in QLD, Australia for end of high school exams is that the teachers can set the exam themselves for their students rather than any form of independently set examination. This means there is a huge incentive, for say Math, to teach to a specific test, then give the exam with largely the same questions but the numbers changed.

There is performance tracking at a school level and principals are incentivised to create good results but often this can be achieved with rote learning rather than genuinely understanding the subject matter due to the lack of externally set examinations.

Meanwhile, while unions ensure that risk of job loss is low, principals can transfer teachers to far away schools with poor conditions easily, and since performance can be fudged, your ability to retain a specific position is largely determined by your personal relationship with said principal.

As far as students being able to address bad teachers directly, how? As you mentioned Jigga, they will likely not be taken seriously if they complain as some will assume it's as a result of work load rather than teaching performance. The only way you can really measure it is student performance objectively measured by externally set examination.

Yes, it's not a perfect measure. Student performance may be determined by the cohort or the effectiveness of teachers in lower grades. That's why you test them before and after to measure progress rather than raw performance. You can also look at average results over 3-4 years to avoid specific class bias and to allow room for improvement.

As far as standardised measures, a good test for say Math will require broad knowledge rather than specific facts as the questions that could be asked would be widespread and would test understanding rather than rote learning. For subjects with wider and less specific knowledge areas like say English or History you avoid advantaging specific knowledge by giving a wide range of options for essay questions.