Population Pedagogically Pensive

ditchingclass:

I would like to report that yesterday, around 7:45 AM, there was a young Latino male walking down Imperial. He was wearing baggy pants that sagged and a giant t-shirt. Whatever crime was committed, I’m pretty sure he fits the description. Your officers saw him, too. As they drove by him, one of…

positivelypersistentteach:

Influential New York City educatorGary Rubinsteinhas long been critical of Teach for America, the organization that brought him into the classroom 21 years ago. In a blog post last fall, hearguedthat people should no longer sign up to join the organization. Now, he’s asking TFA teachers and alumni to take action against what he calls “the corporate reform movement for which TFA is the poster child.”

“Now you’ve experienced how difficult teaching is. You’ve seen, also, how complex the achievement gap is too,”Rubinstein writes. He goes on to ask some tough questions that challenge key tenets of the TFA philosophy: “So do you really believe that the issue is ‘bad teachers’ who need to be motivated through fear of being fired or through cash bonuses? Is that really what you determined after working in a school alongside people who elected to become career teachers? Those of you who worked in charter schools, do you really believe that they are providing an excellent education to all students?”

Rubinstein is inviting corps members and alumni to write openly about what they believe TFA must change, either on their own blogs or as guest posters on his blog. High on his own list is reworking TFA’s five-week long summer training institute, where new corps members learn the nuts and bolts of being a teacher.

Rubinstein is far from alone in his belief that TFA needs to change the way it trains corps members. Last February, after the organization’s 20th anniversary summit, an alum created a Change.org petition asking that corps member “receive at least a full year of high-quality, school-based preparation before they assume responsibility for their own classroom.”

(Click the link above to continue reading)

I am not a fan of TFA, and do not believe it is set up the way the program’s philosophy originally intended.  That doesn’t mean I think TFA-ers themselves are bad.  I just think a lot of them go into it very naively.  I feel like teachers who choose to go into the field, who choose to teach in hard to staff schools, and who stay for longer than two years should receive tuition or loan credits.  I don’t think that someone with less training, making the same amount of pay, and only making a 2 year commitment trumps that.

I think TFA makes teaching sound like summer camp to those outside the field.

I think it is a small band-aid to a much larger problem, and the lack of training and two year commitment create problems of their own. 

I wish the money, time, brain power, and creativity were being used to serve schools in a better way.

I also think it is super shady that they turn down applicants who have already worked towards a teaching degree.

Well said. The people we have from TFA are (fortunately) only doing the after school college programs. They said they would NEVER do it again if they had a chance and that TFA made them realize they weren’t cut out to teach. So it goes.

diaryofafyt:

Do any of you Tumblr Teachers have a teacher Facebook account? I thought I’d create one to keep in touch with former students, remind current students about assignments, and share resources. I’ve made sure there are some basic privacy settings and no one can write on my wall (but can send a…

I have a personal Facebook with the strictest of privacy settings and a teacher one which is completely public.

I use the teacher facebook mainly to keep in touch with students in French Club. They all decided that this was the best thing to use and most convenient for them, so that’s what we did. It is completely transparent and visible. However, no one can just join the French club group. It has been useful to me, though, I get on it mainly once a week for French club stuff. Other students have friended me, but not all of them to make it useful to post assignments and stuff.

If you want something that doesn’t have the personal issues of facebook (like seeing students do things that they shouldn’t etc) then I suggest Edmodo.com It’s a free tool and it acts like facebook but it has calendars for due dates, a gradebook tool, a wall and a whole bunch of other stuff. I used it in student teaching and my kids LOVED it.

monasequeda:

populationpensive:

We had a incredible number of teachers call in today last minute. This left our poor secretary to figuring out subs and such. The worst part is that apparently some of them were supposed to be on a field trip and called in sick.

I think when there are only 14 days of school left, and you are…

The field trip thing is a dick move.

But I say for anyone else that called in sick, even if they weren’t, they have the sick days they should be able to use them.  Anyways, it’s more work for a teacher to call in at the last moment anyways, so it’s really on them when they have to come back to chaos.

I’m of the same opinion. Skipping out on big events is just rude. But I do believe that mental health days are necessary. I teach part time, so I don’t deal with as much crap as many teachers do. I actually find it more stressful to plan for a sub. I have to write out everything I would just do second nature and prepare materials far more meticulously than necessary.

I guess I just feel that, at the end of the year when things are so busy, it’s just inconsiderate to skip out. We have 1 teacher who will call in sick 20 minutes before school starts. She does this routinely so other teachers ALWAYS have to fill in. And I’m usually one of them because I have 1st hour prep.