The "what's On Your Mind?" Thread -2018

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segelkatt

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That excuse of "teachers can't do everything" is just about the lamest thing I can think of. The classes are small, there are teacher's aides, what's wrong with the teachers that they can't even teach the basics?
I think another part is that teachers have no power of the kids who want to act up in class besides sending them to the principal for a talking-to. What kind of control is that? I think shaming works as well as corporal punishment which used to be practiced way back then.
Put a kid in the corner standing up facing the wall for unacceptable behavior (I'm talking about the first 2 or 3 years) for 5 minutes and nothing else said about it afterwards can have a real deterrent effect.
One of the punishments my teacher handed out was also to have to stand next to the teacher's desk facing the class so everyone could have a look at them and would know who had been the offender, also just for 5 minutes.
Of course parents have to be advised that this kind of punishment will be handed out so that they won't be surprised when the kid comes home bitterly complaining about it. The parents also have to be in agreement with the school rules and that's where there is the rub. Some parents think that anything along these lines will hurt their little monster's psyche.
Once the children learn at a young age that poor behavior will not be tolerated in the class room with punishment immediate they will not think about doing it later as hopefully they will have learned that this will not get them what they want.
I'm glad I'm not raising children now.
 

Willowy

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No. I don't think striking or shaming people helps them learn better. Ever. I would have killed myself if I had ever been treated like that by a teacher (yes even as a 5-year-old). That's not conducive to a healthy adulthood.
 

Katie M

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I had teachers who were fond of mass punishment. If one or several kids acted up, we all suffered. If it was meant to be a deterrent, it failed. I was a good kid, why was I being punished? I once overheard one teacher wondering why he was disliked. I could've easily told him why.
 

Willowy

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I had teachers who were fond of mass punishment. If one or several kids acted up, we all suffered. If it was meant to be a deterrent, it failed. I was a good kid, why was I being punished? I once overheard one teacher wondering why he was disliked. I could've easily told him why.
Aghh, yes. That happened when I was in 4th grade (I only attended 3rd and 4th grades at public school); the teacher made everyone stay in at recess because one kid acted up. We all hated her anyway (she was a screamer) and that didn't help.

If she was hoping that social pressure would make the kid feel bad, or the rest of us would gang up on him for vigilante justice, nope. It was always the bullies who acted up, they rather enjoyed getting everybody else in trouble and nobody else had any hope of doing anything to them.
 

arouetta

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Shaming and corporal punishment are horrible punishments. First, if you wouldn't do it to an adult, why do it to a kid? Johnny back talks so you smack him. Will you present your own body to your boss to be hit when he thinks you were disrespectful when telling him why an idea won't work? If not, why is it good for Johnny but not for you? Would you want your boss to spank you when you arrive 5 minutes late? If not, why hit a kid?

Shaming....again, look at adults. What good has come of shaming with adults? Look at one of the classics, **** shaming. To be honest, has that ever led to a good thing? Can any person say that **** shaming turned the woman into a virgin who remained untouched until marriage? And isn't **** shaming used as a defense for a guy going too far? Getting away from that to another form of shaming, we always say a boss should praise in public, chew out in private. Why? Because chewing someone out in public is shaming them in front of their coworkers, and that destroys a workplace. Now another one, your friend ticks you off, so is it a good practice to punish her by shaming her by telling a whole bunch of her secrets? Nope, and only the town gossip will think it was okay. You punishing your friend by shaming her is only going to humiliate her, possibly destroy her other friendships, possibly a marriage, all because you argued about something? If shaming her isn't good, why is shaming a child?
 

Lari

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Okay, so, then, what are the parents' responsibilities? In the earlier grades they're pushing students to know more and more (and some of it they're not ready for developmentally yet). What I'm teaching in preschool now is what I learned in kindergarten about 30 years ago. In kindergarten now they're expected to be able to read.

Assuming that this is a student's first foray into a school setting, they're learning to do school. Follow routines, sit for a story, share with their friends. They're supposed to know all the letters and numbers, counting, sorting, making patterns, shapes and colors. We make graphs and do science experiments and take time to learn how to behave in school.

So yeah, when you suggest that a child needs extra practice at home eating at a table and they come back to you saying it's not their job - apparently I'm the one who has to teach that you eat yogurt with a spoon and not your fingers, it's very frustrating as a teacher that apparently they only feel responsible for potty training and other life skills are all on me, on top of the academics.

Year in and year out I see a huge difference in the children whose parents are involved. When you don't bother to check your kid's backpack or folder for a month, I cannot be 100% responsible for the fact that the child is not improving like they should be. Parents who treat me as a partner (I'm the preschool expert and they're the expert on what makes their kid tick) are consistently the ones with the most successful students.

Yes, some life skills should be taught because not every parent is going to know them - my high school required everyone to either take consumer ed or a test to pass out of it.

I dont want the parents to "teach everything" - I would be put of a job. But there's only so much we can do for students whose parents are not involved for whatever reason. And we shouldn't get full blame for that.

This is a tl;dr ramble and might not have made much sense, sorry.
 

Katie M

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I will always be grateful to my kindergarten teacher for pointing out to my parents that I had a speech impediment. My parents were very involved, but I was their first and they thought 5-year-olds were *supposed* to sound like that. It had gotten to the point where it was affecting my writing, because I wrote how I spoke. Because of her intervention, I was put in speech therapy, and today I only have a remnant of the impediment.

I guess my point is that even the most well-meaning parents can miss things.
 

arouetta

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Okay, so, then, what are the parents' responsibilities?
And here we go, the typical teacher passing the buck comment. What little calculus I did learn is long forgotten, so why is it that I have to go over pre-Calculus sheets with my daughter, figure out how the equations worked and then teach her because the teacher feels that handing out the work is his job and homework is the time that kids are to learn pre-Calculus. Not just one teacher either, this was every grade, every class. I didn't know half the stuff so my kid was having a very hard time learning. When I told her to ask her teachers for help, she said they refused to help. Every grade, every class, every school. She couldn't go to them for help and instead had to learn during homework with my pitiful attempts to teach. I have a very hard time believing that two entire school districts had sucky teachers, so yeah, teaching through homework with the parents having to figure out the stuff to teach it is expected.

So, parental responsibilities. We love the kid, we feed and clothe the kid, we pass on our personal sense of ethics, we attend to medical needs, we pass on a sense of community, and we gather together the resources so that our little baby bird knows how to fly once booted from the nest. But just as we don't set a broken bone and splint it with the kid sitting on the couch or lie the kid on the table and grab a kitchen knife for a tonsillectomy, we shouldn't be expected to teach the child everything when we likely don't have the knowledge ourselves. We arrange for the child to have good medical care from others, well we are supposed to arrange for the child to have good educational learning from others, not do it ourselves. That's why there's such a thing as schools and teachers.

The passing the buck cry of "parental responsibilities" is just like a pediatrician saying the exact same thing when the kid shows up with a sprained wrist from sports, the parents should be responsible for diagnosing and treating it on their own, since the kid's medical care is their responsibility.

That whole partnership thing? It's not a partnership. While unfortunately there are some jobs blurring the lines between work and home, most of us realize that work is work, home is not work, and the twain don't cross for the sake of everyone's mental health. Plus, 8 hours a day is plenty of time to pick up OJT about things that affect people's lives. School's the same way, 6 hours a day and 5 days a week is plenty of time to teach something and make it stick. Don't send home 4 more hours of stuff that the teacher didn't bother to get around to teaching and need the parents to teach.
 

kashmir64

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Okay, so, then, what are the parents' responsibilities?
IMO, my responsibility as a parent was to teach my child non academic things. Morality, Integrity, responsibility, respect of others, honesty, etc...
It was the responsibility of teachers to teach academics, and let the parent know of anything they notice, ie.. change in personality, or struggling with certain things.
I believe it is the responsibility of parents to teach a child most things except academic, and they can even teach a child some of those, just not to the extent of a teacher who has been trained to do so.
 

Lari

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And here we go, the typical teacher passing the buck comment. What little calculus I did learn is long forgotten, so why is it that I have to go over pre-Calculus sheets with my daughter, figure out how the equations worked and then teach her because the teacher feels that handing out the work is his job and homework is the time that kids are to learn pre-Calculus. Not just one teacher either, this was every grade, every class. I didn't know half the stuff so my kid was having a very hard time learning. When I told her to ask her teachers for help, she said they refused to help. Every grade, every class, every school. She couldn't go to them for help and instead had to learn during homework with my pitiful attempts to teach. I have a very hard time believing that two entire school districts had sucky teachers, so yeah, teaching through homework with the parents having to figure out the stuff to teach it is expected.

So, parental responsibilities. We love the kid, we feed and clothe the kid, we pass on our personal sense of ethics, we attend to medical needs, we pass on a sense of community, and we gather together the resources so that our little baby bird knows how to fly once booted from the nest. But just as we don't set a broken bone and splint it with the kid sitting on the couch or lie the kid on the table and grab a kitchen knife for a tonsillectomy, we shouldn't be expected to teach the child everything when we likely don't have the knowledge ourselves. We arrange for the child to have good medical care from others, well we are supposed to arrange for the child to have good educational learning from others, not do it ourselves. That's why there's such a thing as schools and teachers.

The passing the buck cry of "parental responsibilities" is just like a pediatrician saying the exact same thing when the kid shows up with a sprained wrist from sports, the parents should be responsible for diagnosing and treating it on their own, since the kid's medical care is their responsibility.

That whole partnership thing? It's not a partnership. While unfortunately there are some jobs blurring the lines between work and home, most of us realize that work is work, home is not work, and the twain don't cross for the sake of everyone's mental health. Plus, 8 hours a day is plenty of time to pick up OJT about things that affect people's lives. School's the same way, 6 hours a day and 5 days a week is plenty of time to teach something and make it stick. Don't send home 4 more hours of stuff that the teacher didn't bother to get around to teaching and need the parents to teach.
Okay. I know there are bad schools and bad districts out there. To me it's not the norm that teachers would refuse to give students extra help. There are going to be things parents dont know. I know mine would have never been able to help me with French, for example. At my school, they have afterschool tutoring, title 1, and plenty of tutors to work with students on academics.

As far as the pediatrician - when they diagnose the sprained wrist and give after care instructions, or when the dentist says to brush teeth, or a doctor tells a patient they need to exercise and eat better and the patients don't follow the instructions and then the wrist gets worse, or they get a lot of cavities or have a heart attack, no one blames the doctor. But the student stays up until 3 a.m. on electronics and eats cookies for breakfast and then fails the test it's all on the teacher.

I think teachers send home entirely too much homework, so you'll get no disagreement on me there. But students blend school and home and with very young children like I teach they need to hear things from both places. If I tell a student every day they can't hit someone for accidentally bumping into them in line and their parent tells them "if someone touches you, hit them," who do you think they're going to listen to?

IMO, my responsibility as a parent was to teach my child non academic things. Morality, Integrity, responsibility, respect of others, honesty, etc...
It was the responsibility of teachers to teach academics, and let the parent know of anything they notice, ie.. change in personality, or struggling with certain things.
I believe it is the responsibility of parents to teach a child most things except academic, and they can even teach a child some of those, just not to the extent of a teacher who has been trained to do so.
If all the parents in my class taught the non academic things you taught your child, we would get so much more learning done! I want to teach academics and all I want is for my students to get a full night's worth of sleep and a relatively healthy breakfast (which is offered at my school if they get there on time). And to check their child's folder at least one or twice a week so I'm not sending home a permission slip pinned to their back every day a week before a field trip hoping that I'll get it back one of these days.

Is that really asking too much?
 

segelkatt

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No. I don't think striking or shaming people helps them learn better. Ever. I would have killed myself if I had ever been treated like that by a teacher (yes even as a 5-year-old). That's not conducive to a healthy adulthood.

Hey, wait a minute, I did not say that punishment was used to TEACH things to children, and I mean kids below age 10. I said showing a kid that misbehavior will bring immediate punishment (standing in the corner) which hurts nobody but will make that child think twice about doing it again. I am talking about running around in the room, talking when told to be quiet, bothering other children who are busy doing an assigned task etc. What would you have a teacher do when the child insists on doing these things over and over? Again, I am talking about average kids, not special needs. Talk to the kid? Obviously it did not work or the kid would stop doing it. Report the behavior to the parent? That'll do a lot of good, the kid has already forgotten about the behavior so for the parent to THEN talk to the child about it is equally futile. Kids have no more sense than a cat at that age and you would not wait until later to get after the cat about jumping on the counter but immediately. That's how they learn what's acceptable and what is not, same with kids.
 

Willowy

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I won't go on about how to handle kids. . .it's hard for teachers. Well OK I will a little ;). I'd rather see them redirect the kid to a creative pursuit than have them force the kid to sit down and shut up and be "well-behaved".

Public humiliation is wrong no matter how old the person is. There are ways to manage kids while respecting their human dignity.
 
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arouetta

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I would disagree that teachers shouldn't teach respect of others, morality, honesty, etc. After all, what happens when you get a parent who defines respect of others to include only those who the parent thinks worthy of respect and then defines morality as "how we live is moral, how those other people live isn't" and also teaches that morality includes fighting for what is moral and right? Then the kid arrives at school and finds someone who is different and therefore according to his parents immoral, and then things get ugly fast. If the teachers taught those as well, then maybe there would no longer be a, for example, religion vs. atheism problem, or a sexism/homophobia/racist problem, or even an abled vs. disabled problem, since everyone would have gotten a good dose of respect includes ALL, and morals/ethics includes ALL, etc.
 

Lari

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I came home from French club to see someone had found a toy that I accidentally left in my teacher bag instead of putting in my purse.

20180322_214107.jpg


It's been a long hard week. I'm out.
 

arouetta

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Cute cat pictures.
Kitten Born With Two Faces Has Grown Up To Be The Most Beautiful Cat You’ll Ever See

Edit: For those afraid of the words "two faces" it refers to fur coloration, not two noses.

Edit Edit: Another article, but this features two other cute cat pictures.
Chimera Cats: Narnia Joins the List of Two-Faced Cats, Quimera and Venus, That are Winning Hearts on the Internet; View Pics

It also explains better something the first article muddled. Apparently there are chimera cats, in the classic sense of two sets of DNA. But cats that have this coloring are called chimera cats or chimera color cats, and more than just chimera syndrome can cause it.
 
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Margret

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I've seen good teachers and bad teachers over the years, and I've seen kids who were absolutely incorrigible, good kids who just needed someone to understand how their thinking processes worked best, kids who were struggling because they never had breakfast, and smart kids who were struggling because there's actually a stigma attached to being smart.

I won't go into "proper" ways to teach. I agree that it's wrong to shame children, and the worst teacher I've ever met regularly drove middle school students to tears in his basic algebra class by making fun of them for asking questions!

What I will say is that, in the U.S., teachers nowadays face some challenges that teachers didn't face when I was young, and I'm not talking about things like crime, drugs, and broken homes. I'm talking about some of the "solutions" that have been implemented in an attempt to improve the educational system. So many teachers are forced to teach to the test by which both the students and the teacher will be judged. For good teachers, those who know how to engage the imaginations of their students, current guidelines seem designed to force them into mediocrity.

And the other thing I'll say is that there is one lesson that our society is regularly teaching to virtually all students: we don't value education, we don't value students, and we don't value the people who have dedicated their lives to teaching, because sometimes money speaks louder than words and in most school districts we've made it plain that we're unwilling to actually pay teachers a living wage, for one of the hardest jobs in the world.

Margret
 

arouetta

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And the other thing I'll say is that there is one lesson that our society is regularly teaching to virtually all students: we don't value education, we don't value students, and we don't value the people who have dedicated their lives to teaching, because sometimes money speaks louder than words and in most school districts we've made it plain that we're unwilling to actually pay teachers a living wage, for one of the hardest jobs in the world.
I agree. We need to fund schools better.

But we also need to change funding rules. Far too often when schools get an increase in funding it goes to sports. I believe electives have value, but there's no reason it should mean sports electives get the money while educational basics struggle with too huge classes and not enough tools and other electives like debate or art or even home economics get cut completely.
 

Margret

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I agree. We need to fund schools better.

But we also need to change funding rules. Far too often when schools get an increase in funding it goes to sports. I believe electives have value, but there's no reason it should mean sports electives get the money while educational basics struggle with too huge classes and not enough tools and other electives like debate or art or even home economics get cut completely.
Not to mention music...

Frankly, politicians (local and federal) make it exceedingly obvious that they really don't have a clue about education. We've all heard that "Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach." I feel like we need to update that. "Those who can teach, teach. Those who can't teach, make laws about teaching."

Margret
 

Margret

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I just checked. I haven't received a single email notification in the last week. I checked my settings, and they all seem to be okay. Does anyone know what could be causing this?

Margret
 

Willowy

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Far too often when schools get an increase in funding it goes to sports
Yep! The local school chose to close on Fridays, partially to save money (yeah, I know there are other reasons for a 4-day school week, but mostly to save money). But you'd better believe the football team is well-funded! I personally think sports should be separated from schools entirely, but since high school football is basically a religion in a lot of areas, that's not gonna happen :/.
 
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