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Re: TeacherInsight - Thoughts & Advice
Posted by rich on 7/02/09


    > You gave student evaluations every year for 7 years? Why?

    Because in addition to public school work, I have taught university freshman as
    well. Grad students on occasion. Community college too. Hundreds of anonymous
    evals. I have a lot of data on myself. And it's all very good. Three near-perfect
    evals from three classes.

    > In any event, how do you know your TI score? What are they? How did you get them?
    > Has someone told you its the TI score that's holding you up? If you don't know,
    it
    > could be something else. You obviously have at least 7 years experience, and
    > probably have a Master's degree, so it could be that you cost too much, or a number
    > of other issues.

    In my area, there are a lot of suburbs. Big districts that have become bureaucratic
    and have something to prove, and the overwhelming majority use TI or VFE. Even our
    largest urban district is a Teacher Perceiver district. I will get call from a
    district with a position that they need to fill. They've pulled my name and called
    me, so I assume they can intially get past whatever is on my application. So the
    first thing I have to do is to take a standardized interview and then the game is
    over. I don't hear from them again. The Master's might be a factor, but only to a
    certain point. In fact, many teacher ed. programs here are licensing only at the
    Master's level. And in order to be Highly Qualified for NCLB purposes, you
    eventually have to get a Master's if you don't have one. I won't be using up
    district fee waivers to get my degree either. I took a break in my career when I
    went to grad school, so I don't have a ton of years for them to count.

    Many districts with online applications has gone so far as to integrate VFE or TI as
    part of their application. I never get calls from those districts. I think they
    can plug in multiple factors in their databases (math+basketball+SC>whatever%) and
    call up a number of candidates they want to interview. Most districts in this area
    allow no human contact with administrators. Secretaries do a good job of protecting
    the fortresses. Everything is done online. There are a few districts where the
    principal is the direct hire. They are small and can't afford the subscriptions and
    training for VFE and TI. Because they are small, they have far fewer jobs.

    I know that learning styles, as well as relationships (with students, colleagues,
    administrators, etc.) are all very important on TI and VFE and wondered from the
    questions (What three things belong in a lesson plan? What do you need to know about
    your students in order to begin planning?) if they were driving towards what you
    describe with the 20 different lessons in one classroom. That is basically
    homeschooling, and the biggest problem I see with that situation is the inability of
    the student to eventually adapt to an environment which will not cater to them. For
    the benefit of all here, we don't give a damn about learning styles or your
    individual learning pace at the university or college level. We have our department
    objectives, and a limited time in which to acheive them, and that is what we intend
    to do. You don't like me? You can drop my class and take it with someone else.
    We're not inhumane (for the most part), and we'll help you if you're struggling (if
    you ask). But we're not going to let you draw a picture or create a video in place
    of a ten-page research paper because it better suits you. We've promised that
    you're going to walk out of the class a better writer and thinker, because that's
    what we expect of college graduates. I don't care if your homeschooling mom or your
    student-centered high school teacher gave you 2 months to do an single assignment
    because "your individual pace" dictacted such. We have 10 weeks and my department
    chair will have my head for granting an Incomplete for such a flimsy excuse.

    Initially, I was much more of a free spirit with my classroom, and probably fit the
    definition of student-centeredness fairly well, especially in my student-teaching
    days. However, what I learned is that in actual practice, most administrators see
    such a philosophy as chaotic and most students see it as unfair. They would rather
    be treated similarly to each other. "It's not right that I have to read a book and
    write a paper and Josh gets to watch a movie and do a project." I guess because of
    my experience, I wouldn't let my mind go to that definition of student-centeredness
    because I felt instinctively that schools couldn't possibly want that. It would
    generate 5 million student and parent complaints.

    I think that eventually, we will see student-centeredness like self-esteem. In the
    80's and 90's we thought that students weren't learning because their self-esteem
    was too low and we thought up all sorts of ways to help them feel better about
    themselves. Then all this data started pouring out that showed that criminals
    scored very well on measures of self-esteem--in some cases, exceptionally well. In
    fact, this inflated ego without substance was a factor in their criminal behavior.
    They saw their own needs as being much greater than those of others and were willing
    to do whatever necessary to fulfill their needs (usually at the expense of others).
    I'm not saying that SC classrooms create criminals, but I think they produce
    students who are ironically less flexible, less self-aware (because the teacher
    figures out their needs), and less open to change and criticism.

    Anyway, I appreciate your discussion Mark. Now I'm much less ticked off.

     
     

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