Is Topix a cool website? I think so. Here's my December 2007 post:
"The California Teachers Association is hurting our students, teachers and schools. Its failed one-size-fits-all approach to education ignores the huge differences between teachers. Parents and teachers know all teachers do not learn in the same way or at the same pace. Some of them are far, far behind in intelligence, education, and understanding of how kids learn. They should not have full responsibility for any classroom. Pay the good teachers double or triple what they're getting now, and put them in charge of several classrooms. Each master teacher should be deeply involved in several classrooms, guiding several beginning or slow-to-learn teachers."
3 comments:
really smart people--people who could have been doctors or physicists. ----
Just because someone is "Really smart" does not mean one could be an effective teacher.
Rather than looking and calling some teachers bad, maybe we should be looking at the children and their parents.
Why is it that this part of the equation is ignored in our society? How about evaluating the children and hold them accountable for their learning rather than making excuses and rewarding them by passing them to the next grade. Why don't we have people make visits to some of this average to below average parent's homes and evaluate them? If a parent is horrible, then have a master parent that is qualified come in and make sure that parent is improving? This is ridiculous and so is this system for evaluating teachers.
I agree completely that just because someone is 'really smart' does not mean he or she would be an effective teacher.
There are lots of smart people who don't know how, or have no wish, to communicate well with students.
And there are many effective teachers who do not have high IQs.
But the fact remains that there are teachers who are ineffective because they can't think their way out of a paper bag, and they lack the emotional intelligence that would compensate for that shortcoming. Most of these teachers could function well under the supervision of a master teacher.
I love your idea of sending a "master parent" to the home to make sure uninvolved parents are improving. If only the taxpayers would be willing to fund such an occupation.
The problem with holding kids accountable is that we withhold education until the kids jump through whatever hoops we decide they should jump through--but some kids will never jump through those hoops. We are foolish to punish these kids by depriving them of an education.
Some teachers become very angry with children, and wage emotional battles against the very children they are being paid to educate. This is not professional behavior. These teachers would benefit from having a master teacher to help relieve the emotional stress and make sure the students are not harmed.
We MUST make sure every kid has an education. Our future as a country depends on it.
I'm curious about one thing: are you saying that there are no bad teachers? Or are you saying that we should ignore the problem of bad teachers and just focus on bad parents and bad children?
Well I cant claim to be the smartest parent in the world or be up to date with the political circus taking place in our schools. I am however smart enough to know that these school budget cuts have affected my childrens education and we cant wait around assuming government will fix it. I am a concerned father of 4 and I decided to take action. To help out schools every where, I came up with a program called Get My School Bucks.com. Its a simple idea that turns normal everyday consumer spending into savings for the schools. The program offers online gift certificates to local merchants at a 5% discount, and an additional 5% is donated to a school selected by the purchaser. Simple idea, would love to hear some feedback.
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