SUBSCRIBE  |  PREFERENCES MY LINKS:              chat center STATES  |  GRADE LEVEL  |  SUBJECTS

IL Teachers Chatboard

TOP POSTS ALL POSTS SUBMIT POST
Search Teachers.Net
Advanced

Advertise with Teachers.Net - Rate Card, Demographics, etc. Live Chat - Online Teacher Meetings and Workshops Harry Wong - Effective Teaching Teachers.Net Gazette - Articles by Teachers, For Teachers Mailrings - Teacher Email Discussion Lists Teaching Jobs - Free Job Listings for Classroom Teachers Teacher Classified Ads K-12 Classroom Projects Lesson Plans - Over 4000 Free Lesson Plans Teacher Chatboards - Discussion Forums for Teachers Teacher Chat - Over 150 Teacher Discussion Topics
next post skip topic



Print | Share | Report Post

Re: Online applications
Posted by spedhead on 6/17/08

    On 6/17/08, Merrill wrote:
    > Well I think the problem is this...
    >
    > Schools won't take someone with a BA because they don't have enough
    > experience. They also won't take someone with a graduate degree, because
    > they cost too much money. So they want "some" experience, but not too much.
    > Some education, but not too much. They want people with a lot of content
    > knowledge--but not too much.
    >
    > Sounds like Goldilocks syndrome here.

    This is not a problem if you have a wealth of applicants to choose from, as my
    collegues in the English, Social Studies, and Fine Arts depts have. I, on the
    other hand, in special ed, have to take what I can get. Sometimes thats a
    rookie with only a BA, sometimes thats someone with 15 years and a MA+30.
    See, you need to start realizing that we (schools and districts) don't have a
    problem. You do. You need a job. We'll keep on educating students with or
    without you. I'd suggest you look at what you can do to get a job, and not
    blame others.

    > I suggest you go check out the writings of E.D. Hirsch, who contends that
    > children need to be taught "knowledge" not "mental skills."

    I've read him in a graduate school class. A quick google search seems to
    confirm what I believed about him when I read his book: he's never been a
    K-12 teacher. Academia is full of philosophers. Thats a good thing, its
    where they belong. There are many educational philosophers in the Ivory Tower
    who are sure they know how to teach 13-year-olds all kinds of stuff, and of
    course they can do it better than the people actually doing it. Of course
    they never actually teach those 13-year-olds because they're too busy doing
    much more important things like writing books that few will read and fewer
    still will care about.

    Our teachers
    > know all about the procedures they need to follow in the classroom, and the
    > forms that need to be filled out, but they can't teach writing because they
    > have no exposure to research, modern composition theory, rhetorical theory,
    > history of pedagogy, etc.

    Teachers have quite a bit of education in pedagogy, but your opinion of
    knowing teaching strategies is disturbing. You seem to downplay it as
    "classroom procedures" and paperwork. Here's the major disconnect between
    teaching at college level, and teaching in K-12 public school in the US.
    They're as different as Earth and Mars. I'll let you decide which is which,
    but the point is, while they might both be planets, the similarities end
    there. Many of the students don't want to be there, and they don't care
    about what you have to say. So, a major tool in the K-12 teacher's bag of
    tricks has to be how to educate students who do not want to be educated, at
    least to be educated in what you want to teach them. How do you hook them?
    How do you get a 13 year-old interested in something they came into the room
    not caring about?

    So, your content-area PhDs have all this knowledge, but they can't teach any
    of it and if they try, they end up talking to themselves because the students
    have checked out. I've seen it. Its one of the reasons PhDs teach in
    college, because they don't want to deal with disinterested students.

    > You can't have it both ways. You either hire experts who can teach, or you
    > try to do things "on the cheap" and hire paper-pushers. If schools hired
    > people who could teach, we wouldn't have a lousy education system with
    > dismal results.

    You haven't said anything that leads me to believe that you're "an expert who
    can teach." Many people with Doctorates are great students, but having a PhD
    in English has nothing to do with teaching secondary students. If you've
    gotten a teaching certificate, and had no experience teaching grades 6-12,
    then you're a rookie teacher and far from an expert. A person with a BA and
    32 credits in English, but 5 years in the classroom is worth much more to the
    English department, because that teacher has proven he/she can teach
    real-world students.

    If you're a 9th grade teacher who ends up teaching regular Freshman English in
    a run-of-the-mill High School, guess what? Half your students won't go to
    college and many of them have 7th grade reading levels. A third think reading
    literature is "gay" and that same third think you are too and aren't worthy of
    their respect. About 3 kids per class, usually the 16 year old Freshmen, have
    a calendar in their locker with their 17th birthday circled on it labled
    "Dropout Day!" This is the real world. My question for you is: What are you
    going to do to educate ALL of these students in your room? These are the kids
    you WILL have if you get a job. A hint: if your answer involves refering to
    your PhD and how you're an expert in content, or talking about some other PhD
    who wrote a book, that's a wrong answer and you won't be getting a job. The
    buzz word is "student (child) centered" for a reason.
    >
    > But part of what you say is correct--"content" people do tend to get
    > frustrated. When students go through 5 years of education with no
    > expectations and no accountability, they don't respond well to a teacher who
    > suddenly wants them to know something.

    Again, wrong answer from the point of view of a teacher or administrator who
    is living in the real world. Every school's mission statement has something
    like "we believe that all children can and will learn!" Blaming the previous
    teachers, system, students, lack of money, and/or the blue sky isn't going to
    float. What are YOU going to do to get ALL students interested and learning,
    including the students who are reading and writing like middle-schoolers in
    10th grade? When you have an acceptable answer, you have a chance of getting
    a job.


     
     

You are on the IL CHATBOARD:   LATEST POSTS   ALL POSTS   SUBMIT POST

Check out our latest FREE Lesson Plans...
 
Google
 
Web Teachers.Net
Click here
  Site Map: Home Search Teaching Jobs Classifieds Lesson Plans Contacts PR AdvertiseSite Map
  © 1996 - 2008. All Rights Reserved. Please review our Terms of Use, Mission Statement, and Privacy Policy.