"Teaching isn't stressful, stop making excuses" - Ofsted - Polidicks

[QUOTE=King Tiger;35906300]Then you must go to school with a bunch of assholes.[/QUOTE] So because your classes had not this shit, no one in the world has? I always faced this problem durning my studies, the intellectual one, the one with good mark, is the loser, while rebels doing shit in the playground, bullying people, are the cool cats. It should be the opposite.

[QUOTE=FFStudios;35901758]He's pretty much right, though; Teachers work for 9 months out of the year, they get vacations whenever the kids do, they've got it pretty good.[/QUOTE] Your dumb.

[QUOTE=Cone;35901802]it's pretty difficult to get them to actually learn stuff though, and depending on how bad the school is you could be facing verbal abuse or, in really bad schools, physical violence[/QUOTE] Don't be a shit teacher and do more than just force information on the students. Entertain them a bit, say silly things and do silly things. Don't just stand there like a statue and blabber on about the subject like another robot. If a teacher is interesting and funny, students will love and learn more from them.

[QUOTE=Derp Y. Mail;35912400]Don't be a shit teacher and do more than just force information on the students. Entertain them a bit, say silly things and do silly things. Don't just stand there like a statue and blabber on about the subject like another robot. If a teacher is interesting and funny, students will love and learn more from them.[/QUOTE] where I went doing silly things was a good way to get people to ignore your point nobody would remember what you said if you were a memorable person or not because they simply didn't care to learn, you'd practically have to snap the whiteboard in half just to get people looking in your general direction

[QUOTE=Marbalo;35902237][B]The only reason teachers are 'stressesed' is because somewhere along the way they get tired of teaching and treat their students like shit. [/B] Students - even first or second graders - know when a person just doesn't care anymore and simply goes to teach everyday for her monthly paycheck. A lot of teachers tend to have conservative teaching methods which do not work and are counter-productive. They still assume that 'memorizing test assignments' will teach you things. It doesn't and never has. It's far better to teach in unorthodox methods which stimulates a students mind. Takes them out of the mundane everyday life of school. If teachers treat their students with real respect and not just empty-headed cattle to stick information in then the students will treat them with the same amount of respect. Some will even look forward to the class and some might even start enjoying school altogether. Teaching is only as stressful as you make it to be. Teachers arent the only ones at fault here however, because the entire educational system is outdated, ineffective, useless and is dictated by old fucks who are out-of-touch with the current generation - worldwide.[/QUOTE] Wow you are dumb

Always think back to this [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RxsOVK4syxU[/media] It could be suggested some teachers do have a hard time controlling unruly kids, but then again there may be a lot of cases where teachers aren't caring as much as they should. Difficult to say unless you're a teacher with a lot of experience. And I don't think there are many people on facepunch who come close to that..

[QUOTE=slamex;35914685]And I don't think there are many people on facepunch who come close to that..[/QUOTE] the closest to being a teacher I've ever come was when I was in school and I was the only person who wanted to learn anything, but nonetheless I think there's a lot of things that can convince a teacher not to care, as well as many teachers that go in with completely the wrong attitude either way kids aren't getting taught properly, so the blame is on both the teachers and the attitude the kids assume during school, not one or the other as the Ofsted seems to think

Attitude is a two way street though in teaching. You need the right attitude, for sure, but even the right attitude won't make things easier if the students don't have the right attitude.

[QUOTE=Marbalo;35902237]The only reason teachers are 'stressesed' is because somewhere along the way they get tired of teaching and treat their students like shit. Students - even first or second graders - know when a person just doesn't care anymore and simply goes to teach everyday for her monthly paycheck. A lot of teachers tend to have conservative teaching methods which do not work and are counter-productive. They still assume that 'memorizing test assignments' will teach you things. It doesn't and never has. It's far better to teach in unorthodox methods which stimulates a students mind. Takes them out of the mundane everyday life of school. If teachers treat their students with real respect and not just empty-headed cattle to stick information in then the students will treat them with the same amount of respect. Some will even look forward to the class and some might even start enjoying school altogether. Teaching is only as stressful as you make it to be. Teachers arent the only ones at fault here however, because the entire educational system is outdated, ineffective, useless and is dictated by old fucks who are out-of-touch with the current generation - worldwide.[/QUOTE] i have no idea what education system or what country you're talking about but, in my experience, teaching in the UK is just not like that. at all there is a shit tonne of money pumped into courses, many compulsory, that teach the teachers about various new different forms of learning and teaching and what works best for different types of children. there's also huge awareness in teaching in the UK for children with issues, whether social, biological, or both this is based off my own experiences and the fact my mother is a primary school teacher and that i have friends and family friends who are teachers, head teachers, and lecturers at various levels of school and college. i know that's purely anecdotal but i think it provides a better base to judge than that of the average person (because i have no idea what you're basing your assumptions off) i guess it should be noted that my experiences are mostly of pretty middle-class establishments though. i'm not sure what inner-city schools are likely to be like [editline]11th May 2012[/editline] and, as for the article itself: wow what utter bullshit. my class at secondary school was awful. we thought we were hilarious little shits and we made so many teachers cry on multiple occasions. if they weren't stressed then i don't understand what real stress is

It seems as though nowadays kids aren't taught vital information that helps them live life to the fullest, they're taught standardized bullshit that helps them on huge tests that may or may not give teachers big bonuses. Teachers are caring less and less about the well-being and knowledge students receive, and more about missing assignments and bad grades. As a high school student, the best teachers tend to be the ones that teach as little of the required course material and spend more time doing things people actually find interesting. My history teacher last year didn't have us read sections from a textbook and write analyses on them, he told us interesting and thought-provoking stories about historical events. Our end-of-year project was to make a short film about any historical event that ever occurred, ever. Teachers that put as much possible effort into teaching and the well-being of students without any overtime pay or anything deserve all the applause they can get.

[QUOTE=cheetahben;35915568]It seems as though nowadays kids aren't taught vital information that helps them live life to the fullest, they're taught standardized bullshit that helps them on huge tests that may or may not give teachers big bonuses. Teachers are caring less and less about the well-being and knowledge students receive, and more about missing assignments and bad grades. [b]As a high school student, the best teachers tend to be the ones that teach as little of the required course material and spend more time doing things people actually find interesting. My history teacher last year didn't have us read sections from a textbook and write analyses on them, he told us interesting and thought-provoking stories about historical events. Our end-of-year project was to make a short film about any historical event that ever occurred, ever. Teachers that put as much possible effort into teaching and the well-being of students without any overtime pay or anything deserve all the applause they can get.[/b][/QUOTE] while i mostly like and agree with the bolded part of your post, the first bit needs some serious thinking about in terms of teaching standards of the past you're right in saying a lot of teaching now-a-days is just about getting high marks and qualifications and schools looking good on leaderboards. that's partly to do with the ridiculously (and unnecessary) emphasis on university education these days that said, i'd rather that current system where teachers are actually trying hard to get kids qualifications for later life, even if they're not making school interesting or exciting, instead of the old-style teaching of the pre-1980s (ie: teaching standards were incredibly low; beating students was acceptable; teaching was, for the most part, all about reading from a text book and then answering questions rather than actually being [i]taught[/i] by a teacher etc etc)

[QUOTE=FFStudios;35901758]He's pretty much right, though; Teachers work for 9 months out of the year, they get vacations whenever the kids do, they've got it pretty good.[/QUOTE] Except all my past teachers (I recently graduated) have had extensive schooling (Some even had PH.Ds), don't make very much money (See: Student Debt), and had to work frequently after hours to mark the amount of assignments they get in. Considering that only the Principal and Vice-Principal of my old school drove nice cars, I doubt the teachers are rolling in money. Or the fact they like each have atleast $20,000 of student debt, especially those with Ph.D's (That can take up to 10 YEARS). Then consider the fact that I sometimes spent HOURS working on an assignment. Then you take 120 students doing that. And handing that to a teacher that has to mark them. On their own time. And for most of these assignments, each student sees the assignment differently so it's not always black/white True/False answers. Then you also consider that teaching is extremely difficult (I've done it before) and you will die unless you prepare lesson plans ahead of time, prepare your resources ahead of time, and know your content ahead of time. Yes, teaching is stressful. As a recent graduate, high school was pretty stressful, and I can only imagine that it is even moreso for a teacher that has to handle 120+ of stressed out pubescent teenagers with raging hormones. As a Teacher's Assistant, due to ONE student who was having some home problems, I had to photo-copy an entire text-book for them. It took over an hour of photocopying. Yes, Teaching is bullshit, doesn't bring in much money, they get flak because they are paid by taxes, they have a lot of debt, and they have to babysit people's kids all day and then hear the parents of those kids complaining that they "get paid too much" when the teachers know their kids better than they do.

if highschools kids really think highschool education is useless and they're not learning anything, i think we should reinstate the ability to kick or expel students out due to horrid grades or confirmation they don't wanna try. let's focus the money on kids that actually wants to graduate.

[QUOTE=yawmwen;35909573]because most of them are not teaching students what they need to know.[/QUOTE] Yeah, it's terrible that that happens! It's absolutely silly and there's no reason for them to do th- Oh wait, nevermind, that problem is also [I]caused by Ofsted[/I]. [B]I THINK I'M SEEING A PATTERN HERE[/B].

I cant say how stressful it is or isn't having never been one but for me at the end of the day I'd rather be a teacher than a heart surgeon.

Agreed. Teachers complain "oh well I have to grade papers and mark tests and blah and blah at home." No you don't. Most teachers get 3-4 periods of grace time to do all this work so they don't have to do it at home. It's their choice to stand in the hallway and socialize with other people. With the invention of the Scantron and online gradebook teaching has become even easier.

At my school, there are some shitty teachers that only teach us what we need to know for the exams (and not particularly well at that), but I don't get mad about it because I know they have a hard time. I think some of the teachers are just as depressed about the absolute focus on getting the As and A*s as many students are, and the sad thing is that the people who are predicted high grades often feel the most pressured because they don't know if they're doing well enough. I know it would cost a lot, but I personally think classes should be smaller (maybe 20 rather than 30), we should get rid of mixed sets (because it leads to the slower kids struggling and the smartasses getting pissed off or actually struggling themselves due to not feeling like they're taking part in their lesson), and we should focus on a student's attitude to their education while putting less of a focus on exams themselves. Any old idiot can go about remembering things as long as they have a basic level of knowledge, but if you're a genius with a shitty memory then you're fucked. The only reason I do well in exams is because of my ability to make assumptions- half the time I'll have forgotten what I started revising by the time I'm finished. This is just my personal opinion really, and it's probably wrong since I'm at school myself, but hey.

[QUOTE=FFStudios;35901758]He's pretty much right, though; Teachers work for 9 months out of the year, they get vacations whenever the kids do, they've got it pretty good.[/QUOTE] ok, then explain why my mom who is a teacher works pretty much throughout the summer you fucking asshat, learn to think before you fucking post you asshole

You know when I read the first part of the headline I thought this was in the US, but it's disheartening to see the same mentality extends beyond our own borders. I used to think like other people teaching was an easy job and they were just holding out for more money. Sure, what's so hard about lecturing in front of kids and grading some papers. Seems like a dream job? Oh boy I was wrong. Learned that the hard way when I decided to try and get teaching certification on the side while I was going through college. There's a lot of factors that people don't really consider when it comes to teaching. Among other things, -The amount of planning that goes into a lesson can be quite substantial. Even just for a few of my field teaches that was for the benefit of the certification program I was going though, it was quite stressful. Trying to put together a lesson plan that balanced information with being able to get students interested, and then trying to create some sort of evaluation that could adequately tell you whether or not they learned. Even when the teacher provided me with many materials, I still had to fashion a lesson plan around that since it's not really practical to go in with the same lesson the district hands you that that's more bare bones than anything. You have to adapt it for your classroom, and that takes knowing the students. I can't even begin to imagine how that would be every day for several years. -While you teach, you have many individual minds in front of you. Some'll get it right away and will not take the lesson seriously afterwards if you don't engage them. Others might be discouraged by the same lesson and not listen. People have different learning styles, and you've got to make sure you have a way to get as many as possible learning in the short span of time you have as you progress through units. How do you decide when enough of the classroom has learned something to move on to the rest of the lesson? How long is too long? Time is a bitch here. -What is the best evaluation method? Some students perform excellently on multiple choice, but does that really tell you they "learned" something, or memorized it? What about the students who feel intimidated by other forms of testing because they've been so trained with multiple choice? How do you interpret the results of those tests? I've had situations where some students appeared to do excellently, yet later on the same subject material did poorly. What should be the response to that? It's ever adapting. -What do you do with your lesson when it's clearly not getting the attention of your students or not working? You have to adjust within the same lesson... you don't have do-overs with teaching, at least with the same class. Some students can be hard to really gain their trust- and it's not even that much an age thing either. When I was in these classrooms I was only 21 or 22, not that much older than the 17 and 18 year-olds I was teaching (in fact got mistaken sometimes for a student in the hall for loitering when I went to the bathroom during my free period after I finished grading)- some just will come in that classroom intent on making your life a living hell. I *really* don't know why they would do that, but that's an additional problem to deal with. -You can construct the best and most 'fun' lesson the department has ever seen on a particular topic, but sometimes you'll find they really didn't learn from it later on. How do you address these short comings before tests start coming down and you get the pressure to try and ensure your class performance meets the standards of the school? -You have no clue what kind of students you'll get each year. You'll get students conditioned from previous years whit different teachers, and they'll come in at different levels of proficiency and behavior. You got to balance all that out and get beyond any difficulties that pop up. And just when you get used to it... they're off to the next year / semster (depending on the length of your course) and you get a new batch you got to start over with. -This ties back into a previous point, but you got to engage the students. Contrary to popular belief teaching isn't as simple as being a sage on a stage, and you got to get students involved in the learning process somehow. I've had plenty of cases asking questions that I knew the kids knew, but they didn't want to answer. And I know I was like that too because I didn't want to participate in class back in high school. How can you try and get beyond that so the teaching is meaningful? Get a conversation going among your students? Building up trust between the students and yourself is essential to forming a learning environment, and if you don't have that established early on it's going to be a sucky year. -What kind of school are you in? There's a world of difference in teaching a school in a privileged area compared to ones in a needy one. Both have their share of problems, but I can say from experience teaching in the later is, unsurprisingly, much more difficult. I mean, yes, there's the violence aspect, but the most depressing thing really is most of them come in and really don't see why they are in there. They see it as a complete waste of time because they've never seen anyone in their community (at best a few individuals) get success through education, at least in their young minds. I don't know, maybe you got to go in there for a few weeks and get the feeling of (understandable) cynicism there. -Grading isn't as easy as it seems. Yes, you got scantrons, but multiple choice isn't the most satisfactory way to gauge for understanding on everything. You'll have to many times grade by hand because it's probably as close as you can get to getting a feel for a student's understanding short of talking to them. Then balance that with having to plan for lessons further down the line as well as making adjustments as needed due to circumstances that pop up. -Ideally, as a teacher there should be a commitment to all students, even the troublemakers. I've found that even among those that you least expect, really anyone can learn given that they finally find a way that engages them. Simply throwing them away into the disciplinary system or even (as I've read in some screwed up cases), trying to push them out of school so the overall performance of the school can appear better, defeats what it means to be a teacher in the first place. -Parents. You'll always get a few who'll bug you to no end over little things, and you'll of course get the bunch who think you hate their student. It's hard to convince parents that problems may lie with their student and justifying why you had to give them low grades on something, and even if you try your best to work with them you'll hit a wall many times because as far as they are concerned, it must be something wrong you are doing. -Holidays you get aren't really holidays. On weekends you're probably grading and planning. On student/teacher off days you're making room for parent meetings. In longer breaks like in the summer, you're probably holding down another job to make ends meet on top of doing any continuing education and re-certification courses you might have to do. It's hardly an ideal situation that people make it out to be. -You'll get students with differing special needs, and you are instructed by the school to accommodate to the best of your ability. This can bring in a lot of other problems on top of planning it for all your other "normal" students. How do you make sure that kid feels like they belong in the classroom? Keep them from being bullied and made uncomfortable in the class? Try to make sure they learn. -Teacher is not just a teacher. You're a police man. You're a guard. You're a counselor. You're a tutor. You're a confidant. Hell, even a babysitter. You are held to fairly high standards too- I don't think you'll get too far in the community if you're known to frequent bars or use drugs, even if you don't let it interfere with your professional life. Some school districts even have some strict standards extending to facial hair on men and mandating 'acceptable' clothing among other things. Now you got to multiple that load times the different periods you have, and the many years you'll be in the profession. I think some of you remember Matt Damon defending himself from a lolbertarian ambush from some duo who was going on about tenured teachers and the "luxuries" they get! [media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WIv7Xk8BjA[/media] With all the shit you go through, it's really not that great a job if you're in it solely for the pay and benefits. Contrary to popular belief it's really not a cakewalk as I've only touched upon above and honestly if you're in the field, you have to be committed to it to begin with. Otherwise I'm really not sure how you'll deal with the burden of trying to educate many youth and affecting their lives in such a way that can effects for the rest of their lives. There's been many times when I felt uncomfortable of whether or not I've adequately prepared a student for future challenges, and as I've had other older teachers tell me, the pain of knowing that you were responsible for "failing" a student who needed help. Don't get me wrong, there are some "bad" teachers. There are also some "bad" cops, firemen, businessmen, bureaucrats, soldiers, clerks, lawyers, doctors, nurses, scientists, engineers, etc. who you wonder how they got there in the first place. But then there's the rest who hold up the occupation and its position in society and try their hardest to do their job with out fault. There are problems to be solved in education, but it's not completely the teachers' fault- these sweeping condemnations of all teachers and generalizations about them do not help at all. In fact even if they were to strike back at this supposed problems that unions, pay, tenure and so on make in the field, you'll still have a problem. And you're only disincentivizing future recruits- and particularly (in parts of the United States at least) to try and encourage more college students to consider teaching in their field hoping to pay off debts and live a "Middle-Class" life style after 4 years in the grind, it's only making it less appealing a job. Just doing this 2 year thing on my own I've really gotten a real appreciation for the teaching field. Still even looking at my block of text I still feel one really doesn't get the feeling of what's going on until they try their hand at it too. I'm speaking from the perspective of the United States, but I'm sure the stress on teachers is the same everywhere. This childish fixation on teachers trying to fight for their pay and rights, their unions, and all this supposed "spoiled" nature of teachers I think is simplistic and inaccurate. I used to think like that too and honestly looking back on myself I don't know how I could think like that.