Gifted Issues Discussion homepage Forums General Discussion What does "rigorous" mean?

As far as potential jobs go, I think teachers salaries are looking pretty good.

I know of a young man who went into teaching, kind of floating through college, taught high school science of some sort and decided after 2 years to go back to school and recently graduated from medical school.

You have to like the aspect of teaching of going back over the same stuff, year after year. I think that doesn't suit a lot of gifted people unless you get to do research and write papers at the college level.

One big problem is union rules. A math major may not get a math teaching job is they don't have the math creditation. The math creditation has nothing to do with knowing math, just how to teach the math. I found this out when I found out the math coach in our school had no math background but she got the math creditation. Is that ridiculous? I bet they don't have that problem in Finland where they score a lot higher.

Ren

The best teachers I know find great challenge in the human problem-solving: faced with 20+ people who don't all learn the same way, who all need different things, can you actually run a class that gives each one what they need?

That's interesting work, and different every year.

DeeDee

Economists are awesome at this.

I'm sure that there is a minimum intelligence level. It's just not so high that an average person couldn't get a college degree with the proper training. It seems that this is borne out by the IQ numbers of people attending college.

I think that one reason for higher critical-thinking scores for certain majors (English etc.) may be due to the training received in college. I'm guessing that a person would receive some decent training in English-related skills in elementary and high school, not only encouraging an interest in the subject but pretraining them for college. Then in college, those abilities would be honed further.

I see this as involving more than one issue. What's the threshold level of skills necessary to enter college for training in a particular field? What's the level of aptitude necessary for success in college in that field? What's the level of aptitude necessary for success in a field after graduation? And how much is it possible to environmentally influence what's traditionally considered to be raw aptitude?

Oh, try 133!

Yes, it is challenging work. Most of the jobs that I had before my master's degree, I learned everything I needed to know for the job within three weeks. Teaching is pretty intense. Grading is kind of soul-sucking, and there are many frustrations, but I never get bored. I do creative problem-solving all the time.

I submit that their scores are lower because as a group, they aren't as bright as the people who got degrees in subjects like English and chemistry. Many simply don't have that level of ability.

Yes, training at any level helps and the extra training helped the English majors do better. But I will also submit that the ones who lack talent also lack interest. I also believe that a lot of them drop out of harder majors and go into easier majors because the traditional college majors are just too hard for them.

Mind, I'm not criticizing these students: I'm criticizing a system that creates unrealistic expectations by pretending that everyone can do a degree in English or engineering if you just "give them a chance."

They give them a chance in part by watering down courses in high school, heaping on more homework and tests, and pretending that the courses are "rigorous." My son's geometry teacher skipped 90% of the chapter on right triangles this week: no proofs, no geometric means, no intro to trig, no similar triangles. Part of the problem is that she's disorganized and poor planner, but another part of the problem is that she completely failed to see how critically important the skipped subject matter is. And the textbook was already watered down to the point of being ridiculously easy.

When our schools do this kind of thing, they cheat students in so many ways. First, they tell them that they know geometry and algebra, when in fact they don't. So the kids end up in remedial math and no one understands why. Then, when the kids get into a real course on the subject, it's hard, they can't do it, and they don't understand why because they did so well in high school. But by now they have student loans for courses that should have been taught properly in high school but weren't.

Added: bringing this all back together. IMO, the courses are being watered down because the students being encouraged to take them either aren't smart enough to do a serious geometry/algebra/etc. course or need more time to learn the stuff that comes before these courses. And yes, I think that many of the teachers also lack ability, which compounds the problem.

Yet our schools cling to the fantasy that shoving kids into these courses will make everything okay. It doesn't, and research, test scores, and the kinds of jobs they end up in are all showing that fact.

I will try and stick to answering what the OP asked, because it is the end of a long week in a classroom with +100 teenagers going through all sorts of emotional crises, not to mention the threat of the looming semester exam next week, which has to act as a check to see how they're/we're doing on a state curriculum which needs to get done by mid April (even though the school yr goes until June) so they can take an end of course exam, and NOT vent about all of the teacher bashing on this thread.

At my school, we are struggling with what "rigor" means in this age of state/national requirements of end of course exams of proficiency which require that kids learn a certain amount of specific material and tie our hands in terms of being allowed time to do creative and meaningful things in our classrooms. A group of colleagues and I have gotten together and come up with the following framework for what it means for a class to be rigorous:
1) the material taught needs to be challenging to the students
2) the assignments given need to be meaningful and able to align with the state/national standards for the topic
3) the assignments also need to be graded against standards of proficiency (0 = none of the above levels have been met, 1 = minimal facts known, 2 = all facts known, 3 = all facts known and some ability to explain facts, 4 = all facts known and ability to explain all facts, 5 = all facts known, ability to explain all facts and some ability to apply facts, 6 = all of the above and general ability to apply all facts.)
4) participation no longer counts as part of the grade
5) getting credit for completion of work is no longer allowed, grading must be done for correctness. (When looking for completion it goes into an accountability grade which shows up on the computerized grading system as a way to show a parent whether or not the child is actually doing their work.)
6) going back to the idea that a grade of a "C" means that the child did an average job on an assignment, or in a class, rather than it meaning that the child is failing.

Please keep in mind that unless you are talking about a private school, or a very unique public school, the teachers have very little say on which textbook we use, what curriculum we teach from and who we allow into our classes. The state sets the book list we are allowed to choose from as well as the curriculum we must use, the guidance or administration decides who sits in front of us, whether we say they are ready for the class we teach or not.
Also, in this age of others deciding if we can do our job or not, teaching is no longer a "safe government job" - in many states we now have 1 yr contracts, no pay increases, even for cost of living, whether or not you're a good teacher, and for many of us the salaries are barely enough to keep us above the poverty line.

I think the reason you find so many non-math specialists teaching math courses in school in the US (same thing for sciences) is that teacher salaries are so low in the US compared to other jobs in science/engineering fields.

And while we've run into more a few teachers who perhaps weren't Davidson-level gifted, we've also known many more teachers who were in fact clearly intellectually gifted (even in preschool), and who were teachers simply because they loved children and they loved to teach. Having an incredibly high IQ is just one part of a gifted person's self - there is also passion and personality, and I imagine that there are many many inspired highly and profoundly gifted people who come alive teaching in the classroom.

polarbear

ps - I'm not a teacher, just an admirer of many teachers

The quality and intellect of teachers as portrayed here is not consistent with my experience as a parent or professor. When those planning to teach at the MS or HS level sign up for my classes I get excited. As a population, they are curious, intelligent, diligent, and broadly more mature than the rest of the students I teach.


Thank you.

This is exactly what I was asking for.
#1-3 make a lot of sense.
#4 makes me sad. A lot of learning comes through discussion, and this is how teachers get insight into students' thinking.
#5 is strange to state. Is that not how it is anywhere?!?
#6 has practical implications, as grades determine entry into college or other programs, even for my rising 4th grader last summer.


I appreciate this. Our district is in the process of shifting standards, and the textbooks have not yet been selected, so the time is ripe to advocate for the needs of all kids within this framework. Further, the various plans they have in place to get students to calculus as a senior appear somewhat short-sighted, and the explanation coming from the district is that these plans are the only option because of the rigor of the standards. Without knowing how they perceive "rigorous," it makes it very difficult to engage effectively.

It appears that this thread has taken a bit of deviation from the original question and I haven't the time to read all of the responses and to respond to the further thoughts, but in regard to the original one, I'd unfortunately agree that our experience has been in line with what Val said on page one.

As I've mentioned with my oldest, her high school states that they are rigorous and expect 4-5 hrs of homework per night from freshmen. She had that much for some time although we're hopeful that things are getting a bit better. When I called another well regarded local high school to inquire about whether they might have a better fit for my child who needs very high level work but not huge quantity, the response I got was that they had similar quantity expectations b/c they, too, "are very rigorous." Quantity as a synonym for rigor isn't one I expected.