Teachers and math

I was under the impression that all our teachers were "highly qualified".

Most school systems are desperate for math and science teachers, so they end up taking what they can get. Why? I don't know - it could be because most people who go into teaching aren't smart enough to be very good at math or science. They should probably change the requirements for teaching certification so that more stress is put on the specific subject area and not on "teaching methods" and some of the other goofy stuff that makes an college Education major much fluffier than most other disciplines. "It's something to fall back on." Yeah, right.

I have a friend who is trying to get a teaching job locally. He had taught years ago but because of the low pay he went into a different career. Since he began trying to get back into teaching he has gotten a run around on what he needs to provide the public school system and is finding there isn't any communication between departments, i.e. special education and 'regular' education. Then he was told, recently, that with a 'provisonal' teaching certificate there is a very low possiblity of being hired. But when he started he had the understanding that there is such a great need for teachers that he shouldn't have any problem with getting hired.
So maybe the public school system(s) need to provide a clear and concise list of requirements; where and who it is to be supplied with the information; and how many openings and subject areas that teachers are needed for; and where provisional certificates will be acceptable.

We need to stop using calculators in elementary school. In fact, they shouldn't be used until one starts Trigonometry. Math is the ONLY international Language!!

You're right John. Kids are crippled later on without calculators (me too). As for teachers, my daughter had one in high school in geometry who was out sick most of the year. She got substitutes most of the time, and never really got taught anything. She was behind the 8 ball the rest of her time in high school. One thing about math, unlike composition, 2 plus 2 only adds up one way, and if you can't do it, nothing else matters. PS, my daughter graduated and got a BA in college, but we were always bitter about the experience and the school systems lack of response to a needed solution. Lots of kids lost a year of hard math.

jimmy wrote:

Most school systems are desperate for math and science teachers, so they end up taking what they can get. Why? I don't know - it could be because most people who go into teaching aren't smart enough to be very good at math or science. They should probably change the requirements for teaching certification so that more stress is put on the specific subject area and not on "teaching methods" and some of the other goofy stuff that makes an college Education major much fluffier than most other disciplines. "It's something to fall back on." Yeah, right.

For the most part, you are correct in your ideas. However, there is no such thing as an "education major" anymore; teaching candidates have to earn a Bachelor's degree in some content field. Many education programs then set their graduates up to earn a Master's in Education degree - but you have to earn a Bachelor's degree first.

I would agree that there is a LOT of fluff out there in the "teacher prep" classes - just as there is fluff to be found in almost ANY career prep coursework. It is irrefutable that the best math teachers are the ones who enjoy the subject and are skilled at communicating math's complexities to others.

I do not know why anyone would want to be a teacher. The wages are low for someone with a college education and teachers have to put up with disruptive students that do not want to learn and irate parents that blame the teachers when their 14 year old comes up pregnant. On the other hand, many teachers are where they are because they could not hold a job in private industry where your job security is dependant on the quality of your product. Teachers are perfectly happy to graduate people that are so ignorant they cannot get a decent job and have math skills that are so poor that they have problems making change at the McDonalds. I can hardly wait until the government gets their hands on my health care.

On the contrary, if you look at the marketplace, other than in the computer engineering field, I think starting teacher pay is pretty good. That plus summers off.

At the the next PTA meeting, as your child's teacher if he/she knows the difference between a profit and a profit margin.

A timely editorial but we hear this alarm almost monthly from one source or another. There is no solution, for the following reasons.
Teachers-Teachers.com publishes a weekly list of teaching vacancies for NE NC and SE VA. The list dated 6/24/08 indicates over 100 math vacancies, primarily at the middle and high school level (it also lists over 80 special ed vacancies, but that is another story). Well, this is summer some might argue; clearly more vacancies would be open. But these same numbers also existed in January and just about every month of the year. Escaping from special ed I volunteered to teach 7th grade Math, pre-algebra and life science. It was a struggle and the following year I was given just math 7 and pre-algebra. Half of the 50 students in math 7 were special ed and that was a battle in itself.
Its true the children can do the math but they have no "number sense," id est, they do not know the times or division tables and seem to have never heard of fractions. The pre-algebra students likewise suffered but picked up the concepts faster even though the new vocabulary caused problems.
The real culprit, however, is the infamous "pacing guide" dictated by the SOL tyranny. On Monday, you did this, Tuesday that and you hoped they could stay with the script. This is called TEACHING TO THE SOL TEST, and while it may work with English and social studies it is a disaster nevertheless.
Of course negative evals follow and the teacher is usually gone in one or two years. 95% of the teachers are great: dedicated and flexible, but not within a failed system.

Dum Ass Prodect of HCS wrote:

I do not know why anyone would want to be a teacher. The wages are low for someone with a college education and teachers have to put up with disruptive students that do not want to learn and irate parents that blame the teachers when their 14 year old comes up pregnant. On the other hand, many teachers are where they are because they could not hold a job in private industry where your job security is dependant on the quality of your product. Teachers are perfectly happy to graduate people that are so ignorant they cannot get a decent job and have math skills that are so poor that they have problems making change at the McDonalds. I can hardly wait until the government gets their hands on my health care.

Did the teacher... you know .. keep her after school?

Teaching to the SOL doesn't work for English either. These kids can't even write a sentence correctly because they don't speak correctly. Their families do not correct them and just cement this dreadful vernacular into the children's brains. They can never remember when to use a comma or an apostrophe and as seen on these forums they use "it's" when they should use "its." There is a major problem with subject-verb agreement as well as possessives; this spans all the way to their senior year. English has a pacing guide but it's hard to keep up when the kids lack the ability to think critically so that you end up spending two days on imagery instead of one because they just don't get it. Teaching grammar to high schoolers is just like pulling teeth: they don't want to do it, they never remember it since it's not used at home or during the summer, and they don't want to learn it because then they will sound too intelligent to their homies.
As to Social Studies: these kids can't find the simplest things on a map in Geography; the teachers are amazed at how geographically ignorant these kids truly are. I knew of a student who had no clue where the Pacific Ocean was and thought that there was only the Atlantic Ocean. What in the world?!

Dum Ass Prodect of HCS wrote:

I do not know why anyone would want to be a teacher. The wages are low for someone with a college education and teachers have to put up with disruptive students that do not want to learn and irate parents that blame the teachers when their 14 year old comes up pregnant. On the other hand, many teachers are where they are because they could not hold a job in private industry where your job security is dependant on the quality of your product. Teachers are perfectly happy to graduate people that are so ignorant they cannot get a decent job and have math skills that are so poor that they have problems making change at the McDonalds. I can hardly wait until the government gets their hands on my health care.

I have no problem with failing a student. I'm available after school until 5PM every day so there is NO EXCUSE to not come and get help. I call home and give weekly progress reports. If a child never comes to my class (which happens quite often) then of course they will fail and never learn anything. These kids show up to one class every few days just to have it show that they were there were the days. Attendance is not done class by class but just that they showed up to a class for the day; the kid can then skip the rest of the day and it'll show him or her as being present. The reason why half of these kids don't do well is that no matter how much we teach them, if they don't practice it daily and over the summer then they won't know it. One out of 30 students in each of my classes actually bothers to do the homework and that one student does much better than the others on tests. My students wrote an essay on homework and quite a few stated that homework helped them practice what they learned and helped them remember it. My job is dependent on the quality of my product. If I continually have low SOL scores in my class then they have the right to not renew my contract. If it's the end of my provisional contract and I didn't pass the Praxis II and take the classes I'm required to take, well then I don't get my contract renewed. One of the reasons why we lose teachers is that they didn't have all of their requirements and are fired; they don't all leave because they can't handle the kids. I majored in English with multiple classes in composition and literature; I took more than what was required in order to graduate because I knew I wanted to be a teacher and wanted as much under my belt as possible. I have a masters degree in teaching in which I had to take multiple classes in classroom discipline as well as the different ways to teach. I also took multiple classes in literacy and how to use it in any class such as math. There are a lot of requirements in this state in order to teach for more than one to three years. I have friends with masters degrees in education from other states who are being required to take grad courses here because our state requires the classes and their states didn't. That should show you just how strict our state is on education for teachers. Yes, teach for a year or so provisionally but you better have all these requirements by the end of it or else you're gone.

I have a great solution to budget problems in schools. No summer school.

ParkerT wrote:

At the the next PTA meeting, as your child's teacher if he/she knows the difference between a profit and a profit margin.

Can we quiz the parents too (with out their whining to administration about making them look foolish in front of their child)?

teachin10 wrote:

Teaching to the SOL doesn't work for English either.!

By "teaching to the SOL", am I to assume that you mean "teaching to the test"? Any teacher who does that should quit immediately. That defeats the idea of the standards. Teach to the STANDARDS and not the test, and kids might actually learn what they're supposed to learn. If you teach just for the test, you're shortchanging the kids, and thus are unfit for that particular job/

Think 1st wrote:

<quoted text>
Can we quiz the parents too (with out their whining to administration about making them look foolish in front of their child)?

mmmmm.... yea

Five out of four teachers have a problem with fractions.

Rich wrote:

<quoted text>By "teaching to the SOL", am I to assume that you mean "teaching to the test"? Any teacher who does that should quit immediately. That defeats the idea of the standards. Teach to the STANDARDS and not the test, and kids might actually learn what they're supposed to learn. If you teach just for the test, you're shortchanging the kids, and thus are unfit for that particular job/

That is what we mean by teaching to the test: standards. The problem is that it leaves no time to do anything interesting or "fun" that the kids will get into yet learn at the same time. We are told what to teach each day but we aren't always able to keep up with the pace thanks to discipline issues, special education students who need one on one time, and students who refuse to work.

It's always interesting to see folks pontificate on how to fix public schools when they do not work in them nor are familiar with the rules and regs that govern them. Folks keep trying to apply "business models" and such, but they conveniently overlook the fact that - when dealing with human beings and not "widgets" - no two students learn exactly the same way, and no two classes from year to year will be exactly the same as far as abilities, etc.

That is one of the major failings of the whole SOL/NCLB assessments as the be-all-and-end-all of teaching - a "cookiecutter" approach does not adequately address the issues raised by this letter, or other shortcomings in public education.