Reading this has only solidified my belief that we do teacher training wrong. All through my teacher training I looked for specific fixes to problems and all I ever got were unsatisfactory references to "finding what works for you." This only reinforces for everyone that classroom management and good teaching are magic - it's a talent that you just have. And if you just care hard enough and work hard enough and suffer long enough, you'll figure it out. Otherwise, you fail.
I feel like I got set up to fail.
That, my friends, is why teaching continues to be snubbed as a true profession. We treat it as touchy-feely-save-the-children bullshit before teachers hit the classroom, don't give new teachers any real tools for managing children, and then expect them to create entire tribes of perfect standardized test-takers. DOES NOT COMPUTE.
Oh, right. I said I would shut up about education.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Monday, March 8, 2010
vortex of doom
I'm not the first to blog about this, but I figure it can't hurt to keep the word spreading. As Editor B and Hurricane Radio and probably a few others have already posted extensively, there is something seriously fucked up about an education system that works this way.
Count me in among the quitters. I really loved teaching when I began. I loved the little thrill you get when your students are learning something, when you realize that they've gained something from your hard work. But ridiculous hours and ridiculous administrators and ridiculous expectations make teaching an impossible way to live here. You get tired and jaded and pissed off and you might even end up like me: hating the very thought of going back into the classroom everyday.
Current policy is killing public education, I am convinced. And if you ask me at a bar when I've had a couple drinks, I'll be happy to explain exactly what a vortex of doom is being created in our public schools and why self-destruction is inevitable if something doesn't change.
Otherwise, I'm going to shut up about it. It makes me want to puke.
Count me in among the quitters. I really loved teaching when I began. I loved the little thrill you get when your students are learning something, when you realize that they've gained something from your hard work. But ridiculous hours and ridiculous administrators and ridiculous expectations make teaching an impossible way to live here. You get tired and jaded and pissed off and you might even end up like me: hating the very thought of going back into the classroom everyday.
Current policy is killing public education, I am convinced. And if you ask me at a bar when I've had a couple drinks, I'll be happy to explain exactly what a vortex of doom is being created in our public schools and why self-destruction is inevitable if something doesn't change.
Otherwise, I'm going to shut up about it. It makes me want to puke.
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