Re: Tenured Teachers Who Make the Rest of us Look Bad

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Granted, Glenn Beck is over the top. However, the incompetent
tenured teachers make everyone else look bad. Who is at fault for
this?? THE ADMINISTRATION!! Why is it that teachers are always
under fire and the administration is never looked at in the media.
In the private sector, management is the first to look at when a
business fails.

At my school there are three really terrible teachers. One has a
beautiful classroom and she looks the part. She does absolutely
nothing and was caught texting during class. Another only knows
how to scream at children but doesn't have a clue how to teach.
The third is a worn out old lady at 72 who doesn't know what she
would do if she retired. The fact is she goes on hurting a class
of kids every year. She yells at the little kids and teaches
absolutely zilch. Parents complain constantly about these three.
The received tenure and so they stay.

The rest of the staff is awesome! They are very hard working,
productive teachers. Tenure should protect the rest of us but
unfortunately it also covers the weakest links. ADMINISTRATORS
NEED MORE ACCOUNTABILITY. A competent superintendent would visit
schools and classrooms unannounced and base their administrative
evaluations on that. It simply doesn't happen--at least not in my
district.

> I am not sure where there are districts that pay their coaches
> over the summer. I am a coach and my summer work that I do is
> unpaid. This has been the case with two other districts that I
> taught in as well and in two different states. j
>
> On 8/04/09, Midwest Teacher wrote:
>
>
>> 8/4/09
>>
>> "Did you know that 55% of teachers leave the profession
>> before 5 years of teaching"
>>
>> "Tenure protects teachers and the students. If there was no
>> tenure, the school districts would fire teachers who began
>> to make too much on the pay scale to help save money,
>> regardless if they were excellent teachers or not."
>>
>> Thank you for standing up for teachers. I am a young beginning
>> teacher, fresh out of college, licensed, who has been
>> substituting the past year. I do want to bring up my point of
>> view regardless of what Glenn Beck has said.
>>
>> In my town, not a small one at that (300,000-400,000), friends
>> and families are already being hired and are working. There is
>> so much competition for teaching positions that unless you have
>> an "in", you will rarely get even an interview. And that is in
>> my city, not some small country town. An acquaintance of mine,
>> would've made a great teacher-very much into hands on lessons,
>> was hired only for a temp position when someone was pregnant. I
>> later learned that a daughter of a neighbor of a school board
>> member got a permanent position over my friend. The "buddy
>> system" or "good old boy" system is already greatly in effect!
>> Reminds me of the Jackson "Kitchen Cabinet" or of Grant
>> employing all his buddies.
>>
>> We were always told the figure of 55% before five years.
>> However, no one can say with any accuracy why those teachers
>> really left the profession, or even if they did so permanently.
>> Lets be honest, the teaching profession is hard, very hard. It
>> is not something that anyone can just do and do well. You have
>> to "have the heart of a teacher" and a thick skin will help.
>> However, it may be wise for schools to want to get younger,
>> fresh, hands into the pot. If you think of a school as a
>> business, experience is great as long as they still bring
>> results. Unfortunately, I have met many who seem to be teaching
>> the same way as they did in 1975. With competition for openings
>> ever increasing, and demand for results increasing, schools may
>> want to energize their workforce. Not to mention a lot of the
>> time first year teachers are give the "worst" classes and
>> locations. That may have something to do with the number 55%.
>>
>> I would never call anyone bad at their job without knowing the
>> details first. But I do know that I would make a great teacher
>> but I can not seem to find a permanent job. I want to get a
>> masters; however, if I do so I will most likely hurt my chances
>> of being hired right away (not to mention I can't afford it
>> because I'm not making a good salary). Maybe not, I've been
>> told both ways. I do know it's a struggle. Like any work force,
>> there are great, average, and bad. Either way it means you're
>> employed and I'm not. I think I would like to be considered
>> even a bad teacher if it meant I was teaching. And, lets be
>> honest again, Unions make it real easy to be bad at something
>> and still get paid.
>>
>> The last point you made about pay and the summers. Teachers, at
>> least in my state and districts, get the choice of receiving a
>> paycheck monthly or in lump sums. Not only that, its is a
>> salaried amount which is supposed to reflect hours worked on
>> the job. So if you earn 50,000/yr and you have summers off, you
>> divide by 9 months not 12. Your 50,000 just became more
>> valuable because anyone else earning the same salary/yr would
>> most likely be working 12 months. Ive known many teachers who
>> had summer jobs, if they had time. To be honest, many teachers
>> have sports or other school functions that they participate in
>> during summer. However, most are paid extra for that work. It
>> just was not a strong point for you to bring up. However, I did
>> not hear/see what Beck said, so I may not know all the details
>> of your argument.
>>
>> Thank you though for standing up for the profession anyways!
>> Teachers work hard and do more for society than we get credit
>> for. But if one can do great good, than it must be possible to
>> do great harm. That is why "good" teachers should be praised,
>> "bad" ones should be replaced.

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