Becoming A Teacher - Opinions Please

[zephed]

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thank you very much. my goal is really to make education an enjoyable profession. if you look through all the posts here that talk about wanting a job that is not part of the rat race of corporate america, many of these young people would make great teachers.

it is especially wonderful to get men in classrooms, but it is ridiculous to expect them to work 60 hour weeks 10 months a year for $40,000 or many times less. that is assuming they have a master's degree at that!

i have done the programs i am talking about, and have graded papers the way i mentioned by having kids underline all the facts and then skimming for accuracy...is it as accurate as reading each word? probably more so, since you can go back and review what you are using to base your opinions.

if i had my way, all papers would be introductions and conclusions with bullet points and some logic and detail in between. the idea of writing a 10 page paper these days is ludicrous even at the college level...but you can get some incredible visual projects if you get some artistic kids to work with some readers, and allow them time to discuss waht it is they are trying to get across...and everyone learns.

i taught many years as a sub and several years as a full time classroom teacher.

unfortunately, there are problems with inner city students, but that is really where the self control programs work best. i would love to see classrooms with camcorders in each room that documented what was going on. as long as the purpose was to help teachers with discipline and helping them improve their methods, it is not even an invasion or a threat.

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You know, perhaps the reason why I jumped on you was because I was thinking about how a math teacher would go about doing this. Is your approach the same if you are a math teacher who has regular homework assignments?

[Bulldog]

Run, don't walk, to the conversion program.

[BLdSWtTRs]

Those who can't do, teach.

I 75% believe this.

[AAAA]

even in math, go over the daily work in class and answer questions...have testing for proficiency and make them multiple guess but add the option of explaining their answers...the students who need help can easily grade multiple guess tests, and leave the other parts for me to grade, but if the student thinks that answer deserves partial credit, they can read the answer and we can discuss it.

i absoluetely adore partial credit...as a student, i hated it when i was marked totally wrong when i made a slight error...still hate it as a teacher. yes, there are some things where perfection matters, but only when they become routine, and people who do routine jobs love that type of thing and just don't make mistakes at it...people who hate routine just wither in that kind of atmosphere.

i really like games where students can do rapid fire basic skills but those get totally boring once they are mastered...same with phonic drills...totally important to get started and death warmed over once you know them.

remmeber, as far as i am concerned, curriculum should be done along the lines of the core knowledge group...this is a very conservative fact based curriculum, but it is only meant to be about 50% of the clasroom work. the rest of the work can be supplementing the core stuff with projects that allow students to learn things that are important to them.

in the 21st century knowing how to google and read is so much of what is needed...that and a healthy curiousity. we don't want to stunt the curiousity, and that is what happens in many traditional classrooms.

if you assign a class a project and break it down to

preproduction/brainstorming/research this is what is usually the entire project in most classes.

presentation ...how to show that you understand the material...this allows the kids with art and mechanical skills to shine...and also the kids who love to perform

post presentation/evaluation ...this is where you decide if you did a good job, how you could do it better, and what you learned about the actual material. what conclusions and what other questions do you have?

this type of curriculum is a spiral learning program that keeps doing some of the same projects at higher levels, and introduces different points of view or different parts of the world or different time periods as years go on.

but the key is to make it so the student has as much control and responsibility as possible...portfolios of their best work should be kept at least in digital format to use as means to assess progress, strengths and weak areas.

not all students respond to the challenge, but then not all students respond to what we are doing now.

[AAAA]

so perhaps you see the value in my suggestions to have people "doing" things in classrooms.

to say that people who cannot read are teaching reading is just not true...i think you can see the drift.

if you are talking about business skills or sales skills, you are probably right...with few exceptions, people who like to teach are not people who would have made great salesmen or astronauts.

however, to say taht people who work for $30 to $50 grand a year doing jobs that can be quite time consuming and frustrating are somehow failures because they chose to teach is not fair. many women teach because it allows them to be around their own children's schedules...are you saying they "can't" do something else of value?

one other thing about the way i advocate doing classes...the teachers don't get bored either...there are always new lessons and new projects to develop. yes, you will use some of the same material from year to year, but there will always be something new and students come up with new insights that just cause you to drop your jaw in awe.

[PokerBob]

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Physics is easily the hardest subject to teach high schoolers. I would definitely suggest teaching math

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i teach high school physics. i can barely dress myself, so it can't be that hard.

[AAAA]

high school physics was the most fascinating course i took. well, i guess trig and analyt were incredible too...and of course chaucer was there in english...needless to say it was a great year, superseded only by my freshman year in college! college was exciting for a few other reasons.

as far as how easy physics is...when you have a talent, you believe it is easy...for those without your talent, they call it a miracle.

[MrMon]

Thanks for all the feedback so far. I can understand some of the problems, but I really don't expect to run into some of them for the simple reason that I don't plan on becoming a martyr. It's a good school or none, public or private. Forget the inner city, I want the suburbs. I'd rather waste the time and effort getting the certs than go inner city. Sorry, but that's the way it is, I want to teach, not play cop, and I don't need the job that bad. As selfish as this may sound, I'm in it for me and no one else. I plan on being where the students want to learn, and if they don't, I'll go elsewhere.

I like a lot of what AAAA says, but I'd put my own twist on it. In physics, I'd give homework, but rarely grade it. The twist would be, the homework becomes the quizzes, tests, and board problems. (I've had teachers do this and it always worked well.) On any given test or quiz, one-third to one-half the test is simply turning in certain homework problems. If you don't have the homework done, you can't possibly finish the test. Two sections of a class - you collect different problems to prevent word from getting out on what needs to be done. Cheating? I've had teachers give open book, open note tests before that made cheating nearly impossible - but if you didn't know the material, again, no open book or note could possibly help you. Not sure that's possible in high school, but it's an idea.

If get to be a physics teacher, I want to be able to teach physics for everyone. Literally. It'd be great to have a physics for those in calculus, physics for algebra level students, even a physics for non-math oriented students, just so they at least understood the basic ideas behind physics. I want it to be fun and funny as well as informative and hopefully the student demand will be there. Might not get to do that, but that's going to be my pitch to the schools, I'm just hoping someone will bite.