What do some of you have agianst the public school system and teachers?

Question

I posted on here saying that I was a teacher and this person went on this huge insulting rant about how teachers won't allow vouchers and how our schools are so bad and teachers are overpaid and underworked. Are they just jealous that we have summer's off? I am a teacher because I LOVE kids and my job takes a LOT of patience. If you have never even been a teacher then how can you be so critical?

Another thing, I am a human, and on this forum I make jokes and I get mad sometimes. Just because I am not PERFECT does not mean I am not qualified to do my job.

Ok, I spelled "against" wrong, not because I can't spell, but because I can't see!

Answer 1

I have nothing against the public school system or teachers; the system (at least where I live) doesn't work in the least for my son, so we homeschool, but I really have nothing against it. I think that public schools are a very valuable part of our educational process, and true teachers (wherever they teach) are incredibly important.

My parents are teachers. My dad has been a union negotiator and political activist for longer than I've been alive. I grew up around teachers, helping in classrooms, and getting to school 1-2 hours early/leaving 1-2 hours late. I got to know some amazing people, hanging out that much at school.

What I do have a problem with is teachers who really shouldn't be teaching. I see a lot of very dedicated teachers on this and other forums; I give you all props. You have an incredibly difficult, not-that-well-paying, and often thankless job - and you keep at it because you love having the opportunity to inspire the kids that you can reach.

However, I have also seen teachers (though far fewer) whine about the "bratty little snot-nose twerps" in their class and talk about how much they hate their jobs. They talk about what incredible teachers they are and how hard they work - and then in the next breath rant about how much they hate the devil spawn that they have for students. Huh? I understand venting...but if you really hate what you do that much, switch jobs. Believe me, the kids probably don't like you much more than you like them. (These people are few and far between - granted - but even the fact that they are teaching scares the jeebers out of me.)

I have seen teachers that have gotten far too comfortable in their routine - they've stopped trying to reach the kids. Being a teacher's kid, I've seen this happen far too often. They're just riding out the last few years (like 8-10) until retirement, and they really have stopped caring if their students learn or not. Again...if they're not going to teach, to at least try to reach the students, they really shouldn't be teaching.

Like I said, I really don't have a problem with public schools. I think that they are important and that we should work to improve them. I do see two very important problems in the system, though: 1) the government needs to step back and allow teachers to do their job, and 2) society needs to see that public school, while important and beneficial, is not the one and only choice. It is logistically impossible for one institution to serve the needs of every single person, and it shouldn't try.

What I have a problem with isn't so much the public school system, or teachers; it's when the public school system (under government dictates) tries to over-standardize every student (NCLB) and refuses to let teachers teach. (I've gained some really incredible curriculum from my parents - curriculum that has been really beneficial for my son - simply because they no longer have the time to utilize it in their classrooms. They're too busy being forced to teach to the test in order to keep their jobs and their school rating.) That's where the real shame lies.

I do get a bit tweaked when I'm told that I'm wrong for not sending my son to public school, as well...I don't homeschool because I think public schools are evil or wrong. I homeschool my son because the schools near me are both unwilling and unable to accomodate his needs - academically or physically. I respect and support teachers, and we make gift baskets for the teachers at local schools. My son even thanks them for working hard to help his friends. In return, we are often judged (by people who don't know us or why we homeschool) for our choices.

I know this is long-winded, but hopefully it sheds a little bit of a different light on your question. You sound like a very dedicated teacher, and I applaud you. Believe me, I know exactly how rough your job is, and what you put into it. I've watched my parents do it all my life. Thank you for what you do.

Answer 2

As a teacher in the public school system, I don't really have anything against it. I teach high school English and I'd like to have smaller classes, but 32 is the norm in my board and the maximum is 35 per class.

Those people who rant against us and the schools are not teachers and are jealous. However, they expect us to take their children and give them everything, including discipline, our attention and love, whikle they can sit back and watch tv or whatever. No one realizes how hard we work, thinking we are on the job from 8 am to 3 pm doing nothing but tell kids what to do, but they never see what we do. They have no idea how many hours of preparation and planning go into a 60-minute class, and how much time we spend correcting.

I love my job and I like most of the kids I teach. I don't understand anyone (especiallly parents) who feel sthe need to criticize what I do considering that they haven't been in a classroom since they left high school. Now I'm ranting!!!

Answer 3

Hmmm...so you're asking the people who are ranting to explain to you why they are ranting. OK!

Well, I wasn't ranting, and I am a teacher, so I'll just offer my unique perspective on the issue, what Hawaiians call a "mana'o".

I have taught in a school where 70% of the students were speakers of other languages learning English. I've taught in a school where 75% of the students were Native Hawaiian. Inner city or remote island, Africans, African Americans, Caribbeans, Latinos, Filipinos, Hawaiians, Samoans, Tongans, low test scores, dwindling funding: these are the school systems I know, and I am personally appalled by what I encounter on an almost daily basis.

The public school system, as you call it, is actually hundreds of systems, and some of them are quite dysfuntional. You hear the word "broken" used sometimes. Vouchers and private schools are not any kind of way to fix them, I'll agree with you on that.

Teaching must be one of the hardest jobs out there. I had several careers before I became a school teacher, and those were no comparison.

However, there are some teachers in some tough schools who got through the survival phase of a beginning teacher, somehow. They earned some status in the school, maybe tenure, a place in the community, and a voice. By this time, they were burnt out, but had invested so much blood, sweat, and tears in earning that paycheck and benefits that they were not going to change careers for anything.

One of the ways they survived was by setting limits. There are so many problems inside the school, outside the school, that you can turn yourself inside out just trying to help kids succeed. Eventually, some of these teachers reach the point that they will tell you flat out that they only care about students up to the end of their contracted duty day.

They've got their crazy classroom management techniques (Workbooks! Workbooks! Workbooks!) that work for them, and they're not learning anything new. They will say, "I've seen it all! They just come up with new names for it, we've tried it already." And there's some truth to that.

I've seen more experienced teachers strike students and get away with it because they were more experienced teachers. I was asked to write down discipline advice I got from a mentor teacher once, and I didn't write it down because what I got was "No witnesses."

One veteran teacher brought me back my stack of 3-page, quintuplicate standards-based report cards with dozens of sticky notes explaining the changes I needed to make, with white out, on each of the five copies. She said, "By the way, I'm your mentor teacher." Having said thus, she walked out of the room.

Turnover in some of these schools is quite high, maybe an 1/8 of the staff in a typical year, and some of that institutional rather than teacher choice. The kids know that some of their teachers are disposable and treat them accordingly. They will never understand how much having most of their education delivered by inexperienced teachers will hurt them.

Could be your ranters went to a school like one of these, or perhaps an otherwise functional school was just the wrong environment for them.

If you are this sensitive about the comments of people you don't know, may I suggest you stay far, far away from the kind of school districts I'm talking about.

Answer 4

I too was a teacher but there were others in the profession who were only in it for the paycheck. Parents expect teachers to accomplish miracles in the few hours that they have their children but are often not willing to do their part when the chiild is at home. You and I both know that teachers work at home grading papers, doing lesson plans and preparing tests. We take our salary on a 12 month basis usually and during the summer often take classes to increase our education. They can pump millions in schools and pay teachers great salaries but we will never solve the problem of public education until we eliminate other societal problems. You cant work miracles with children who have no homes, food, utilities, clean clothes, shoes, medical and dental care, parents who are drug and alcohol free, parents who know how to parent etc. Hang in there. The world needs dedicated teachers.

Answer 5

as a student there are some teachers that really care about the kids and other just don't

Answer 6

nothing