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

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 6:01pm

I am a senior in high school this year currently taking AP Calculus. The teacher expects very highly of us; he doesn't take the time to teach us the things he "thinks" we know or should no. Of course I've been getting very frustrated with it, and have been going for extra help any chance I can get (to another teacher who also teaches Calculus who've I had before and is a WONDERFUL teacher). How have you guys dealt with "those" classes in the past?

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 8:49pm

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?

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

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 8:53pm

yo dollypop... please tell me thats a joke... not the kind of attitude i wanna hear the year before i have my own classroom (hopefully)!

[broadwaystar2b]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:17pm

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

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:19pm

[Plum]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:22pm

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.

[Dollypop]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:32pm

I've been teaching for 33 years now and the current crop of students are a pathetic lot. When a kid gets to the 11th grade, it would be logical that he or she knows what a "glossery" is. Is it too much to ask for a kid to turn to a Table of Contents and know what it is and how to use it? However, last year I was dumbfounded when a 16 year old volunteered that Paris was the capitol of Boston.

Dismal, truly dismal.

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:35pm

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.

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:37pm

ok... i'm gonna agree... that is kind of pathetic. but all of the kids i've come across are better than that. i've got faith in them.

[The Grovers Corners Yenta]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:48pm

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.

[Plum]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:50pm

The funny thing is, things like teen drug use, smoking and pregnancy have been going down for years.

But it's so much easier to assume we're going to be the downfall of society, isn't it?

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:58pm

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.

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 9:59pm

plum, i agree. we often are looked at as the downfall of society, but our job is to prove that wrong!

[StickToPriest]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 10:01pm

"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.

[The Grovers Corners Yenta]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 10:07pm

Zepka........my father was a teacher and so was my aunt, and my second cousin. I was always surrounded by teachers. I tell you, I have three that stick out in my mind and they all had to do with nurturing my creativity . My third grade teacher encouraged my love of writing, a music teacher help me cultivate my love of music as well as my self-esteem and an English teacher that I had for College Composition who saw the great potential in me that I didn't see in myself until the past few years. I am 47 now and two of them are long gone, but notforgotten.

Updated On: 10/27/04 at 10:07 PM

[zepka102]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 10:11pm

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

[CrowdMeWithLove]

Posted: 10/26/04 at 10:19pm

Your AP Calculus teacher and my Physics teacher should get together and go bowling. They'd get along fantastically.

And StickToPriest is right. Not all 16 year olds are morons. Yesss, a lot of them are. Believe me, spend one day trying to have a conversation with a girl in your US History class who actually believes that Switzerland was a major threat to the United States during WWII (true story) and that Jerusalem is for sale on eBay (unfortunately also a true story)...you'll understand where I'm coming from. It's just as torturous for us intelligent teens as it is for you adults. Frankly, though, I know a lot of adults who are just as idiotic as teenagers, if not moreso. In my life, I've been blessed with some of the most intelligent, thoughtful, and creative friends any teen, or person for that matter, could ever ask for. Most of my friends are smarter than the majority of adults I meet on a daily basis. Granted, I live in suburban Pennsylvania...so it's really not all that much of a shocker. I think it's pretty universal though; the idea that your teen years are sort of a foundation for who you'll eventually become. Basically, all I'm saying is this: Idiotic teens are just idiotic adults waiting to happen. Yes, some grow up and mature...maybe get a few brains in their heads...but once you're 16 or 17, you've pretty much set up patterns for yourself that will carry with you for the rest of your life. It's all about individual personalities and mindframes...not necessarily age, y'know?

Sorry, if that made no sense, I have an idea in there somewhere, I swear.

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/27/04 at 2:54am

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).

[ErikJ972]

Posted: 10/27/04 at 7:07am

"thought Paris was the capital of Boston."

It's easy to blame the kid for that interesting geography fact. I work in an inner city school and used to be AMAZED when I would get a high school senior in my office that couldn't read, but then I would look up his grades and he would have a B average. My question is, how does a kid get to be 16 and think Paris is the capital of Boston or get to be a high school graduate without being able to read? Could it be because of lazy, uninspired teachers who stopped teaching when they got tenure? Could it be because of lousy administration? Could it be because I regularly hear teachers cursing at their students in class? Could it be because of tragic underfunding (no child left behind my ass). Could it be because teachers are underpaid? Or could it be because no one is paying any attention to what these kids are going through at home or what they have to put up with out on the street?
Unfortunately I don't have all the answers. It just seems to me that blaming it on "lazy" kids, cell phones, and calculators is the easy way out.

Posted: 10/27/04 at 10:31am

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."

[Plum]

Posted: 10/27/04 at 10:34am

well, I took trigonometry as a junior and they probably had it in middle school or their freshman year, for example

Is that really a foreign thing? In my high school, there wasn't even a trigonometry class available- we skipped right to analysis and pre-calculus. Now, admittedly it was a magnet school, but it always found more than enough qualified students from around the county to fill its classrooms.

So when you start talking about how stupid the kids today are, or how American kids are lazy bums, kindly don't forget the bigotry of low expectations. My parents never expected anything less than my best. That's more than my school often required, but that's what they got. I maintain that expectations shape what kids achieve far more than we acknowledge.

Posted: 10/27/04 at 10:54am

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

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/31/04 at 6:34pm

I didn't even get to derivitives yet, and I'm in AP Calc. Trig was a half year course for me, then I took pre-calc the other half.

[bythesword84]

Posted: 10/31/04 at 6:44pm

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.

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

[millie_dillmount]

Posted: 10/31/04 at 6:48pm

Well, of course trig isn't a "foreign thing," what I meant was in other countries they are introduced to ideas at an earlier age than kids in America are.