Today I'm featuring a contributing writer for The Lufkin News, Lufkin, Texas. His name is Gary Stallard, His email address is garylstallard@yahoo.com. You can find The Lufkin News online at lufkindailynews.com.
STALLARD: How to get rid of good teachers
By GARY STALLARD/Contributing writer
Our society must be getting tired of having all those good teachers around. Seems it’s doing its level best to get rid of them.
Every year, we’re seeing a mass exodus from the teaching ranks, and not all of those are leaving just because they feel they’re not cut out for the job. In a Washington Post article, the author paraphrased information offered from Richard Ingersoll, “a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a leading scholar on the nation’s teacher workforce,” as estimating “that between 40 and 50 percent of public and private school teachers leave by the end of the fifth year of starting their careers.”
It’s strange to me that so many people who answered what I consider a calling decided they were picking up a wrong number. It’s not all that surprising, however. Our current education systems are showing us exactly how easy it is to drive those educators away. Heck, getting rid of ’em is easy.
We just have to keep doing what we’re doing.
First, just keep pushing standardized testing as the be-all in every school. In no other facet of life have I seen something so consuming yet so unproductive. The tests themselves aren’t necessarily eating up classroom hours, but the constant preparation from schools fearful of low results consumes an inordinate number of hours every week. Add to that the pressure placed upon the teachers — who find themselves forced to teach testing materials rather than the skills necessary to function in those tests — and the frustration inevitably boils over.
Testing is necessary when it comes to measuring a school’s effectiveness. It just doesn’t need to be the only measurement. Any teacher can tell of those students who started far below standards and ended up showing great progress; however, by testing standards, those same students are still under-performing. They’re failing. That’s it, cut and dried, but it shouldn’t be.
Another way to get those good teachers out of the classroom is to keep pushing this Common Core stuff. I was fortunate enough to escape teaching in a public school before this brand of insanity crept its way into the mix. If I were honest with my students, I’d have to tell them I’m just as lost as they are. What a great way to build their confidence in me.
I still don’t understand the thought process behind Common Core. How’d you like to solve this problem? “Solve 5 x 3.” If you wrote “5+5+5 = 15,” you’d get it wrong. No, your answer should have been “3+3+3+3+3 = 15.” That’s an actual problem, and the first answer was the kid’s solution. He missed it and was told the second solution was correct, even though both answers equaled 15.
Huh?
Or how about this one: “You think that longer novels are better than short ones; they give the characters more of a chance to grow and develop. How can you best link these two thoughts together?”
That’s a third-grade Language Arts question. Third grade, because we all know those little 8-year-olds are just devouring novels at that age.
Yes, let’s keep pushing this kind of stuff on our teachers. That’ll drive ’em straight from school to a nervous hospital somewhere.
We can also get rid of teachers by forcing them to kowtow to parents. Man, I loved having some parent who couldn’t spell “pedagogy” telling me how to teach. He or she usually wanted me to teach his or her little Bubba a certain way. Never mind there were at least 20 other kids in the class. I was supposed to focus the entirety of my effort on the one kid, and I was supposed to alter my own methods accordingly. I’ve had more than one tell me, “You need to teach the way he learns.” I’d love to have more one-on-one time, but the real answer is getting him to learn the way I teach. I’ll try to meet somewhere in the middle, but I can’t neglect the rest of the class.
And when little Bubba acts out enough that his teacher has to send him to see a principal just so the teacher can, you know, actually teach something, let’s make sure we send the little disruptor right back to class. I always loved (sarcasm) spending half my class time correcting behavior instead of actually teaching. I’ve dealt with kids whose behavior wasn’t just mischievous; it was outright malicious and harmful to the others. I handled the majority of my classroom issues, but when I couldn’t turn the kid around, I was fortunate enough to have principals who kept the offender out of my class so I could do my job. Teachers who don’t have that kind of support are already looking for a different career that doesn’t involve raising someone else’s child.
We can also keep overworking and underpaying teachers. That’ll get ’em out of there. Two of our daughters are elementary school teachers. They love their jobs, but I’ve called them plenty of times late in the evening and had them tell me they were still working and couldn’t talk. Nothing, and I mean nothing, I’ve ever done caused brain drain like spending eight hours trying to out-maneuver 80-100 ninth-graders on a daily basis. Trying to work extra hours at night and on weekends just adds to the drain. I guess the solution is to make sure we only hire single people, since anyone with a family won’t have time for one anyway.
There’s no overtime pay in teaching. Heck, there’s barely any regular pay. Those teachers who make it to the five-year mark earn an average of $31,000 per year. Do the math — and not the Common Core kind — and a teacher makes roughly $11 per hour. That’s for someone with a college degree.
That’s just a few bucks above minimum wage. Keep paying teachers like this and we’ll shove them straight into a better-paying job with fewer headaches.
The best way to get rid of teachers? Keep squashing their initiative and creativity by forcing them to adhere to a curriculum developed by someone who spent little, if any time, in an actual classroom. Keep handing them state-mandated workbooks and force them to stick to the prescribed schedule. Now that I’m teaching college classes, I have the ability to “adjust on the fly.” I can see where my students need the most work and adjust accordingly. I can take advantage of those moments when a conversation opens up a learning opportunity. I can write new lesson plans based on what a particular group of students is able to do at the time.
I didn’t have that luxury when teaching high school, and it wasn’t our administrators’ faults. The state said we had to teach a specific lesson (because of the tests, of course), and not doing so could lead to problems. Tired of workbook lessons, I once spent an entire summer creating lesson plans involving literature and poetry formatted to what those workbooks contained. My kids loved it and did very well on the ensuing standardized test. I thought for sure I’d made a point, but instead I was informed I couldn’t continue the practice. If a group scored low on one of those exams, I was told, I’d be in trouble for “deviating from the curriculum.” They were right, but it was the kind of right that made it easier to leave when the opportunity arose.
See? It doesn’t take much to rid our ranks of good teachers.
We can just keep doing what we’re doing.
And we’ll just keep losing good teachers.
Testing is necessary when it comes to measuring a school’s effectiveness. It just doesn’t need to be the only measurement. Any teacher can tell of those students who started far below standards and ended up showing great progress; however, by testing standards, those same students are still under-performing. They’re failing. That’s it, cut and dried, but it shouldn’t be.
Another way to get those good teachers out of the classroom is to keep pushing this Common Core stuff. I was fortunate enough to escape teaching in a public school before this brand of insanity crept its way into the mix. If I were honest with my students, I’d have to tell them I’m just as lost as they are. What a great way to build their confidence in me.
I still don’t understand the thought process behind Common Core. How’d you like to solve this problem? “Solve 5 x 3.” If you wrote “5+5+5 = 15,” you’d get it wrong. No, your answer should have been “3+3+3+3+3 = 15.” That’s an actual problem, and the first answer was the kid’s solution. He missed it and was told the second solution was correct, even though both answers equaled 15.
Huh?
Or how about this one: “You think that longer novels are better than short ones; they give the characters more of a chance to grow and develop. How can you best link these two thoughts together?”
That’s a third-grade Language Arts question. Third grade, because we all know those little 8-year-olds are just devouring novels at that age.
Yes, let’s keep pushing this kind of stuff on our teachers. That’ll drive ’em straight from school to a nervous hospital somewhere.
We can also get rid of teachers by forcing them to kowtow to parents. Man, I loved having some parent who couldn’t spell “pedagogy” telling me how to teach. He or she usually wanted me to teach his or her little Bubba a certain way. Never mind there were at least 20 other kids in the class. I was supposed to focus the entirety of my effort on the one kid, and I was supposed to alter my own methods accordingly. I’ve had more than one tell me, “You need to teach the way he learns.” I’d love to have more one-on-one time, but the real answer is getting him to learn the way I teach. I’ll try to meet somewhere in the middle, but I can’t neglect the rest of the class.
And when little Bubba acts out enough that his teacher has to send him to see a principal just so the teacher can, you know, actually teach something, let’s make sure we send the little disruptor right back to class. I always loved (sarcasm) spending half my class time correcting behavior instead of actually teaching. I’ve dealt with kids whose behavior wasn’t just mischievous; it was outright malicious and harmful to the others. I handled the majority of my classroom issues, but when I couldn’t turn the kid around, I was fortunate enough to have principals who kept the offender out of my class so I could do my job. Teachers who don’t have that kind of support are already looking for a different career that doesn’t involve raising someone else’s child.
We can also keep overworking and underpaying teachers. That’ll get ’em out of there. Two of our daughters are elementary school teachers. They love their jobs, but I’ve called them plenty of times late in the evening and had them tell me they were still working and couldn’t talk. Nothing, and I mean nothing, I’ve ever done caused brain drain like spending eight hours trying to out-maneuver 80-100 ninth-graders on a daily basis. Trying to work extra hours at night and on weekends just adds to the drain. I guess the solution is to make sure we only hire single people, since anyone with a family won’t have time for one anyway.
There’s no overtime pay in teaching. Heck, there’s barely any regular pay. Those teachers who make it to the five-year mark earn an average of $31,000 per year. Do the math — and not the Common Core kind — and a teacher makes roughly $11 per hour. That’s for someone with a college degree.
That’s just a few bucks above minimum wage. Keep paying teachers like this and we’ll shove them straight into a better-paying job with fewer headaches.
The best way to get rid of teachers? Keep squashing their initiative and creativity by forcing them to adhere to a curriculum developed by someone who spent little, if any time, in an actual classroom. Keep handing them state-mandated workbooks and force them to stick to the prescribed schedule. Now that I’m teaching college classes, I have the ability to “adjust on the fly.” I can see where my students need the most work and adjust accordingly. I can take advantage of those moments when a conversation opens up a learning opportunity. I can write new lesson plans based on what a particular group of students is able to do at the time.
I didn’t have that luxury when teaching high school, and it wasn’t our administrators’ faults. The state said we had to teach a specific lesson (because of the tests, of course), and not doing so could lead to problems. Tired of workbook lessons, I once spent an entire summer creating lesson plans involving literature and poetry formatted to what those workbooks contained. My kids loved it and did very well on the ensuing standardized test. I thought for sure I’d made a point, but instead I was informed I couldn’t continue the practice. If a group scored low on one of those exams, I was told, I’d be in trouble for “deviating from the curriculum.” They were right, but it was the kind of right that made it easier to leave when the opportunity arose.
See? It doesn’t take much to rid our ranks of good teachers.
We can just keep doing what we’re doing.
And we’ll just keep losing good teachers.
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