The Education Isse - 2008 Campaign

[yolland]

Also, what about some of the ideas from Obama's education platform (.pdf)? (these are all explained in more detail in the document, though as always with platforms the language is often vague)

[q]• Create Early Learning Challenge Grants to stimulate and help fund state “zero to five” efforts.
• Quadruple the number of eligible children for Early Head Start, increase Head Start funding and improve quality for both.
• Work to ensure all children have access to pre-school.
• Provide affordable and high-quality child care that will promote child development and ease the burden on working families.
• Create a Presidential Early Learning Council to increase collaboration and program coordination across federal, state, and local levels.
• Increase Funding for the Child Care Development Block Grant Program.[/q]
[q]• Expand service scholarships to underwrite high-quality preparation for teachers.
• Performance-Based Teacher Education
• Provide mentoring for beginning teachers so that more of them stay in teaching and develop sophisticated skills.
• Create incentives for shared planning and learning time for teachers.
• Support career pathways in participating districts that provide ongoing professional development and reward accomplished teachers for their expertise.[/q]

There's also a shorter and still vaguer 'college affordability plan' (.pdf).

[Dreadsox]

It sounds like he has been stealing more than speeches from my Governor....hehe. I will respond tomorrow, no time now.

[dazzlingamy]

Regarding the negative, almost despondent air that can sometimes be around at a school, is that I believe the respect for a teacher from both parents and students is almost zero compared to 50 years ago. Now this isn't just contained to the teaching profession, lawyers, police, government, everything is held up to scrutiny, and viciously attacked, but when you have a student every day for 40 weeks, and that student brings all these ideas and feelings he gets from home, the atmosphere is not conducive to work and learn in.

Teachers have lost a lot of power with students, I don't believe in corporal punishment, but to have almost no power of students, nothing to make them tow the line - the learning gets thrown to the side for a myriad of behaviour management techniques. I have spent a lot of this year with a very chatty, immature and rude class with many many many clashing personalities working on behavioural techniques.

I think what both candidates should realise and focus on, is how to find that balance in the classroom - how to positively reward the 'good' students maybe with stud grants, or vouchers to stores or something, and for beginning teachers, to really help them with behavioural problems, because we all can teach, we learn to teach and in different ways, but to manage a class, to feel like we're not just barely holding on to the class before it explodes into an all out riot (which has happened at a school i've been too)

I also think parenting classes should be compulsory. Not like 'this is how you wipe their bums' but a 'this is how you support your child at school, these are some techniques you can use to get your student to work' Once the child has proved he can work successfully at school, you have passed the class. I know unrealistic and possibly harsh, but really, when you don't have a parental support, when the parents are non existent, or toxic, or uncaring, learning is not going to happen, or happen very slowly, to the detriment of the other students in class, who have the well rounded understanding of learning and support from their. parents.

[maycocksean]

^It's true. Management is such a vital issue. If you can't manage the classroom it really doesn't matter what other kinds of skills you have.

Dread, Amy, Martha, WildHoney (and any other teachers on this forum), did you feel your teacher training adequately prepared you to manage a classroom? I don't remember much about my own management classes. The things that helped me the most were two master teachers (one teacher I worked with while teaching on the remote island of Chuuk--imagine moving the inner city to a small tropical island and you get the idea. We had teachers literally physically attacked by students with knives, chairs, etc. The other teacher was my supervising teacher during student teaching). I'm also fortunate to just kind of naturally have a knack for managing students. It comes easily to me.

I'm just wondering what your take is on how effective our teacher training programs are in this crucial area.

[WildHoneyAlways]

My training had very little "classroom management" components to it. Just the basic "talk to student, talk to parent, refer to counselor, dean, etc. . ." Most of the situations that were presented to us were set in a middle to upper-middle class school community. Not very useful when your students do not share the middle class values you were raised with. Student teaching was my first real experience with classroom management.

I happen to have a knack to dealing with students too. I am part of the mentor program at my school and struggling 1st year teachers are sent to my room to observe me. That being said, I've had my share of disasterous days.

For example, this year I had a student call me a "fat fuck" and I had to push for the suspension.

I also had a student tell me to "fuck off", "shut up talkin to me," & the ever popular "I don't have to listen to what the fuck you say." Now all this time I was calling for security, smiling at her, and then told the class that it was this type of apathetic attitude that makes us a failing school. Well, if I'm bitter it's in part b/c this student called her mother, told her I told her to fuck off and that I called her pathetic. Our assistant principal has no spine and believed this student and her mother when they came to her with this story. I immediately got my union rep and administrator. The mother insisted that the class be polled as to what I said. Oh yes, they did it. A few of the kids made stuff up but most of them had my back. (I was told what each student said, btw) The mother, who texted almost the entire meeting , was very upset my boss would take the word of a teacher over her daughter. The associate principal who allowed this charade to begin was usurped by my boss and the student's 5 day suspension was upheld.

So yeah, I'm bitter. I don't have many rewarding days. But this isn't a pity party. I've chosen to stay at my school for another year. After this year, we'll see. Even I have my limits.

[maycocksean]

Originally Posted by WildHoneyAlways

My training had very little "classroom management" components to it. Just the basic "talk to student, talk to parent, refer to counselor, dean, etc. . ." Most of the situations that were presented to us were set in a middle to upper-middle class school community. Not very useful when your students do not share the middle class values you were raised with. Student teaching was my first real experience with classroom management.

I happen to have a knack to dealing with students too. I am part of the mentor program at my school and struggling 1st year teachers are sent to my room to observe me. That being said, I've had my share of disasterous days.

For example, this year I had a student call me a "fat fuck" and I had to push for the suspension.

I also had a student tell me to "fuck off", "shut up talkin to me," & the ever popular "I don't have to listen to what the fuck you say." Now all this time I was calling for security, smiling at her, and then told the class that it was this type of apathetic attitude that makes us a failing school. Well, if I'm bitter it's in part b/c this student called her mother, told her I told her to fuck off and that I called her pathetic. Our assistant principal has no spine and believed this student and her mother when they came to her with this story. I immediately got my union rep and administrator. The mother insisted that the class be polled as to what I said. Oh yes, they did it. A few of the kids made stuff up but most of them had my back. (I was told what each student said, btw) The mother, who texted almost the entire meeting , was very upset my boss would take the word of a teacher over her daughter. The associate principal who allowed this charade to begin was usurped by my boss and the student's 5 day suspension was upheld.

So yeah, I'm bitter. I don't have many rewarding days. But this isn't a pity party. I've chosen to stay at my school for another year. After this year, we'll see. Even I have my limits.

Oh, wow. I'm sorry.

It makes our job so much harder because it seems like there are just so many parents out there who just don't know how to do THEIR job.

Still, the school makes a difference. I can't imagine anything like that happening where I teach (though it would have for sure in Chuuk).

It's a shame that the classroom management training you had focused on kicking the problem up the chain of command. Good management strategies are really preventative. The goal is to not have to engage the disciplinary program at all.

I hope next year is better for you. Hang in there!

[Dreadsox]

As a principal/and teacher I would say classroom management, is the biggest skill necessary for success. Having been a grad assistant at a college in the education department, I would say it is the ONE area, schools suck at preparing people for.

Content can be learned, management is something that people either have the skills, or they need to be groomed. Good mentors are helpful in this area.

I had a student telling me to fuck off and tell me that I was an asshole (4th grade) let him go on and on and on. The teacher could not believe it when I looked at the kid, laughed out loud, and started talking to the aide about the Patriots.

The behavior stopped, and we got things under control. Another kid destroyed my office with a bat. would I have had the skills for these situations as a rookie no way. That is experience.

[maycocksean]

Originally Posted by Dreadsox

As a principal/and teacher I would say classroom management, is the biggest skill necessary for success. Having been a grad assistant at a college in the education department, I would say it is the ONE area, schools suck at preparing people for.

Content can be learned, management is something that people either have the skills, or they need to be groomed. Good mentors are helpful in this area.

I had a student telling me to fuck off and tell me that I was an asshole (4th grade) let him go on and on and on. The teacher could not believe it when I looked at the kid, laughed out loud, and started talking to the aide about the Patriots.

The behavior stopped, and we got things under control. Another kid destroyed my office with a bat. would I have had the skills for these situations as a rookie no way. That is experience.

And isn't it ironic that the biggest skill necessary for success is the one that schools suck at preparing for.

In my experience the keys to good management include, 1) a comfort level with being in charge. I know some new teachers who "feel bad" to be in charge of the classroom 2) a belief in your ability to control the class--letting the kids know you mean business and meaning it 3) not taking disruptive behavior personally and not disciplining out of anger. 4) Consistency and follow through and 5) A little bit acting talent is useful too!

And as you pointed out, you need to know when "not" to respond too, or at least you need to avoid "getting in it" with a kid. For example I've had students run away from me and I refuse to chase them.

I still think you and WildHoney have way worse kids than I do though. . .geez. Destroyed your office with a bat? I don't know if I EVER want to move back to the U.S.!

[Dreadsox]

My initial reaction to Obama's plan:

Section I NCLB

Reform assessments? The federal governement has NOTHING to do with the assessments being used for NCLB. The government requires them, the states determine the standards and the assessment model. I do not understand what he means by improving the assessment, nor do I believe it is the federal governments responsibility to dictate what the assessments should be.

The improving accountability portion is vague.

II. Early childhood - Sounds good.

III. Retaining Teachers

It all sounds good. Mentoring occurs. I am wondering how he plans to provide collaboration time. There has to be money for this. Many schools cannot get grade levels the same planning time. Currently I am working on a grant to expand the school day by an hour and half. Built into my plan is more time for teachers to collaborate. If we do not get the grant, it will not happen.

I like the residency ideas in his plan. I think the paid common planning time is coming from Massachusetts Expanded learning time grants. I would not be surprised if it did.

There are some good ideas. In general, i THINK he has a better grasp on this topic than McCain does based on the proposals. 18 Billion seems a little low to fund this.

[yolland]

So what's needed to better prepare new teachers to manage the classroom effectively? More varied and extensive role-playing in the (education) classroom, more time spent student teaching, more comprehensive mentoring programs, all of the above, or what? How widespread are mentoring programs right now, and how do the best ones work? (Obama's platform at least seems to assume many schools don't have them; I've no idea whether that's accurate or not)

Originally Posted by Dreadsox

Having been a grad assistant at a college in the education department, I would say it is the ONE area, schools suck at preparing people for.

This much is a problem college faculty have in common with primary and secondary teachers, though we're not dealing with anything like the behavioral issues you have to contend with. My "classroom management" problems are peanuts by comparison; every now and then I'll get a mentally ill or emotionally disturbed student doing, well, things that mentally ill people do, but that usually happens in my office, not the classroom. However, basic teaching skills--how to hold students' attention, how to lead a discussion, how to grade and otherwise give feedback so that students understand what they need to do to improve, stuff like that--those things are for the most part not "taught" to grad students at all; it's usually entirely dependent on who you get assigned to TA for...does s/he takes the mentor role seriously, give you lots of guidance and feedback, and role model good teaching skills for you to emulate, or is s/he a crappy teacher to begin with whose attitude towards you is basically "Woohoo, personal secretary for the semester! Less work for me!"

Originally Posted by dazzlingamy

I also think parenting classes should be compulsory. Not like 'this is how you wipe their bums' but a 'this is how you support your child at school, these are some techniques you can use to get your student to work' Once the child has proved he can work successfully at school, you have passed the class. I know unrealistic and possibly harsh, but really, when you don't have a parental support, when the parents are non existent, or toxic, or uncaring, learning is not going to happen, or happen very slowly, to the detriment of the other students in class, who have the well rounded understanding of learning and support from their. parents.

Compulsory parenting classes are definitely unrealistic, although there are some "learning community" approaches to school improvement that involve parental participation; I think Dread talked about that in another thread awhile back.

[Dreadsox]

My school is based on the Professional Learning Community format. AS principal, I am there more as a facilitator. There are non-negotiables that I will step in and be the boss if I have to.

To be a professional learning community you need leadership at the top that is not into control. I have committees set up for almost every concept imaginable. I have a school council comprised of parents and teachers that are involved with decisions involving the running of the school.

More often than not, I am trying to keep up with them. Generally, I present the staff with DATA to demonstrate there is a problem. For example, I felt that from my observations science/ social studies was not being taught effectively. Because there is no standardized test until grade 5 (my school goes to grade 4) there is no pressure to change anything. I presented the staff with four years of grade 5 data broken out by the seven elementary schools that demonstrated our students were not performing as well as the other schools grade five students. Since that staff meeting, my staff has developed a strategy to change this. The solution did not come from me, the prinicpal sitting on top of the throne. I said, these results are not where I think we should be as a community. What are we going to do about it? They came to me with the plan, and I am there to support it, or ask them to revisit it. I am not there to give them the solution, they are there in the trenches, and if it comes from them, it means more than me saying you need to do a, b, and c. I do not care how they get there, as long as they are following the plan and our results change in the next three years.

I also gave up staff meeting time to support their initiatives. Not ONCE did I regret it. They used the time like it was a treasure to accomplish objectives to make the school a success for children.

One other thing that has become part of the culture is they are working together to develop lessons and common assessments at their grade levels to measure what they are teaching. They are responsible for demonstrating an action plan if the standard they taught was not learned. AS a team, they work together to remediate if necessary and provide enrichment to those that have learned it. There is a set 1/2 hour in the day when every sped, title one, remedial reading teacher comes to a grade level to help with the intervention or enrichment of students. This gives multiple opportunities for small group instruction.

I believe that ALL of the best initiatives have to come from within a school community. I think that is the way to build meaningful change in a school.

----------------------------------------

Teacher prep - ugh - I would say, that the mentoring program is essential. Having expert teachers who are willing to share their ideas and strategies with new teachers is essential. I find the student teacher program in Massachusetts to be ridiculous. Teachers have TWO weeks of running a classroom on their own. That is insane. You cannot learn it in two weeks. PERIOD. Ideally, new teachers need to have a mentor that can observe them weekly, provide feedback, and make suggestions. You also need principals who can get their asses out from behind the desk and be in the classrooms providing feedback to rookie teachers, in a non threatening manner. This past year, I spent quite a bit of time working to support a new teacher who had classroom management issues. I was not there judging threatening, but supporting.

Again, I am not a typical principal. My staff and students see me three to four times a week in the classroom. I refuse to let the paperwork pull me from what I feel is important.

[MadelynIris]

What do you think of merit pay for administrators?

[Dreadsox]

Originally Posted by MadelynIris

What do you think of merit pay for administrators?

I would be against that as well. If you are talking combat pay for going into schools that have a challenging demographic, I would say yes, but I would apply it to teachers as well.

I have a performance bonus in my contract for meeting goals. I do not find it motivating, and quite honestly, I find it annoying. Pay me for the job I do, I would be doing these things anyway.

[Laura M]

Originally Posted by maycocksean

Dread, Amy, Martha, WildHoney (and any other teachers on this forum), did you feel your teacher training adequately prepared you to manage a classroom? I don't remember much about my own management classes. The things that helped me the most were two master teachers (one teacher I worked with while teaching on the remote island of Chuuk--imagine moving the inner city to a small tropical island and you get the idea.
I'm just wondering what your take is on how effective our teacher training programs are in this crucial area.

What does your training in the US consist of? Northern Ireland doesn't have a shortage of teachers and there aren't very many jobs. There aren't many places on the teacher training course and you have to do interviews before you're offered a place. You also need a degree and you usually need to have been working in a school before you apply.

We spend six months in two different schools and every couple of weeks our university tutor has to do a surprise visit to write a report on the lesson they have watched and inspect the dreaded teaching file. We had to fill that with lesson plans, 3 pages per lesson , and resources we made. Each time you have a visit you get a grade and they go towards a final grade. You aren't told the grade but if you get below a C/50% you'd have to spend time at another school before you could qualify. We also did 5 essays - at Masters level - and an IT portfolio.

We do spend some time at university but the lectures provided some information about the essay topics (which focused on the law, changes in the curriculum and types of assessment) and we spent class time preparing things for after we qualify or reading articles. We got one talk from a teacher about discipline and it ended up being a lecture on how to mark an essay.

Management is such a vital issue. If you can't manage the classroom it really doesn't matter what other kinds of skills you have.

I definitely agree with this. The first place I was at was completely mad. The first time my tutor came out I told the pupils to sit down but they all sat on the floor and wouldn't get up. The reports I had from her when I was at that school tended to be very negative and I always felt it was mainly because I had no idea about how to manage the classes. I was terrified to begin with and kids just picked up on that. I had no idea what I was doing. We weren't given any time to prepare for starting in our first schools, just told we'd learn a lot and hopefully we wouldn't drop out

I didn't choose the schools I went to and the second one was very academic. I was constantly told about how important it was that they did well in their exams and the teachers had told me how long I should spend on each topic and were always making sure I wasn't falling behind. I knew I had to have control of the classes the first day I started there because I couldn't let any bad behaviour get in the way of what they had to be learning. There wasn't time for messing about. Suddenly my reports were positive, reading the first ones compared to them is amazing. The new tutor I had was saying I was very easy-going and relaxed. I was always tense and nervous in the other place.

I really think the change was because I had learnt so much at the first school. I was lucky to have an amazing mentor. At the start I didn't feel like I would get along with her, she never spoke to me. One day I told her I wanted to do something to help me feel like I could cope better with the classes and from then she was amazing. I had two of her classes and she would always give me feedback. Once a week she'd give me written feedback too. Always willing to give advice about anything I was worried about. She encouraged me to keep studying after I had qualified and was always sending me home with books she thought would help me. I can't praise her enough. She was really kind to me and did so much for me. I still keep in touch with her now.

Despite the horror stories about lack of work I did get offered a temporary job here. We decided to move to the country where my fiance is from though. I have found a job at an international school there so I start in just over a month. I am absolutely petrified. I'm worried about how I'm going to manage. There's still so much I need to learn. I don't feel ready at all. When I said I wanted to be a teacher everyone tried putting me off, especially my parents. Even though I complained a lot this year, mainly because I never got much sleep, I really loved it. I would have been very disappointed if I hadn't found a job. I honestly don't know how someone could go through the training if they didn't really want to be a teacher.

[unforgettableFOXfire]

Something that also needs to be raised when discussing this matter is how testing is carried out, and to what cost.

I am by no means an expert, but when I wanted to decide whether or not I wanted to get into teaching as a profession I sought out some of the reading for the teacher's college program at my university, and the results cemented a definitive 'no' decision in my mind. I can provide a list of books if anyone's interested.

Governments are incredibly fond of citing tests, test results, testing, etc, and faulting the teachers -- but the whole testing process is flawed. Unforgivably so.

To digress on that point: standardized tests aren't strictly curricular insofar as questions deemed 'too easy' by the sample group (ie, ones that most students got right) are thrown out, and the tests are designed to have a certain mean before anyone starts writing them. So, to expand, it essentially means that a perfect score is next-to impossible, implying that teachers and students will always have room to improve, which while it isn't false it is pretty convenient for a company who is being paid to evaluate the progress of education and can then demonstrate a need for continued testing. The point is, they aren't designed to punctuate the successes, they're designed to highlight the flaws -- and these flaws largely exist in the socio-economic realm, and the realm of the flaws in the tests themselves. Apart from that, the 'knowledge' tested is largely prejudicial insofar as that which is being defined as 'knowledge' is a collection of questions loosely-at-best associated with understanding a collection of processes and facts by a group of people who are certainly not representative of or qualified to judge society's knowledge as a whole. Social knowledge, which will aid any student in their daily lives, is a non-subject. Fiscal knowledge, which is essential to living in a world inextricably tied to economics is a non-subject. Multiple choice fails to evaluate processes, only answers, and since test results are not returned in detail to students with suggested areas of improvement, ways to increase understanding, or even a diagnosis of what went misunderstood, there's absolutely zero benefit to the child. Ability to understand, which is the larger point of learning, is not what's being accessed by these tests. Sure, some understanding must exist in those children who generally do well, but if you force repetition on enough kids they'll get it by pure memorization alone and then will fail utterly at understanding more involved processes -- results will look good, initially, and then will plunge sharply.

Furthermore, when high-stakes are attached to these tests (teacher rewards/punishments, student rewards/punishments) a whole set of peripheral problems come up re: cheating. Since teachers are only responsible for 8 months of a child's education, and yet test results would fault/credit them for the abilities of the child as of that point in time which is a totally erroneous measure of that teacher's worth since the student is the product of all their prior experiences and not just that teacher's term. Most learning takes place at home, since this is where youth spend most of their time, and despite any efforts of a teacher they will never replace in 8 months what a parent can do over a child's life. How much responsibility should be on the teacher over something that largely escapes their realm of control? More to the point, what incentives do they have to punish cheating students or oversee a test run with integrity, when they will be blamed for failures? Conversely, what do they have to fear if they cheat when poor results will be punished anyway? That's punishment on one hand if they don't cheat at all, punishment on the other if they cheat and get caught, but the chance for rewards if they do it and don't get caught? It's absurd.

Besides all that, which I think are wholly significant problems, the testing process is ridiculous for another reason: when do you, ever, in your life, get put into a situation where you're forced to perform a set of disjoint tasks within a largely restrictive timeframe and environment, where you aren't allowed to consult resources or peers, and the outcome of which may have significant ramifications on how the rest of your life proceeds? Unless you're an emergency worker, my suggestion is: it won't happen to you very friggin often. If you were in a situation like this, would stress affect your performance? You're darn right it would. Yet we do this to kids and to make matters worse, with the way education is going, they want to test kids every year. Because then they'd have more results and could better judge why teachers and students are failures. Because clearly the problem is limited to student stupidity or teacher incompetence.

Yet, despite all these issues, this is what we're basing our decisions for the future on. If the parent's don't know this, though, and don't get involved in the education of their children, it'll just continue and we'll waste millions, billions even on testing totally irrelevant to improving the quality of education.


Now, don't get me wrong. There are bad teachers out there, lots of them. Do they need to be evaluated, held to some sort of professional standard, etc? Sure they do, but testing isn't the way to do it. By no means does my support lie behind teachers, but neither does it lie with harming students by continuing the bullshit involved in this ever-expanding process of "improving" education by means of not addressing education in any meaningful way.

[unforgettableFOXfire]

I totally didn't mean to threadkill. Sorry.