Reading through these posts irritates me on a number of levels. But, if I look at it as objectively as possible (keeping in mind that I spend 7 hours a day with a 12-18 year olds every day, plus another 3-5 hours a night doing prep work as well as correcting, all while I try to balance my 2 girls and their unique educational needs as being PG and an unknown quantity at this point due to age and for a pay which just barely keeps me above the level allowed to qualify for free or reduced lunch, while I sit here looking at my MS physics diploma.) I can see both sides of this entire thread.
However, I think that the psychi (sp?) of the teenage mind needs to be brought up. Yes, there are bad teachers at every school, just like there are bad employees at every business around. However, as someone brought up these employees are not being evaluated by the teenage mind. At my school at the end of each school year the students are required to fill out evaluations of all of their teachers. To ensure confidentiality the teachers switch rooms with each other and administer their colleague's evaluation to their students. It is not until the following school year, if we ask, that we are allowed to see these papers. While doing this, the students will talk about what they are going to write, or have just written. Their conversations usually go something like this:
"I just Christmas treed it - I hate doing these things they don't mean anything anyways." (Christmas treed it meaning they made pictures with their answers on the scan tron part of the eval.)
"I decided she would be the one I gave all zeros to this year - I love to pick out the teacher who gave me the lowest grade and really zing them on these - let them see how it feels to fail."
"Hey that's a good idea, I'm going to change mine."
Or, when there are state exams that really have no bearing on their future education, but count towards our evaluation it is common for them to again decide that they don't like the teacher(s) they have had in that subject so they are going to do poorly on the test so they aren't helping someone they don't like. When asked why they don't like the teacher, it is most often NOT that they are bad at their job, but rather that they were not the "easy" teacher who let the kids get away with doing nothing in their class.
No, these are not the minority of students, these are the majority of kids - both those society would label "good kids" and those they would not.
I do not argue that any service job has to deal with annoying customers, however, the challenges that teachers are faced with are many times greater than simply having someone yell at you because they don't like your product. How many of you have been physically threatened by a "customer" and known that if you are attacked and try to defend yourself that not only will you lose your job, but you will lose your license and never be able to get another job in your profession again? I know many teachers who have, including myself. Or, what about being in a situation where a student doesn't like how you graded her exam so she decides to accuse you of all sorts of inappropriate things that never actually happened to "get back at you", and no matter what the result of the investigation - which will occur in a very public way, your reputation is shot and you can again never work in your profession?
Until more people take an objective look at what teachers actually do with what little supplies they are given and the results they are getting - not on some state written exam, but on actual learning and development of the students in their charge, there will be no fair treatment of teachers.
Why do other countries not have the problems the US does with evaluating their teachers - some do, some have had as hard a time as the US is, others don't because there is still a respect for people in this profession, which has long since been lost in this country.
I am proud of the job I do - I wouldn't change professions for all of the gold in the world (although some would be nice
) because I get to see something that no other profession gets to - a kid find something that ignited a fire inside and send him/her off into the future knowing that I did my best to prepare him/her to go after their dream. The only thing I wish is that people would have more respect for the vast majority of teachers in this country - the ones like me who work our butts off so that every kid we come in contact with leaves our room better educated, more mature, and wiser than when they entered. (Not to mention the amount of food, clothing and supplies we hand out each year to kids in need.)
