I'd like to start with a few questions. I know we'll come up with more, but we have to start somewhere.
1) What are the purposes of public education?
2) How do those differ from the purposes of private education?
3) What are some of the problems with public education (aside from lack of money)?
4) If you teach, what one thing would you change about your classroom?
5) Why (honestly) do you teach?
I think it may be appropriate to talk about a couple of these, but I'd really prefer to start a discussion.
I've heard a lot of people talk about how public education suffers because of tenure/unions. Having taught at schools both with and without unions, there are differences, but I don't know if those differences are the things that cause problems. (Admission - I have never been a member of any union at any school I've worked at).
At one school, by contract, students were not allowed to use faculty restrooms or to be in teacher prep rooms. Can't tell you how many times I had to stop a student from using a teacher rest room. I guess that the sign on the door was a challenge.
But more importantly, does tenure/a union stifle performance in a classroom? Affect it in other ways?
I know that students at my current school have discussed this subject as part of their discussion about Charter School lotteries (another subject for another time).
Thoughts? Opinions? Please?
Honestly? I started teaching because I have a chronic illness and I need health insurance. My religious studies undergrad degree wasn't going to help with that, so I did a teaching program. I turned out to be pretty good at it and found a position where I feel I can make a difference without getting too burnt out. Sometimes the bureaucracy drives me nuts, but now I wonder if I have any transferrable skills for anything else.
ReplyDeletePublic education needs to let teachers do their jobs. I would dearly love to find a way to promote true teacher accountability, based less on test students' scores than their level of engagement. I would love to see school leaders who are still true educators; it seems to me that most administrators are there because that's the only way to advance in the field, not because they are educational leaders.
More later.
I started teaching because I was able to teach something I was passionate about. Also, because my HS Theatre teacher had a huge impact on my life and I hoped that I could have even a little bit of that affect on students.
ReplyDeleteI agree with teacher accountability but not with the current way we're being measured. We need to assess our teachers the way we should assess our students - multiple forms of assessment that measure different types of performance.
Just like Lissa, I would love to see Administrators that are still passionate about teaching. Maybe they should have to go back into the classroom periodically to keep in touch with it.
I also have to admit that even though I know we need to train students for their futures, I'm a huge proponent of education for education's sake. As an evolved species (or at least I'd like to think so) I think it's important to understand and appreciate concepts from history, theories in science, solutions in math, and expressions from the Fine Arts.
How do we get/keep students loving to learn?