Teachers: To Teach or Not to Teach, That is the Question...

I see no reason why a teacher feels that he or she should HAVE to teach. Kids today are so miserable that they should find a way of learning on their own. I mean, the average teenager already has all the vocabulary that's need for success in life (the word "amazing" will do fine in any situation). Their sense of geography is substantial (they can get out of their immediate neighborhoods without any difficulty). They have pocket calculators to do their math and their father's credit cards to get them out of emergencies. And did I mention cellphones? One little doxie had the audacity to pull hers out during a vocabulary test and call one of her friends for an answer!!!!

Who needs teachers?

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Updated On: 10/26/04 at 08:49 PM

sadly, just by some of the kids at my school, dolly has the majority of today's "future" down pat

I am sick and tired about hearing how young people today just aren't as good as their parents. Every generation has to go through the same crap, and for every generation it's wrong. So if you want to dismiss my entire age group as a bunch of MTV-addled idiots, go ahead. And please kiss my ass while you're at it.

it bothers me too. the times are changing and the issues we deal with ARE different from other generations. while there are some things i can't stand about our generation, i think overall we are doing a damn good job. it's tough growing up in the world today, and i'm hoping that as i enter this field, i can be involved with making it the best for the future generations... and i'm not just saying that to sound lame or cliche.

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My niece and nephew both attend a private Jewish Day Schooland I have often beed encouraged to visit with them during the school day. The teachers there are able to do what they want.........teach. The kids do fantastic and creative things in their classes. But bear in my mind thast this is a private school. I see school age kids in my area and I am disgusted and apalled at what I see. There is such a gross disrecpect that students have for their teachers. I don't blame any teacher for being unhappy and wanting to leave this torture. When I was a child we always respected our teachers because they were our bridge to the future. I am what I am today because of the teachers I had. But kids today regard school as a joke. When I hear the filthy language coming from kids today, I want to vomit. The drugs, drinking..and worst off pregnancy have become the school subjects that kids excel in today. G-d help today's teacher.

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grovers, i wanna say thanks... hearing what you said about teachers meant alot, even though it had nothing to do with me

i'm gonna give more credit to public schools. went to a public school all my life and while i didn't care for the people i went with cuz of their snobbish attitudes, the school district was amazing. the school i'm teaching at now is public and it's amazing also. and yes, it does go back to respect. if the teacher has respect for the students, they will have respect for you. i love my kids and i show it. i love talking to them about out-of-school stuff and i know they love doing it too. it really makes everything that much easier when you're doing a lesson. and you see that their experiences do have an affect on them. i've seen many students come back to the teacher i work with to say hi and catch up, whether they are still in the middle school or in high school. when i comes down tot he drugs, language, and sex, there really isn't that much more we can do but encourage the appropriate behaviors. it makes me sick too to think about it and i wish there was more we can do. i'm only in college and i don't know everything. i'm not an expert teacher and there's a lot i have to learn to grow, but i'm willing to take on the challenges, but like i said before, it all begins with respect and i intend to keep it that way.

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"Paris was the capitol of Boston"

Oh gosh. I cried from laughing to hard.

But not all of us 16 year olds are incompetent, ignorant morons.

Some of us can be quite astute.

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true success story grovers... i think we should all learn from this... teachers are very important individuals in our lives, especially if they care for their students as yours have cared for you

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Today (or yesterday actually ) my Physics teacher had an off-topic discussion with our class. There is this one teacher in our school who teaches math...he is a doctor (most likely in mathematics) and has taught in Europe. Thus, he has very high expectations of his students and believes in a "discovery method" (as my teacher put it), where the students shouldn't be spoon fed everything. It reminded me of my calculus teacher...and yes, I complain and whine to others, but it is because I am used to a different method of teaching because standards have gotten lower in the US. However, I know there is nothing I can do to change what he does and attempt to go for extra help when I feel I need it. I guess it is good preparation for college, because I've had teachers mention that when you get to college, a lot of your teachers, mostly math, will have accents that will be difficult to understand.

My physics teacher also explained how most students from other countries have a desire to learn, something that isn't as common in the US. The student may be just an "average" student in their own country, but when they come here they are considered a "genius" or very smart. For example, a girl I know of takes piano lessons at the same school I do. She is a year younger than me, but is already in the advanced repertoire of piano and is probably the most advanced student at the school. She studied piano in her native country, and my thought is that a Level 4 or 5 here would be equivelent to a Level 1 or 2 back in her own coutry. I talked to her on one occasion before, and she said that she thought it was kind of funny some of the stuff we were learning here when she was in high school, because it was stuff she had learned in middle school. A lot of the foreign students in my school challenge themselves and already have been through classes I haven't even taken yet (well, I took trigonometry as a junior and they probably had it in middle school or their freshman year, for example).

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I think a big problem is that teaching is a thankless profession.

Teachers (and parents) are made out to be non-understanding idiots by EVERY teeny-bopper movie. Think back to Paul Gleason in The Breakfast Club, Ben Stein in Ferris Beullers' Day Off, and Molly Ringwald's parents and grandparents in Sixteen Candles. It's no wonder that kids have no respect.

What teachers get paid is criminal. I work in corporate America and I can think of at least 10 co-workers (past and present) who are former teachers and left it because they were "tired of being poor."

Trig was my celing for math. Once they started talking about derivitives, my brain melted.

No it's not a foreign thing, taking Trig.

When I was in High School I was in Honors math all the way through and what we did was they blended two classes together and this is how it worked:

9th- Sequential I and Algebra
10th- Sequential II and Geometry
11th- Sequential III and Trigonometry first half of the year, Pre-Calculus second half of the year
12th- AP Calculus

Because in NYS before they did the Sequential math system they did one year per topic (now they do this completely ridiculous Math A and Math B thing) so when I took it we took both the old system and the new one in the same year.


Edit: You didn't get to derivatives yet? Wow that's not good. Derivatives are the foundation of MOST of Calculus. I took 4 semesters of it in college in addition to my having taken it in senior year of high school. Derivatives are very important.

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Updated On: 10/31/04 at 06:44 PM