re: Elementary teachers are pitiful

quote:

---

I don’t want to hear it. You work a low-skill job 9 months out of the year.

---

It's all remote, and only 4 days a week here. Not only that, it pays well

And they still are bitching looking for sympathy.

This post made a fricking mushroom cloud over my head. I'm going to have a hard time dealing with stuff like this as my kids get older.

quote:

---

Many professors have jobs because of their research, not because of their ability to teach students.

---

Right. At schools like LSU many professors DGAF about teaching or students.

quote:

---

We went and looked and he had turned them in. I emailed the teacher and she said she was behind in grading.

So you have kids bringing home grades to parents that aren’t their true grades because the teacher failed to grade them on time and instead just filled in zeros. Wtf kind of bullshite is that?

---

Do you live in an inner city area? Not wealthy enough to afford a private school?

I have a hard time believing a teacher put in zeroes and tanked students' grades because she didn't have the time to grade assignments.

Why make a blanket statement like that?. My wife is an elementary teacher that works her arse off sometimes to the detriment of her family. All jobs, again all jobs, have shitty workers and employees. How about calling out the one shitty teacher instead of stereotyping them all?

So is this public or private?

Because I’ve never worked with a public school teacher that would tell parents to grade their kid’s assignments. They have contract standards in which they have to follow for grading and reporting to parents student deficiencies.

quote:

---

Why make a blanket statement like that.

---

quote:

---

New to the OT?

---

No, I've been around here for awhile. I know how it operates.

quote:

---

That’s why TAs teach the lower level classes.

A world class mathematics researcher has no desire to teach 100 freshmen how to factor equations.

---

Which is fine, but come the hell on, man. I know professors who make $150k+ (if not more) and teach a 1/1 load of only graduate courses.

And I'm sure the universities advertise that students can come there to get an education from those world class scholars. Only to find out that they're spending $20k+ a year for some 23 year old dweeb to flub through a course and have zero idea how to teach students.

quote:

---

For the majority of teachers working a “low-skill” job I’d have to agree and also add most are over paid for what they do.

However for some, this is TOTALLY incorrect.

---

I think the bigger issue isn't the salary, and I would certainly argue that it's not a low-skill job.

Effective teaching requires a diverse skillset with a tremendous amount of knowledge in child psychology, best pedagogical practices, and a subject area. It also requires organizational skills, soft skills for communicating with parents, innovation, and creativity. Students and technology are changing every few years. You have to be a lifelong learner and have the ability to adapt your practice to the new crops of students.

There are two big issues with education: 1) the low threshold it takes to become a teacher and 2) tenure.

It's too easy to quit trying as a teacher once you hit tenure. There is literally nothing a system can do. You can become the teacher that shows movies every day, and you'll never be fired. You can give completion grades for everything if you want to be like OP's teacher and avoid grading.

And to raise the threshold for becoming a teacher would mean you'd have to recruit higher quality employees. Only way to do that is with incentives. The benefits are there - the salary is not. We'll never revamp the quality of teachers in public education until we offer a salary that can compete with other high skill jobs.

To end my little rant here: most people probably don't know how bad it is at rural/inner city schools. If you live in a nice suburb, your school has good teachers. They need your support. But most schools in America are employing people who are fricking stupid and have no idea what they're doing.

I attended a conference two summers ago and had workshops with teachers from all over Alabama. English teachers who didn't know their parts of speech. English teachers who couldn't pronounce a lot of the words in the course curriculum standards. Teachers who would act like classroom management meant "they were gonna get them!" like it was some kind of battle with students.

It was scary.