I am a
teacher, and I would like to be fired by my school district. Please.
Fire me. Let all of the teachers
reapply, and then hire me if I am the best choice. And then my school district can pay me on a
merit-based system, just like every other job that has legitimacy in
society. Teaching may be a government
job, but I don’t want any special favors.
I want my profession to be respected by society – not pitied or
congratulated, but valued. Doctors, lawyers, architects, engineers, teachers. The word “teaching” does not follow, does
it? Teachers are basically low-level
government employees. No clearance, no
pay.
Should
we take a step back and acknowledge that teachers are responsible for roughly 8
hours of a child’s life every day? Do we
really want to hand over our children to teachers who are half-assing their
job? I have three children in
school: one in college, one in high
school, and one in elementary school. I
work in a school. I went to school. I have seen
hundreds of teachers in my life. Just
like in any profession, there are effective teachers and shitty teachers. I don’t see why it’s so hard to pay the
effective teachers what they’re worth and fire the shitty teachers. Yes, it might take a few years to weed out an
ineffective teacher, but that is true in any profession. And please tell me what other profession has
tenure so that employees can’t be fired because of the backing of some big, bad
union?! Being a teacher should not make
a person immune to the workforce rules.
People need to earn their job not just once, but over and over. A trial lawyer would not have a job if he or
she kept losing cases, just like a teacher should not have a job if his or her
students are not learning.
Having
said that … how do we tell if a teacher is doing his or her job well? Test scores?
Yes and no. The test scores WOULD
be an excellent indicator IF people didn’t suck. But they do, so … teachers (SOME teachers)
will cheat. They will do whatever it
takes to get the good test scores. If
their pay is based on those scores, there is even more incentive to cheat. Just last year, we had teachers giving
students the state writing prompt beforehand so their students would do well
when the actual test happened. Teachers should know that cheating is totally
fucked up and doesn’t represent learning, yet if pay is tied to scores, the
shiftiest “teachers” will get paid the most money. Maybe they ought to correlate the in-class
and state test scores to the ACT and SAT to see if these kids really know what
the hell they’re talking about. (How you
do that, I don’t know.)
I know
that I am supposed to get “observed” a couple of times a year, but it’s a
miracle if that happens. I think that
teachers should be observed all the time.
I know that’s inconvenient for administrators, but teachers act differently
when an evaluator is in the room. Is it
really so ridiculous to acknowledge this?!
I try not to change how I act, but the presence of an “outsider” affects
every teacher. I don’t think my students
would say I’m terribly different, but there is still a subtle change in
behavior on my part. (And theirs…) If teachers didn’t know when they were being evaluated, that would be ideal. I know it sounds a little Big Brother-ish,
but surprise attack these teachers and see how they teach on a day-to-day basis! Video tape them. Keep them honest. Don’t schedule a date to observe them so they
can pander to the person watching. Let
them know that the community is not fucking around! As a parent, I want to know what my child is
learning during the day, and I want to know how he or she is being
treated. Is the teacher an asshole? Is there a lot of wasted time? Are the students being taught to a test or
being taught something valuable?
The biggest problem here is that
some parents are going to (potentially) react badly to certain concepts from
the class (especially in high school) that they don’t agree with. I think this where parents need to let go for
a minute. I may not agree with all the
things my children’s teachers teach them, but I am also a parent, so my JOB as
a parent is to talk to my children about these things and give them an
alternative perspective. I cannot shield
my children from ideas with which I don’t agree. I don’t WANT to shield them from those
ideas. It’s the acceptance of a conflict
of ideas that makes America a great place!
When we shut down opposing viewpoints, we insulate ourselves to the
point that the children are unprepared to properly participate in society when
they come of age. A strong and confident
child (read: parent) is not afraid of
people who don’t agree with them.
Americans need to think about what
they want from the teachers in their country and then fall in line behind it -
NOT based on personal or religious ideology, but based on the value of knowledge
in and of itself. Socrates drank hemlock
and killed himself rather than rebut his teachings publicly; that’s how it
should be. Teaching is a mission, not
just a job; and those people who are doing it as just a job because they couldn’t
decide on anything else need to get the fuck out of Dodge. Work at Starbucks or Whole Foods or
something, but get out of the way of those of us who want to change the world
by making people more informed and more intelligent. I’m not talking about making students believe
one thing or another; I’m talking about teaching people how to think, something which is largely absent from most teachers’
curricula.
Think about who you want your
children to be – what you want your children to know – and make these people
who teach your children (and the administrators who dictate their bullshit
curriculum) RESPONSIBLE for what they get paid for every day. Pay attention, get the qualified people in
the classroom, keep them accountable, and then let the magic happen. Learning doesn’t have to be an antiquated
thing; it’s actually quite valuable in the 21st Century.
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