ewwww.

we could raise kids in Los Angeles without sending them to private schools...
and there was no way to pay for that.

tell him that. He is very intelligent you would have thought better of him not to go into teaching. Well he did go into teaching in Georgia. He lasted one year and after that he left teaching. He now works for the government dealing with security and computers and travels all over the world. He likes that a whole lot better. He said what I already knew that it really does take a special kind of a person to teach. Teachers have to put up with so much. You are lucky that you finally got out before you ended up really bitter. My brother was a high school teacher and loved. He was well like by his students. He retired 2 yrs ago.

I haven't had family members looking for me to hurt me, but I have been threatened by kids who would have done it, kids who had the means to do it and described exactly what they'd do when they could. You learn to shrug it off and keep teaching. The vast majority of the time, people can be reasoned with, and when they can't, that's when you need a great administrator who has your back (and that teacher did from the sound of it).

Schools are the canary in the coal mine. Whatever's going on outside our doors comes right on inside, too.

I was SO sorry there for a while that I became a teacher. Now I love it...but I'm surprised I made it through the first couple of years.

I wonder if this guy went through any kind of teacher training? Doesn't say in the article. It helps to know what you will encounter.

My uni ed department requires teacher candidates to complete 120 hours of hands-on classroom observation and practice before they can even student teach.

Pencils are serious weapons.

I haven't been bitten, but I did have a special needs kid draw blood with his fingernails and leave bruises that lasted for days. Subs get all that, too--he decided to hurt me because I was a sub and to see if he could get away with it.

Well written article.

Or at least making the system worse will be the upshot of their attempts at "reform" whatever their wishes might be.

I have a stack of blankets in my room because it is so cold in the winter we either have to use blankets or go work in the hallway.

Then they want to test my students to see if they learned enough while sitting in the hallway. WITH NO BOOKS.

Yes, that's right, we've been told to change what we are teaching to align with new core standards but I don't have a single textbook. I have to borrow or make everything. I've been told DO NOT SPEND ANY MONEY WE WILL NOT BE REIMBURSED. So, no books, no ability to buy books, and then the students are tested on what is in the books and I'm fired if I didn't teach what is in the books I don't have.

Tell me I don't want to change that system.

Try nursing.

I'm a nurse who is married to a (former) teacher. He got laid off last spring and is now working as a transit system bus driver. Part of me is jealous. I keep thinking I should quit and take a job as a cashier in a grocery or convenience store/ gas station.

We like to think everyone has the same motives we do, to help others, to make the world a better place. We sometimes have trouble recognizing the sociopaths who are dragging our society down for their own profit.

sort of contact with. They are toxic to non-bullies, be it social,mental stability,compassion ,freedom,equality, democracy and love.

load, more new nurses, some of them coming out of perhaps declining degree programs somewhat un-prepared, long hours, poor inter-professional communications culture.

This last week, I went to back-to-school night at the high school. My oldest is a freshman this year, and it seemed prudent to meet his teachers. Plus, they were giving up a good chunk of their evening to be there.

The language arts teacher is new this year. A few of the older staff retired, and this teacher is one of a handful of new ones. She isn't fresh out of college but she has the enthusiasm of a brand new teacher.

She told us a story that was meant to let us know how grateful she is to have this job. When she started this fall, her new colleagues told her to wait until the day she had her first assignment due.

All 65 of her freshman kids (three classes worth) turned their assignment in. On time. The kids at this school want to be here. She mentioned that some of them even thank her every day as they leave the class for their next period.

That is what teachers across the US should face every day.

...but he is right about Prop 13. The single biggest factor in the quality of public education is class-size. And the voters of this state haven't given a single thought to it in over a decade...

It took everything I had to give. I used to sweep my classroom at the end of the day, not because the custodians wouldn't do it, but because the classroom was empty and quiet and I needed to decompress and get my head together before I went out in public, before I got in my car and drove home.

Otherwise I might have been Mr. Road Rage, or Mr. distracted driver replaying all the dramas of the day in my head, no resolution possible.

Our upper classes starve the schools, starve the people, and then when the people become angry and their communities dysfunctional the upper classes blame the people for that hunger and dysfunction, and they propose "solutions" like privatization that will only suck more money and vitality from the communities they are starving.

More money will fix the schools. Pay students from within the community to go to college and become teachers. Make classes smaller, provide free breakfast and lunches, support communities with a generous welfare system and well paying jobs. Make schools a nice place to be, a kind of oasis of safety and sanity in communities that are rough.

We could do it. We could flip our tax system so that property taxes paid for the "common defense" and income taxes paid for education. Wouldn't that work well -- let the guy with the million dollar house pay for useless aircraft carriers. We could raise the minimum wage. We could create good government jobs in places where the private sector has failed the people.

The money people created this problem. It's stupid to pay any attention at all to their proposed solutions.

I'm lucky. I teach elementary school. I don't think I could handle high school. I also have a wonderful job where I work with kids in small groups and really see progress. I've also been blessed to work in high performing schools with good principals. I make a difference every day. If I didn't, I couldn't keep doing it.

Your points about poverty are correct. It's the elephant in the room no one wants to talk about. Th cultural issues I deal with every day are too heartbreaking to talk about here. I don't even talk at home to my friends and family about what my students go through. Homelessness, incarcerated parents, violence in their neighborhoods, it goes on and on. And no one seems to know how to fix any of this. Or want to fix it. But then when they started talking about holding teachers accountable for low test scores that are directly related to poverty, I got angry.

Missouri approved gambling in 1984 and the casinos came to town. The big selling point for legalizing gambling was that it would mean more money for education. Did you witness an increase in spending for education after 1984 that went to improving schools?

Just curious. I work in KC MO and constantly hear/read negative comments about the school system. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if gambling hadn't been approved.

it's only a fraction of a percent of the total yearly budget for education in the state. It's certainly not enough to solve any funding problems.

Also, it gets dumped into the general fund first and then trickles out to the state dept of education. So the state could spend it on anything they want if they decided to do that.

So no, I didn't notice an increase in spending for education after this money started coming in. In fact, if I am ever again asked to vote on a source of revenue that is going to education, like this gambling money, I'll vote NO. For 20 years the voters in MO have believed the schools are well funded from the casino profits and that's never happened. I believed it too; we lived in MO at the time and I voted YES. Never again though. We were duped.

Next time you hear something negative about the KCPS, remember you know me and there are about a thousand more just like me working there. So many good stories are never told. We have schools that outperform the suburbs but the media never tells you about them.

all of the family trouble associated with problem gamblers.

My deceased brother-in-law was a bankruptcy attorney; he had a phenomenal case-load from gamblers.

Relative to the total number of households, it's probably just a fraction, but a very significant one for the depth and breadth of the damage done. All of which affects schools in every way.

During the new faculty orientation, we went around the room and identified ourselves and what courses we would be teaching. One member said he was an attorney specializing in bankruptcy and would be teaching a paralegal class. He said his practice was "average" but when the boats opened, it boomed with many, many new clients!

This was 1996.

ALWAYS went the extra mile for ALL of his clients, no matter what other people may have thought of them. He wrote his own software and managed his own server farm, so he was able to deal in volume, but worked himself to death anyway with all of the detail stuff.

He was a musician at heart, but following his dad's way in the world, after young years as a ground-breaking hippie at KU. We all grew up together. He was also a Vietnam combat vet who came to authentic cynicism and non-evangelical atheism, an absolutely fearless intellectual libertarian, deeply profoundly generous (his daughters had to keep an eye on his practice), he still believed in Democrats and Justice not only as a process but as a principle that applies to everyone, so, though he knew people cause a lot of their own problems, he was very aware of how exactly his clients' vulnerabilities had been used and he took great pleasure in evening up the score just a little. The kind of guy who didn't deserve the lawyers' bad name. He's only been gone not 2 years yet.

We miss him.

I have this absolutely awesome funky feisty OLD lhasa-apso, Dalai, whom he took as a fee once. She became his best friend. She's mine now and one of the delights of my life.

nt

All paid for via tax dollars.

Google the name for clarification

solutions."

Bravo & amen.

There’s a good reason that American slaves were forbidden to learn to read: Literacy is freedom. Free, high quality, accessible, equitable education is the bedrock of a free society. That’s not just Tea Party flag-waving; it’s the Incontestable Eternal Truth. Sadly, in the final analysis, historical and political forces are at work that leave us, the teachers and students, rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. People, people, people! Can’t you see that The Man wants us ignorant? Unite, my friends! We have nothing to lose but our … ohferchrissakenevermind!

But remember, if you’re there when the last dog reaches the last hill: Lost causes are the only ones worth fighting for.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________


Literacy IS freedom. If you have no education you can be fed anything as fact. Thank whatever you thank, but when you do, thank them for teachers.

dismantled.

I'm a 27 year teaching veteran. I feel like an abandoned child sometimes. And I have it good.

I wonder where my grandchildren will go to school?

Thanks for sharing

It was a pure stress or "psyche" case without physical injury, the type of work injury case that's strongly contested by insurance companies and rarely successful. After two days of deposition, I called the adjuster and suggested she consider picking up the claim. I was almost in shock to hear of the terrible environment in which the teacher had had to work. He had broken up a fight on a bus between two middle school classmates. One of the boys told his father that the teacher pushed him off and kept him from beating the crap out of another boy who had offended him. The parents got very upset when the school refused to fire the teacher. The father was a gang member and began hounding the teacher, waiting for him in the school parking lot with other gang members in his car, brandishing assault rifles out the window, and nearly running him over. The teacher was physically attacked by the boy's mother, also a gang member, inside his classroom at the end of the day. He was constantly receiving threatening phone calls at night. There was two days' worth of incidents involving these parents described by the teacher that blew my mind. The school administrator did nothing and was afraid for his own life. The police did nothing, as no one was brave enough to back up the teacher's story as a witness.

In my darker moments I think we need a "three strikes" policy for students where expelling troublemakers is much, much easier. Yes, you're throwing away thousands of students, but you're also allowing tens of thousands of other students to get an education in a classroom without constant disruption.

The kid in the situation with the teacher above was young and probably still reachable. But not as long as he had parents with screwed up ideas about the world.

First of all, we made it clear that threats to teachers and/or physical violence toward teachers would be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. We're lucky that the police here are pretty good, and they came to the school fast when needed. The few times anything happened (good school overall, so violence wasn't usually a problem), cops came, the rest of the kids saw what happened, and fewer and fewer pushed that boundary.

It's our job to set boundaries and not let the kids cross them. If a parent doesn't understand that and starts pushing the boundary, too, then it's our job to not let that parent cross the boundary either. The principal in that case needed to get some ovaries/balls, file a restraining order (which schools can do), and make sure the cops understood that he'd go right up the chain of command until something happened.

I student taught and couldnt believe the difference between my 20 per class and 30 or more per class. I had perfect control and teaching with 20. Lost it at 30. So I was out.

I agree that 30 is too big - just curious to know was this high school or younger?

In order to be effective, you have to care. The kids know when you are going through the motions. However, caring begins to eat your heart and soul as you watch what happens to the students. You do what you can and hope it helps a little.

How do you help an 8th grader who can't read? Even intense efforts in a special class would be a hard slog towards real advances.

The author is spot on about administrators that wander about in some nebulous hierarchy. If I never saw one, I would be happy. Fortunately, there were always a couple who would help. The rest were ineffective or autocratic assholes.

Parents could wear me out too. There were parents who genuinely cared and worked WITH me to help their kids. Then there were the others.

When I taught near DC, everybody thought they were important. They'd march into a conference and give some title that was supposed to awe me. I didn't care if they were the Queen of the May or Kaiser or whatever, their kids were not getting special treatment. That didn't go over well. Their kids were above the norm in every respect. They were not to be given poor grades or have their behavior corrected.

I had many memorable conferences. I never said directly what I wanted to say except for one time.
A mother came in because I dared to give her daughter a lower grade than was acceptable. The kid didn't finish or turn in a lot of her work.

I walked in and before I could even sit down she announced that she was an opera singer and would be flying to NYC. I wanted to say, "So" or "Won't your arms get tired?" i refrained.

We then went back and forth about the grade. I wasn't going to change it, and I didn't. Then she started declaring that she had talked to Mrs.Fields. That became her refrain. I was wracking my brain trying to come up with some Mrs.Fields that would affect me. I finally had enough and I said, "Which one? Totie or the one who makes the cookies?" Then she mentioned school board member. Oh, that Mrs. Fields.

My hair caught on fire. I leaned toward her and said quietly but firmly that she had crossed a line. She had given Mrs.Fields a one-sided and poor view of me. I had not been there to provide balance and had no idea how this would affect my career. I then told her if there were ramifications from this or if she ever did this sort of thing again, she would be meeting with me and my lawyers. The conference wound down quietly.
(Please don't give me chapter and verse about why I had no leg to stand on. I had no idea when I said it, but I wanted to give her something to think about.)
I never heard from her again.

I do not miss those moments. I miss the kids.