Which Board Member's Head Would You Most Like To Go Upside Of?

[ewiggy]

what's the best way to go about campaigning for more votes, here? i don't think a sparkley boob picture is gonna do it.

[PassiveTheory]

I'm genuinely surprised that I'm not on this list...

[thelastgreatman]

Why would his being a school teacher annoy you?

It's not just the fact that he is a school teacher (although yeah, Gabe's analysis is concurrent with my own incredibly egotistical view of myself), but every single post he writes has that same condescending snarky fucking attitude despite not actually knowing jack shit that made me hate all of my teachers with a vengeance. They're always under the impression that being a high school teacher is somehow a qualified position? Where does that come from?

Most of them are barely able to comprehend period, they just know how to make a lesson plan and regurgitate the same shit over and over, and contribute to the ruination of our children's minds and therefore our future by fucking up the educational process on almost every level.

Also, the teachers' union is as corrupt and evil as any labor union, any mob run union, and have such ridiculous voting power that they never get challenged about anything. They bitch and complain about how much they get paid despite getting an entire season off plus about 4.5 weeks of paid vacation in the course of the nine months they do "work," that work really consisting of babysitting. Let's say they make 25 grand to start, that's really 32 grand per year if they were working a full year WITH almost five weeks paid vacation, and TENURE?! Teaching is the only profession I know of that has a system like tenure, where all you have to do is last, what, 5 years? 10? Somewhere in between? Maybe just 3? I forget and it probably varies state to state. But all you have to do is babysit well enough 180 days out of the year for about five years and you're guaranteed all these perks forever as long as you don't fuck one of the students. Horseshit.

[TomAz]

haha, Tom voted for himself (which is exactly what I would've done if I was on there).

that scares me.

[amyzzz]

What the fuck does that mean, Tom?

[Calamity Jane]

that you're a psycho hose beast?

[SojuGorae]

I don't know, man. Teachers have it pretty rough. Managing adults in an office environment is difficult enough, how stressful do you think managing teenagers is. And some have to teach at private afterschool academies during summer breaks for income.

[TomAz]

What the fuck does that mean, Tom?

you and I thinking alike amy. it scares me.





IT'S A JOKE, LIGHTEN UP! Srsly.

[amyzzz]

I was so hoping you would say that.

[algunz]

I'm a teacher too LGM, do you hate me?

[ewiggy]

my mom is a teacher. don't be talkin' shit.

[samiksha]

Randy, you're right. There are a lot of really incompetent people in that line of work. But the reason for that is because of this attitude that teaching is an easy job, equivalent to babysitting and anyone with any intelligence would be wasting it by becoming an educator.

[algunz]

Yo momma's so dumb she brought a spoon to the Super Bowl.

[algunz]

OK here goes - didn't want to get on the rant . . .

Teaching is a great job, but it is a difficult and at times a thankless job. Like many jobs, it has it's perks. Vacation, good benefits, and a chance to make a difference in the lives of many. There is a counter balance to those perks though. Your job, despite the vacations really never ends - evenings, weekends, vacations are almost always filled with preperation and/or grading. The discipline issues that a teacher deals with on a daily basis, especially junior high which is what I teach, can be exhausting and disheartening. Most of you couldn't possibly understand what it is like to be on stage all day long trying to engage students in things that they have little interest in for the most part. Of course, there are few things more exhilerating than that moment where a student or, in rare cases, a whole class suddenly clicks and truly LEARNS something. Unfortunately those moments are not regular occurences despite all the work and energy a teacher puts into teaching.

I love my job. I love teaching preteens, but I can tell you that if it weren't for vacations, my family, and Coachella I might go nuts.

Be careful with generalizations. Although, I can agree there are teachers who fit these assumptions - but it most certainly is not all of us. There are many who do this because they genuinely want to make a difference and encourage the youth to make the best of themselves.

[thelastgreatman]

I won't hate you for being a teacher, unless you start acting like one. =)

The entire educational system needs a massive overhaul. All that it is right now is a facade to keep kids off the streets and teach them socialization, the supposed "education" is largely irrelevant after 6th grade or so. All high school is classes to prepare you for the classes you'll have to take in college that will all end up being completely worthless when they graduate.

What we should be doing with the public schools is (a) completely changing the reading curriculum to focus on books that might actually engage children's desire to read instead of stuffing Shakespeare and Dickens and other "classics" that only make sense to 90 percent of them because the entire English class is spent by the teacher explaining whatever chapters they read last night back to them.

(b) Shift the focus of the entire history department off of early American History (I dunno about y'alls, but my school required two years American History that ended around Vietnam and only one year World History that ended sometime in the 16th century) and start designing the curriculum to trace the broader trends throughout history and their specific relevance to current events. Learn the past through the present, so to speak, so that maybe a single 18 year old in this country would understand anything about how the situation in the middle east came to be, or know what happened during the entire decade of the 1980s, or 90s for that matter.

(c) Make all maths above algebra 2 (if that far) completely optional. Instead, make at least one of each of the following courses mandatory: philosophy, sociology, psychology, government, macroeconomics, and a couple others, you get the idea. Oh and logic--classes in logic must be mandatory, because I'm fucking tired of arguing with people who don't know the basic principles of true and valid arguments.

All that the schools do know for the most part is train children to copy notes (at least 25 percent of all class time in my school). regurgitate said material in a five-paragraph essay (another 25), and memorize shit for the sake of academia that isn't even interesting academically.

I'm all for paying the teachers more under that system, but they need to be subject to reviews like any other job, and if they're bad they get fucking fired. They all have jobs during the summer, they're making out just fine as it is and with job security found in no other industry on this planet. The reason no one ever votes to put more money into the school budgets is because we all remember how fucking useless it was.

[Mr.Nipples]

mr.nipples...

[algunz]

LGM we really need to work on your sentence structure and word usage. Your points would be far more effective if you did prewriting. Also, always edit what you write before you post.

[samiksha]

(c) Make all maths above algebra 2 (if that far) completely optional.

Why?

[thelastgreatman]

Algunz, all I'm saying is you were a junior high student once, so you knew damn well what you were getting into. And I don't mean this as a personal thing, although I vaguely remember you having said something to me in the past that I should hate you for, right now you sound pretty reasonable. But you knew what the job was going to be like--you were one of those kids, bored out of their fucking minds by a teacher who wasn't really getting anything important across whether or not it was poor teaching or just the shitty curriculum you're forced to teach. Either way, you ended up there by your choice. My feeling about it has always been that if you were truly passionate about teaching effectively you should go the extra mile to at least be able to teach at a college level where your pupils are no longer forced there by the state. Minors are the last group in this country openly discriminated against by the government--if you're not 18 you are regularly suspended a number of your Constitutional rights, particularly when under the thumb of the government institution school system that they're legally forced to attend.

It's fucked up, and they have every right in the world to hate the school and all those who choose to work with an unfair, ineffective system. Although I'm sure YOU have good intentions, I don't honestly believe that most teachers do, and in my personal opinion (which doesn't mean shit, but we're just talking here), if you really want to teach like you say you do you should find somewhere else to do it, 'cause public schools won't even let you teach properly.

[thelastgreatman]

Why?

Okay, combine Alg 2 and Basic Trig. No mandatory maths that aren't at least decently likely to have real world applications. If the kids like math, let them take it, if they don't, try to teach them what they really should know to get by in the world and then let them do other shit. Vocational school shouldn't just be a cop out either--let's give the kids some job skills instead of making them take classes to teach them to take more classes to get a degree that only ends up applying to their line of work something like 15 percent of the time.

[bug on your lip]

[ewiggy]

that's not entirely true. i've had some amazing teachers in the public school system.

my mom is also an amazing teacher in the public school system.

[thelastgreatman]

LGM we really need to work on your sentence structure and word usage. Your points would be far more effective if you did prewriting. Also, always edit what you write before you post.

Very clever. Almost even funny.

[bug on your lip]

ewiggy's mom is amazing

mmmmmmmmmm...


















amazing cook

[algunz]

I am not following your logic at all, LGM. If school is such a horrible place to be as a student, shouldn't we be doing whatever we can to get the best and most engaging teachers in to our high schools, jr. highs, and elementary schools, so that we can connect the kids to learning as soon as possible. The skills and habits you learn early on are what will allow you to find successes later in life. I wouldn't mind teaching college kids, but I feel I'm most needed right where I am. Hopefully my students, when they leave at the end of the year, have an understanding that school doesn't have to be torturous.

"The things taught in school are not an education but the means to an education." Ralph Waldo Emerson

[ewiggy]

amazing cook

this is the best meal i've ever had, and my mom cooked it:

[amyzzz]

I've had a lot of amazing public school teachers. The thing is, I was in a lot of the accelerated or advanced classes, and I think the better teachers gravitate toward the better students. (I was number 8 in my high school class--surprise, surprise)

[SojuGorae]

this is the best meal i've ever had, and my mom cooked it:

That looks good. I'm hungry again.

[thelastgreatman]

Yeah, I started off high school in all Honors and AP classes too, and the teachers weren't that good. I eventually dropped them because I realized all they were really doing was giving us more work and the same shitty material. The books weren't any better, we just had to write more and longer absurd interpretations of the significance of this that or the other irrelevant plot element in Great Expectations. Fuck that.

Algunz, I'm not really sure the definite answer to the question you pose to be entirely honest. On one hand, I'm thankful for the handful of decent teachers I had in all 12 years of schooling. On the other hand, you don't have to be the junior high equivalent of Oscar Schindler in America--you could be spending your time fighting to reform the true problems in the system than just trying to make a difference in the lives of 1 or 2 students for every 30 in the class for the course of your 40 minute period. Just sayin'.

Yeah, of course it would really suck if all those handfuls of good teachers bailed on the system, but maybe if they all spoke up something would be changed for the many instead of just for the few.

[thelastgreatman]

And Emerson's quote can really go either way in this argument. On one hand, the current system is failing to truly provide a means to an education beyond the fact that they've made their otherwise irrelevant time-killing machine an essential step to reaching a place where education actually happens. So in that sense, yeah, I suppose public schools are a means to an education, in the sense that an arbitrary requirement can be considered a means.