Multani's Political Corner 4: Public School Teachers.

[Multani]

After a long hiatus, Multani's Political Corner is back!

After a day at school, I've had just about all I can stomach of my History teacher. Than I started thinking, what are public school teachers really like?
Debate and discuss your opinion, then defend it!
Have fun!

(Note: No offense Yellowjacket. Also, I might not be able to participate in this debate as much as the last ones due to massive amounts of schoolwork.)

 

[Spiderman]

Public school teachers are the same as any group of people anywhere else, you have some good ones and you have some bad ones. <shrug>

 

[MrXarvox]

very true...

Although at my school I must say there are more good than bad. It's an art school, what do you expect?

 

[ErinPuff]

I've only been in the public school system for two and a half years (went to a private elementary school), but I'd say that yeah, there are good ones and bad ones. My seventh grade English teacher was the best teacher I've ever had.. he was funny, nice, and really inspired me to go someplace with my writing. On the other hand, this year's social studies teacher is really insecure because she doesn't want to admit that we know more than she does, so she refuses to admit that she doesn't know everything; on top of that, her test writing skills are nonexistant, and most of my bad test grades in her class were because her wording is strange and it's hard to figure out what she means by questions.

So yeah, good and bad.

 

[Hetemti]

I like the ones that let me play Magic in class.
I REALLY like the ones that let me teach them Magic in class.

 

[Thallid Ice Cream Man]

I go to a "magnet" school for math, science, and computer science. Kids from all over my county have to apply and 100 are accepted per year. (This is not an attempt to brag; read on.)

However, this school, which should be close to the very best in the county, is situated in a low-income area. Moreover, this is not even in the middle of the county; it is at the very southern region of it. The only possible reason for such placement is that the people who designed the program chose to put us where the standardized test scores were some of the worst. We were moved here to increase funding for the schools by drastically improving scores. This devious scheme seems to have worked.

(BTW, There is another magnet program in our county; it is about 2 miles away, in a school with probably the worst crime rate of a school in the county.)

Anyway, I have had experience with a lot of teachers. Unfortunately, no matter how much you want to do so after getting pissed off at them for giving too much homework or failing you (seemingly) arbitrarily, no one can make sweeping generalizations about teachers. There are good teachers and there are bad teachers.

However, my point is that this is true no matter where one goes. One might think that at least in my program the teachers of math, science, and computer science would be all outstanding individuals with character and would set an example for us to refine our self-respect and make us productive members of society blah blah blah etc...... However, this is not the case. My first computer science teacher was overly fond of granting As with little provocation; I don't remember learning much in that class, although the food was good (I'm serious, we had M&Ms one day). My current computer science teacher seems to many of us to grade depending upon whether he likes us or not... There is a good chance that he isn't seriously grading assignments, as he hands stuff back about one month after we turned it in (on AVERAGE). He strikes me as a jerk, and not because I do badly in his class; I don't. He is not the kind of person about whom it is said "Oh, you don't like him now, but you will later...," because it wouldn't be true. I am not interested in computer science to the extent that I might have been before.

Fortunately, my math teachers have all been good at this school (except the second one - she was debatable.) So were my french teachers. My science teachers were a little strict but weren't annoying overall. Most of my world studies teachers were good as well, except that my current one is a total fascist - he has books titled "The Ayn Rand Lexicon" and other stuff on his desk - and my teacher of last year had an attitude that clashed with mine on several occasions... but there is no need to get into that.

Two of my english teachers seemed totally clueless on the subject - some of you could have taught it better than they did. They misused the very grammatical rules they were trying to instill in us about five times a day (at least). In addition, one gave us a test on grammar as a "pretest," graded it, didn't let us look at it, and gave us a nearly identical paper the next week as a final test. That was the "grammar" unit for the year. There might have been a packet as an assignment, but I doubt it, and if there was one, about half the class would have considered reading it. The one thing (I say this with near certainty) I learned in the first year was said by one of the other students in the class in response to an assignment that the teacher copied out of a book. I was luckily rather good at english already, but other people missed out on learning good english, and with that subject being increasingly viewed as the least important one taught in school (maybe behind the arts - sorry Yellowjacket), I am saddened. Fortunately my current English teacher is a good one.

PE teachers are all jocks, old women, or people who mean well but don't do much about it besides teach a negligible subject. No surprise there.

In essence, my message is that you can't generalize about teachers anywhere.

PS: Well, maybe I was bragging...

 

[Zadok001]

I go to a very similar program, TICM. Mine is situated in a fairly strong neighborhood, though. (Albeit RIGHT next to the local power grid, something that is probably less than healthy, but hey, whatever. Little radiation here, nothing more than I get from my 'puter on a daily basis. In five years, I'll die of cancer from staring at my computer screen for too long at a sitting, no doubt.)

On the topic of teachers, in my experience, there are very few 'average' teachers. You get very good ones, or very poor ones. The ones that are 'average' are the ones that are very good and one thing and very bad at another (my Calculus teacher teaches well, but grades based on _quanitity_ of work shown, a conjecture I have proven by handing in dozens of pages of complete gibberish, and recieving A's, and two pages of perfect work and getting C's. Whatever.). Beyond that, my english teacher is less than wonderful, while my other teachers are relatively brilliant in their respective fields. Teachers vary wildly, you can just hope to get good ones.

 

[Darsh]

Of course the worst ones are the ones who know the subject but CAN'T teach it....it's pretty bad when the students can explain it better than the teacher.

 

[Daggertooth]

Personaly I feel that it is the expirience of the teacher that primarily dictates the quality of their work. But then expirience is what helps all teachers. In the end it is the students themselves that determine the quality of their own education.

I say this because I learned from one of the best teachers I had how hard a struggle it was to keep a good education going. I had many debates about the direction my schools education system was going. Few were taking AP classes, that once popular program was going dow the tube. The only classes left were second rate classes that should have been taught in elementary or early junior high. The Dumbing down of cariculum is the frustration that many teachers are having. For my english teacher it was slowing down the cariculum because the students didn't know basic gramatical rules.

I guess I did get sidetracked from the original topic. The only teacher I ever had that had no excuse to be a horrible teacher was my PE teacher. He was an old fart that was retiring at the end of the year. Every Flipping day all we did was play basket ball. Just dress up and get into teams. He would watch us but do nothing. Ever Flipping day. Now many of you would say "Great, basket ball is great." But I'm a soccer Player. And what do you think the majority of the Idiots in the class voted for when we had the chance? BacketBall! (Stupid Americans) So for every single day of the entire school year we did nothing but play Basket Ball.

Daggertooth

 

[Apollo]

Well, you can't make sweeping generalizations (as about 53.5 other people have said). But those that are bad, are bad.

--I have a French teacher that talks about her husband all period. Every day. Fred. His name his Fred. 20 years from now, I won't remember her name, but I will know her husband's name is Fred. She never teaches; I read the book to prepare for quizzes.

--I had a science teacher last year that could not write a test. Every test or quiz, for ever 20 minutes we spent taking it, we would spend an hour explaining how his questions made no sense. There was one test in which 4 people got D's; the rest got F's. By the time we finished arguing with him, over half the test was gone, and I went from a 45% to an A. He also spent 9 weeks grading a leaf project we turned in. When he gave them back, everyone had perfect scores and it was obvious he had never looked at them. Another time, he misgraded one of my tests, costing me 2 points. When I told him about it, he said he'd look. He never did, and I missed the A by 1 point.

--I had an English teacher that smoked in the teacher's lounge before, after, and during class. He stunk. Bad. He also seemed drunk at times; he was prone to occasonal screaming and once made a girl cry by standing in front of her desk shaking it and yelling for no particular reason. Another time, I was reading while he was showing us a video of oral reports we had done the day before. I had started reading when the video was off and he was gone (smoking, no doubt) for a while. He came back, and I didn't notice. He took the book (Ogre, Ogre) and threw it across the room, screaming at me. He picked up a desk, threw it out the door into the hallway, still screaming, and yelled at me to go get in it. When I did, he followed me, still yelling. After about 5 minutes of screaming, he went back in the room. Minutes later, when he saw me sitting in my desk sideways, he came back out for another round.

--One government teacher assigned her students to write a mock letter to a celebrity asking for a campaign contribution. One student, "Jon", wrote to Michael Jordan. Another student, "Arthur," was harassing him, and Jon wrote "...and please dispose of Arthur." The teacher turned him in to the office and he was almost suspended for death threats (he talked them out of it). A week later, Arthur was up at the teacher's desk, looking at his grade on her laptop. When the bell rang, he ran out of the room and accidentally knocked the laptop off her desk. She screamed, "Godd*mnit Arthur, if this thing is broken, you're dead meat!"

Naturally, the school didn't do anything to her...

Our school now gives detentions to anyone who is tardy. Our school is BIG, with narrow halls, and we have 5 minutes to get to class. There is a traffic jam every period, and it is literally impossible to make it to all of your classes on time (really--I've sprinted). They started the policy today, and many of the people I know have detentions. One girl I know was stopped coming out of the bathroom with plenty of time to get to class because the administrator thought she was smoking. The admin took her purse and searched it. When she found nothing, she let the girl go and gave her a detention because she was now late to class.

One of my brother's teachers was a bit "weird"... One day she had a breakdown and locked herself in the room, screaming.

I could probably think of more stories, but these are my favorite...

 

[Gerode]

I few years ago I had a terrible Spanish teacher. Only one assignment during the entire year was not directly from the textbook, and that was a paper on "What I did over summer vacation." He had absolutely NO control or discipline over his students whatsoever.

At the end of the year, every single textbook in the classroom had to be replaced. Students had creased or torn off all the cardboard hardcovers, not to mention a plethora of inappropriate phrases written all over the book. Most of the desk could have used replacement for that manner.

Students completely removed the lock and handle from his classroom's door. Twice.

Here are a few quotes I have heard students say directly at him.
"Senor esta muy gayo." (Answer of student when called upon to answer a question)
"You're !@#$ing deaf!" (Loudly shouted)

He never punished or even seemed to notice any of this.

Normally he would be boring as hell and even I would occasionally fall asleep, but every few weeks he would explode in frustration. For about 5 or 10 minutes, he would shout at the class. I had to struggle to keep myself from laughing.

For almost an entire class period, he lectured us on how he lost his flashlight and how important it was to him.

You know what he called the 90th day of school, where you are past the mid-way mark of the school year? Super-Hump Day.


Back to the subject, I will be 314.15th person to say that generalizations don't work.

"I don't like people who generalize."
Think about that for a moment. It's an oxymoron.

This year, I can feel fortunate that all of my teachers are strong. My hardest course is also my favorite, just because my teacher is so great that he makes learning enjoyable and fascinating, and allows a very lax classroom atmosphere. And I've already learned more in that class than I ever have in any previous courses.

 

[Thallid Ice Cream Man]

Apollo: How could you rank those anecdotes among your "favorites?"

fuzzy510 has one of the worst spanish teachers I could have imagined.... I'll wait until he comes back for him to tell you about her....

 

[Multani]

Most of you are right when you say generalizations don't work. However, look at it this way. Private schools offer higher pay than public schools. Now, teachers, like all people care about money. Very few teachers will care enough about something, be it a student or a school, to turn down an offer to teach at a private school. Also, private schools will often choose only the "best" teachers.

So, in this case, a generalization can be made. Private school teachers are better than public school teachers. There will be exceptions to every generalization, but that doesn't always prove the generalization is completely wrong.

The problem with teachers is that they are human. This means that all teachers are biased to a certain degree. My
main rant against teachers is favortism (sp?). I absolutely despise teachers that give "special treatment" to favored students, even if I am the favored student. Also, some of my Algebra teacher here has a tendency to disregard what he said in previous times. My History teacher is rather a sexist, according to some students.

My question to everyone is, can the "system" make teachers in all public schools, "better".

 

[dw51688]

Teachers in a school have total power over the students inside their class. many times, these teachers abuse their power. I have a teacher now who I don't pay any respect to. He is a total hypocrite. He is a distrustful to his heart teacher -- if you can call him a teacher. He treats his students like a lower class of people. And as an Asian, I was very offended when he stereotyped me. I have gotten used to his insipid ways, I know that someday he will be condemned to Hell. He has broken the hearts of many girls, in which he criticized their clothes. What kind of teacher does that? Sometimes I wonder if a teacher is an inspiration, or a blockade of personal enlightenment.

 

[Apollo]

Thallid: I was being sarcastic.

 

[Spiderman]

Multani: There are too many variables to answer your questions, mainly because there is no baseline to start from. To start off with, what makes a "good" or "best" teacher?

Also, private schools may offer more pay (and here is a generalization, where are the facts to back this up?) but what about benefits? Location? Is it a religious school (which may cause some people to shy away or may not)? Higher pay is not the only thing people look for in jobs.

Just as teachers are biased to some degree, so are the students so this question is unfair. You may not agree with what the teacher is teaching/saying, so you may automatically not rank his/her class as a high priority.

Can the system make teachers in all public schools better? Another loaded question... directly, I say no, because in most cases the teachers belong to unions and the unions have a strong say in how a teacher can be transferred, dismissed, etc. And the implicit suggestion in that question is that ALL teachers in public school need to improve, which may not be the case; like I and others said before, there are some good teachers and some bad teachers.

How about we turn around the question? Why don't students do all they can to learn, either from the teacher if it's an interesting class or on their own if it's not? Why do some just laze around when there's a bad class or not interesting? Why don't they make the effort to learn from other sources?

Answer: some do and some don't. It's all human nature.

 

[Daggertooth]

The general trend has been a dumbing sown of schools. The majority of students arn't getting enough support from home and/or don't care what happens.

Another trend is that teachers seem to be teaching at the lowest level so "everyone" can keep up. I saw this alot in my english class. Well, i didn't see it, But my class had discussions with the teacher about here remidial classes. The system as I understood it was that if a student failed it was a black mark against the teacher. So the teachers do everything in their power to make the class passable short of giving cheat sheats during tests. The more advanced students get bored and the lazy ones still fail. Over all it does nothing but lower the rate of education. As this trend continues students get dumber and dumber and teachers are constantly forced to dumb down their coriculum. Thats how it works in Utah.


Daggertooth

 

[Multani]

Granted, I don't have any facts, but neither do you.
I don't think anyone is going to do research on this topic.
But, what I do have is personal experience, and I want to know other people's personal experience, and based on that experience, I can draw a conclusion, true, or not true.
It's not the conclusion I want. It's the story of other people's experience. The conclusion is only a by-product.

 

[FoundationOfRancor]

Well then, now we've all heard horror stories about bad teachers...

What makes a good teacher? I wanna hear stories of good teachers, and their actions.

PS; Kudos for Multani to make this thread, its very interesting.

 

[Spiderman]

Multani: You shouldn't muck up the waters then by your second post:

Most of you are right when you say generalizations don't work. However, look at it this way. Private schools offer higher pay than public schools. Now, teachers, like all people care about money. Very few teachers will care enough about something, be it a student or a school, to turn down an offer to teach at a private school. Also, private schools will often choose only the "best" teachers.

So, in this case, a generalization can be made. Private school teachers are better than public school teachers. There will be exceptions to every generalization, but that doesn't always prove the generalization is completely wrong.

The problem with teachers is that they are human. This means that all teachers are biased to a certain degree. My
main rant against teachers is favortism (sp?). I absolutely despise teachers that give "special treatment" to favored students, even if I am the favored student. Also, some of my Algebra teacher here has a tendency to disregard what he said in previous times. My History teacher is rather a sexist, according to some students.

My question to everyone is, can the "system" make teachers in all public schools, "better".

Except for the third paragraph, you are asking thoughts and solutions to a problem that is not well-defined. And if you just wanted people's experience with bad teachers (which is misleading in itself, because they could have had one bad teacher and 10 good ones), you should have just said so.

And if you make sweeping generalization that private school teachers make more than public school teachers, you ought to be prepared to back it up when challenged. Otherwise, what's the use in making such a generalization/assumption?

And personally, I think using such experiences to "draw" a conclusion, ESPECIALLY if you admit that it may be a "bad one", is a terrible way to solicit research. Yellowjacket and other teachers may as well ask for stories on "terrible" students and use that to back up their thinking that ALL students are terrible.