As a teacher who has to sit through two to five meetings a week, I'd say the most important tip is, if you can say it in 10 minutes, you don't have to use the full 30. If your boss asks you why you didn't fill the full time up, say "I scheduled 20 minutes so I could answer questions."
Except now we also have to go against those Unions who are entrenched and lost sight of their purpose. They're going to get pretty stroppy about any organisation operating outside the "official" Union.
I have no clue how "socialist" became the new replacement for "Commie bastard" (which itself replaced "Nazi").
Because if you're a politician who supports a capitalist-only system and doesn't care what happens to the majority of the population, it's a handy label to apply to your inevitable opposition?
Plus after a Union gets old enough, they tend to get lazy, and you end up paying membership fees for very little. The problem is that once you have an established Union in your area of work, you only get two choices - work with the Union, or go up against your employers yourself. Which means the Union only has to be a little better than the alternative.
Then you work for a shitty company. You should be look forward to working for a better company that understands DDoS attacks cannot really be prevented
Which company do you work for that has management THAT reasonable??? I wanna apply for a job!!!
... quite frankly, nobody else is doing anything that is actually causing a stir and even making the public realize something is wrong.
I'm a little concerned about how many people assume that the public is "uniformed" or "asleep", and they just need to be "woken up". EVERYONE knows that things are wrong, but we've had decades of civil disobediance and the bastards still seem to get back into power. I'm becoming convinced that the lasting solution is to try and do as much as possible around the bastards and make them as irrelevant as possible. "'Tis easier to ask for forgivness than permission."
Not to mention that there's all those nice little tools to hack the package database to do something the package builder didn't plan. (My favourite is the ability to move packages from prefix/opt to/usr/local or/usr.)
I loved Cup Scouts because our scout leader got us to do all sorts of interesting things for the sheer hell of doing something new.
However, the instant I was old enough to get into Scouts, trying to earn badges got boring fast.
I feel the same way about "kicking a ball around" and joining a team sport.
I'm not sure competition is the best way to motivate young children.
Useful in that it gets kids to think beyond "That's just a stick and a board."
I was raised on a small dairy farm, so we had to do a lot of our repairs, modifications and fabrication ourselves. Good old wire and bailing twine.:D
I'm now a science teacher and am constantly surprised when some city (thus, supposedly more advantaged) kids freeze up at the idea of designing their own experiments or equipment. It's anecdotal, but it seems that the kids that have outdoor lives as well as books and computers, are the ones who come up with the coolest solutions.
Want to know why it's hard to get rid of "bad" teachers? They're becoming the only ones who can survive in the current education system. Bad teachers actually have an advantage, because their lack of enthusiasm or effort means they don't burn themselves out.
So you're saying every teacher is bad? Maybe we should fire them all, then.
No, that's not what I'm saying, and I don't appreciate how you're trying to twist my words. But it's getting to the point where it feels like everyone wants to fire the lot of us, and I suspect that the "bad" teachers will avoid this current fallout, because they'll have more free time to game the system.
Besides, what you're saying is completely idiotic. Teachers aren't the only ones who can survive the current education system. Why do you even think such a stupid thing? What propaganda have you been listening to?
Propaganda? Oh I don't know - maybe the propaganda of actually being in the system and seeing what's happening to it? You can insult me as much as you like, but I'll stand up for my views because I actually think what teachers do is important.
Are you really saying that someone in their 40's (Probably with children, mortgages and student loans.) who after a lifetime of teaching, is going to have the time or motivation to get anything else but a bottom-end job?
A bottom-end job? Like, working at McDonald's? Are you seriously saying a teacher, with a college degree, who loses their job is going to get a job at McDonald's? That's hilarious. No, they get another real job, just like you would if you lost your job.
Please try to think, you aren't doing it.
If they're 50 or 60, YEAH! Despite what you think, the older teachers are usually the best, and they're the ones who keep us young-uns going. Even us youngsters are nervous, because, well every time I mention I'm a teacher "Oh, so you couldn't actually do real work, huh?" That's the attitude teachers face in the non-education workforce. Very few people actually respect a teaching degree.
Finally, I hope you realise that just because you insult people and they don't want to continue talking to you, doesn't mean you've won the argument.
Okay, back from my Slashdot 24hour cooldown period.
The difference here is, and I'll only say it once more, 100% of the teachers in my teaching area (science and maths) have suffered burnout. There's a big difference when the job GUARANTEES to break you down at the three to five year mark. Think of all the research that shows teachers only really become effective after five years (There's a reason for that - you first have to learn how to manage expectations for a start.). You're almost guaranteeing that the education system will lose that (and don't think that you aren't).
But it WON'T be one or two teachers. You're describing the use of Metrics and Evaluations as a screwdriver, and politicians and managers just aren't that subtle - they'll use it as a Sledgehammer.
You're really telling me that you can't see a politician faced with a "broken school" deciding to "Evaluate the $!%! out of them" as a way to "fix" the problem?
Um. Because it takes so long for a teacher to become effective?
If you really want to get gung-ho and fire all teachers the first screw-up they make, well you better have a good teacher-training program. It takes at least a year for a teacher to become baseline competent in the classroom, and about five before they really hit their stride. Using your method, we'll need about, oh, 100x as many people graduating, just to keep up with the turn-over.
And as I've pointed out above, it's annoying how so many people complain about how good teachers have it compared to them, yet the same people refuse to become a teacher.
Really? Because in the reality I live in, when a school gets over crowded, they bring in these things called "temporary buildings" to serve as classrooms. They can be put up in less than a month and taken down in even less time. These are in place until a permanent structure is built to house the students, although, sometimes, it takes so long to build the additions that the temp building feel permanent.
Of course, that's in MY reality. I can't speak for the one you live in where there is only one solution to any given issue.
Really? I had a couple of years at a newly-built school which was mostly so-called "temporary buildings". They're ugly, hot, noisy, and dreadful to learn in. Any school that could chose it's students (As any high-score school would do.) is going to decide to limit student uptake rather than put up temporary buildings. edmentry was making the point that "good" schools will become harder and harder to get into because there's benefit to limiting access. After all, that's what's behind the idea of a private school. I am so against the idea of public schools becoming more private. If the public really wants a private school environment, send your bloody child to a private school. Don't screw up the public school system so you can have a private school at public school prices.
Is there something wrong with that type of clustering?
Well, I guess it's fine if you happen to be wealthy enough to benefit.:/
It's certainly to the advantage of students who aren't that good but have motivated parents.
If you read jackbird's post, you'll realise that he wasn't talking about motivation of the parents, but opportunity. A parent may be highly motivated for their child to succeed, but has to work 2-3 jobs just to keep them fed. That parent WON'T be able to get time off, because they're in such crappy jobs, their bosses will quite happily threaten to fire them if they don't show up for work. Because they can. (Let's completely ignore school selection based on ability to pay fees in a "timely" manner.)
I've heard this argument about the benefits of clustering and/or private schools before. It would have screwed me up dramatically if I had had to seek education in such a system. My mother divorced my father (For quite vicious child and spousal abuse.) before I entered my teens. She had been out of the job market for years (One of the first thing an abuser does is to isolate his victims.) so found it very difficult to find work, and had to raise us on low-income jobs and benefits. Private school? HAH.
She and my step-father were very involved in my education, but didn't have enough education to help me beyond parent-teacher interviews and emotional support. The only other thing that was in my favour was that the state education system for the most part didn't play favourites. I see more and more parents choosing private schools over public schools (Both for enrolment and political choices.) and all I can think of is how it's probably screwing up anyone who is in the same situation as mine.
Education is the ONLY way that children in low-income situations even stand a chance of getting out, and nearly everyone else seems perfectly happy to say "Meh, there's only 10% of the population, I'll happily screw them over to give my kid a 5% improvement in a test."
But by all means, let's jam those unlucky bastards in with the really vicious students, simply because they can't afford private schools.
Oh that would be so nice.:D
"I'm sorry Mr and Mrs Johnson, but we can't accept your son into our school because, well his state-measured student record shows him to be lazy,violent, disrespectful and disruptive to the learning environment. No, this isn't an arbitrary decision, his record shows he's been this way for the last six years of his schooling. Thank you."
As long as you're prepared to LISTEN TO THEM when they try to explain why they do the things they do in their job.
"Doctor, I'm paying you to do open-heart surgery on me... well I'm not paying you directly, but I pay my taxes darned it, and you're in a public hospital, so that's the same as me paying you... and I want to watch you do the surgery and question every single one of your decisions while you do it, because that's my right."
Yes, parents that are products of a failing system, many uneducated, most know nothing about teaching, let's make them the target of accountability, not the people with degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job that is being done poorly.
1. The people making decisions about the failing education system are the politicians - a large number of them don't even understand how the Internet works, let alone have "degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job".
2. The job of education didn't start being done poorly UNTIL control was taken away from the "people with degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job".
3. This current issue is about taking even more control away from "people with degrees", and giving it to the public, "many uneducated, most know nothing about teaching".
If you intend to take more and more control away from teachers, give them less and less power over how they do their jobs, then at some point you're going to have to stop blaming this current mess on teachers, and blame it on the public and government.
As opposed to punishing those teachers who choose to work in poor areas with half-assed metrics? You know, the people who got into education to help the poor or disadvantaged? Haven't seen any of those in a while? That's because they got blamed for everything and most of them left or got cynical.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh god. Audience participation. Ugggh. Seriously, if I wanted to do that sort of shit, I'd go to open mike night at a comedy bar.
Which was probably not what he intended, but most certainly the most important piece of information society needs to know.
As a teacher who has to sit through two to five meetings a week, I'd say the most important tip is, if you can say it in 10 minutes, you don't have to use the full 30. If your boss asks you why you didn't fill the full time up, say "I scheduled 20 minutes so I could answer questions."
The real reason? Protecting the Imperial dollar as supreme instrument of International economic hegemony.
The nukes are a pantomime
Doesn't this risk the Imperial dollar becoming less and less relevant and more powerless?
Except now we also have to go against those Unions who are entrenched and lost sight of their purpose. They're going to get pretty stroppy about any organisation operating outside the "official" Union.
I have no clue how "socialist" became the new replacement for "Commie bastard" (which itself replaced "Nazi").
Because if you're a politician who supports a capitalist-only system and doesn't care what happens to the majority of the population, it's a handy label to apply to your inevitable opposition?
Plus after a Union gets old enough, they tend to get lazy, and you end up paying membership fees for very little. The problem is that once you have an established Union in your area of work, you only get two choices - work with the Union, or go up against your employers yourself. Which means the Union only has to be a little better than the alternative.
>>>Blame gets passed and people get fired.
Then you work for a shitty company. You should be look forward to working for a better company that understands DDoS attacks cannot really be prevented
Which company do you work for that has management THAT reasonable??? I wanna apply for a job!!!
... quite frankly, nobody else is doing anything that is actually causing a stir and even making the public realize something is wrong.
I'm a little concerned about how many people assume that the public is "uniformed" or "asleep", and they just need to be "woken up". EVERYONE knows that things are wrong, but we've had decades of civil disobediance and the bastards still seem to get back into power. I'm becoming convinced that the lasting solution is to try and do as much as possible around the bastards and make them as irrelevant as possible. "'Tis easier to ask for forgivness than permission."
Not to mention that there's all those nice little tools to hack the package database to do something the package builder didn't plan. (My favourite is the ability to move packages from prefix /opt to /usr/local or /usr.)
Are they still using cpio for rpms?
Yes, there are some Gnome2 forks out there - I'm adopting a wait-and-see attitude.
However, the instant I was old enough to get into Scouts, trying to earn badges got boring fast.
I feel the same way about "kicking a ball around" and joining a team sport.
I'm not sure competition is the best way to motivate young children.
I was raised on a small dairy farm, so we had to do a lot of our repairs, modifications and fabrication ourselves. Good old wire and bailing twine. :D
I'm now a science teacher and am constantly surprised when some city (thus, supposedly more advantaged) kids freeze up at the idea of designing their own experiments or equipment. It's anecdotal, but it seems that the kids that have outdoor lives as well as books and computers, are the ones who come up with the coolest solutions.
Want to know why it's hard to get rid of "bad" teachers? They're becoming the only ones who can survive in the current education system. Bad teachers actually have an advantage, because their lack of enthusiasm or effort means they don't burn themselves out.
So you're saying every teacher is bad? Maybe we should fire them all, then.
No, that's not what I'm saying, and I don't appreciate how you're trying to twist my words. But it's getting to the point where it feels like everyone wants to fire the lot of us, and I suspect that the "bad" teachers will avoid this current fallout, because they'll have more free time to game the system.
Besides, what you're saying is completely idiotic. Teachers aren't the only ones who can survive the current education system. Why do you even think such a stupid thing? What propaganda have you been listening to?
Propaganda? Oh I don't know - maybe the propaganda of actually being in the system and seeing what's happening to it? You can insult me as much as you like, but I'll stand up for my views because I actually think what teachers do is important.
Are you really saying that someone in their 40's (Probably with children, mortgages and student loans.) who after a lifetime of teaching, is going to have the time or motivation to get anything else but a bottom-end job?
A bottom-end job? Like, working at McDonald's? Are you seriously saying a teacher, with a college degree, who loses their job is going to get a job at McDonald's? That's hilarious. No, they get another real job, just like you would if you lost your job. Please try to think, you aren't doing it.
If they're 50 or 60, YEAH! Despite what you think, the older teachers are usually the best, and they're the ones who keep us young-uns going. Even us youngsters are nervous, because, well every time I mention I'm a teacher "Oh, so you couldn't actually do real work, huh?" That's the attitude teachers face in the non-education workforce. Very few people actually respect a teaching degree.
Finally, I hope you realise that just because you insult people and they don't want to continue talking to you, doesn't mean you've won the argument.
The difference here is, and I'll only say it once more, 100% of the teachers in my teaching area (science and maths) have suffered burnout. There's a big difference when the job GUARANTEES to break you down at the three to five year mark. Think of all the research that shows teachers only really become effective after five years (There's a reason for that - you first have to learn how to manage expectations for a start.). You're almost guaranteeing that the education system will lose that (and don't think that you aren't).
You're really telling me that you can't see a politician faced with a "broken school" deciding to "Evaluate the $!%! out of them" as a way to "fix" the problem?
If you really want to get gung-ho and fire all teachers the first screw-up they make, well you better have a good teacher-training program. It takes at least a year for a teacher to become baseline competent in the classroom, and about five before they really hit their stride. Using your method, we'll need about, oh, 100x as many people graduating, just to keep up with the turn-over.
And as I've pointed out above, it's annoying how so many people complain about how good teachers have it compared to them, yet the same people refuse to become a teacher.
Really? Because in the reality I live in, when a school gets over crowded, they bring in these things called "temporary buildings" to serve as classrooms. They can be put up in less than a month and taken down in even less time. These are in place until a permanent structure is built to house the students, although, sometimes, it takes so long to build the additions that the temp building feel permanent.
Of course, that's in MY reality. I can't speak for the one you live in where there is only one solution to any given issue.
Really? I had a couple of years at a newly-built school which was mostly so-called "temporary buildings". They're ugly, hot, noisy, and dreadful to learn in. Any school that could chose it's students (As any high-score school would do.) is going to decide to limit student uptake rather than put up temporary buildings. edmentry was making the point that "good" schools will become harder and harder to get into because there's benefit to limiting access. After all, that's what's behind the idea of a private school. I am so against the idea of public schools becoming more private. If the public really wants a private school environment, send your bloody child to a private school. Don't screw up the public school system so you can have a private school at public school prices.
Is there something wrong with that type of clustering?
Well, I guess it's fine if you happen to be wealthy enough to benefit. :/
It's certainly to the advantage of students who aren't that good but have motivated parents.
If you read jackbird's post, you'll realise that he wasn't talking about motivation of the parents, but opportunity. A parent may be highly motivated for their child to succeed, but has to work 2-3 jobs just to keep them fed. That parent WON'T be able to get time off, because they're in such crappy jobs, their bosses will quite happily threaten to fire them if they don't show up for work. Because they can. (Let's completely ignore school selection based on ability to pay fees in a "timely" manner.)
I've heard this argument about the benefits of clustering and/or private schools before. It would have screwed me up dramatically if I had had to seek education in such a system. My mother divorced my father (For quite vicious child and spousal abuse.) before I entered my teens. She had been out of the job market for years (One of the first thing an abuser does is to isolate his victims.) so found it very difficult to find work, and had to raise us on low-income jobs and benefits. Private school? HAH.
She and my step-father were very involved in my education, but didn't have enough education to help me beyond parent-teacher interviews and emotional support. The only other thing that was in my favour was that the state education system for the most part didn't play favourites. I see more and more parents choosing private schools over public schools (Both for enrolment and political choices.) and all I can think of is how it's probably screwing up anyone who is in the same situation as mine.
Education is the ONLY way that children in low-income situations even stand a chance of getting out, and nearly everyone else seems perfectly happy to say "Meh, there's only 10% of the population, I'll happily screw them over to give my kid a 5% improvement in a test."
But by all means, let's jam those unlucky bastards in with the really vicious students, simply because they can't afford private schools.
And of course, the test has to be standardised and applicable to ALL students in the nation, and can be marked using a Scantronic.
Oh that would be so nice. :D
"I'm sorry Mr and Mrs Johnson, but we can't accept your son into our school because, well his state-measured student record shows him to be lazy,violent, disrespectful and disruptive to the learning environment. No, this isn't an arbitrary decision, his record shows he's been this way for the last six years of his schooling. Thank you."
As long as you're prepared to LISTEN TO THEM when they try to explain why they do the things they do in their job. ... well I'm not paying you directly, but I pay my taxes darned it, and you're in a public hospital, so that's the same as me paying you ... and I want to watch you do the surgery and question every single one of your decisions while you do it, because that's my right."
"Doctor, I'm paying you to do open-heart surgery on me
Yes, parents that are products of a failing system, many uneducated, most know nothing about teaching, let's make them the target of accountability, not the people with degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job that is being done poorly.
1. The people making decisions about the failing education system are the politicians - a large number of them don't even understand how the Internet works, let alone have "degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job".
2. The job of education didn't start being done poorly UNTIL control was taken away from the "people with degrees in the field that we are paying to do a job".
3. This current issue is about taking even more control away from "people with degrees", and giving it to the public, "many uneducated, most know nothing about teaching".
If you intend to take more and more control away from teachers, give them less and less power over how they do their jobs, then at some point you're going to have to stop blaming this current mess on teachers, and blame it on the public and government.
As opposed to punishing those teachers who choose to work in poor areas with half-assed metrics? You know, the people who got into education to help the poor or disadvantaged? Haven't seen any of those in a while? That's because they got blamed for everything and most of them left or got cynical.