Random Thoughts Thread

[Luke]

Your wife teachers ESL?! That's cool, I work right next door to the ESL guy and he seems to have the same experience. Good amount of travel between all the schools in the district too.

She earned her Masters probably six years ago, she's been teaching since 2001, but only got the ESL position around three years ago. She teaches at two schools, all within a twenty minute commute. So her gas costs are down big time, her salary spiked another 10%, and she is such a happier individual all around.

She hated, hated school politics until her ESL position, and although she still hates school politics, at least now she has a say in matters.

I tell ya Bone, you and my wife would hit it off (as friends mine you. That's MY kool-aid). She rarely, and I mean hardly ever, complains about kids, but can go on a rant about parents everyday. Not just in ESL classes, but in school politics as a whole.

A few exceptions aside, she LOVES the Hispanic parents, loathes upper-middle class white parents, and...well, she hardly sees African American parents. And that isn't a knock at all, it's that when I asked her about parents and their ethnicity, she responded with...

"Usually Hispanic parents really want their kids to understand they have an opportunity to advance and push them as much as they can. If their kid is slipping, they remind them that they are getting 'free food and education' and place the blame solely on the child, and not the teacher. With white parents you have either trailer trash or uppity non working women who both, not matter the income, blame the teacher first. They also both prefer a quick fix over an actual solution. The black parents? To be honest, I rarely speak with them".

[J T]

Random Thought: If you see a Shaq sized dude telling his little kids to "Just get in the f---ing car!" it's better to jot down his plate number and not confront him.

That reminded me of this:

[J T]

I teach an undergraduate course in Research Methods. It's kind of crazy how so much is expected of the instructor. Students now expect you to give them your Power Point slides, provide podcasts or screencasts of lectures, to have a continuously updated website, meet with them at times that fit their schedules, give away clear instructions about what will and won't be on the test, create study guides for them, etc.

In my day, you went to class, took your own notes, and you read your book. That was it.

A lot of this I honestly don't mind because they are good ideas. The only thing I won't do is pre-grade your paper before it gets graded or give away exactly what is going to be on my test. Many faculty members get much more upset than me though and they complain about student entitlement. I can understand that too. As an instructor, you have to pick and choose what you spend your time on, and the pay sucks, so there's not a lot of financial motivation to bend over backwards to make life easier for students. I'd much rather spend time making my lectures have an entertaining and educational story that flows through them, rather than creating a study guide that you could have made by yourself if you read the textbook outline or followed my lecture structure.

I do know that the average hours students spend per week outside of class has dropped substantially over the past 10 years (based on some research I once read but don't currently have the reference for).

The younger generation does seem different than mine. I never would have told my instructors to do things for me, like "will you please put this up online" or "can you put your lectures up a day BEFORE class so I can use them to take notes" or "would you PLEASE get us the study guide further in advance and make sure that it ONLY tells us to study material that will ACTUALLY be on the test". I hear stuff like this all the time as a teacher. There was even one professor I was a TA for that had the student's parents contacting him about their son's experience in his UNIVERSITY class. Come on kid, you're supposed to be an adult now. Fight your own battles.

It does get obnoxious sometimes and I think it comes from seeing their parents fight the school system all through grade school to get things their way. Plus the fact that they live and die by their exam scores after having an education system entirely geared around how well you can perform on standardized tests, without regard to the many other benefits of an education that extend beyond test performance. But a lot of it is just a generational difference and older faculty aren't used to having to use technology, and the students are too young to know anything that isn't high tech and instantly available. At the same time though, it's amazing to me how many students pester you with e-mails that are easily answered on Google. I don't know... it's always a constant struggle between deciding how much to give them and how much to expect from them.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Your wife teachers ESL?! That's cool, I work right next door to the ESL guy and he seems to have the same experience. Good amount of travel between all the schools in the district too.

She earned her Masters probably six years ago, she's been teaching since 2001, but only got the ESL position around three years ago. She teaches at two schools, all within a twenty minute commute. So her gas costs are down big time, her salary spiked another 10%, and she is such a happier individual all around.

She hated, hated school politics until her ESL position, and although she still hates school politics, at least now she has a say in matters.

I tell ya Bone, you and my wife would hit it off (as friends mine you. That's MY kool-aid). She rarely, and I mean hardly ever, complains about kids, but can go on a rant about parents everyday. Not just in ESL classes, but in school politics as a whole.

I hear ya on this. I always tell people, "the hardest part of working at a school isn't the kids - it's the parents."

[Luke]

Power Point slides...

It serves its purpose rather well, but I can't stand PP. I've never, ever watched a Power Point presentation that was memorable. Great for a ten minute presentation, but even a half hour of PP in a classroom is miserable*.

*Unless one slide creates an hour of discussion. But I stand firm on my opinion that PP is lazy, boring, and a short cut.

[SNKnicotine]

Your wife teachers ESL?! That's cool, I work right next door to the ESL guy and he seems to have the same experience. Good amount of travel between all the schools in the district too.

She earned her Masters probably six years ago, she's been teaching since 2001, but only got the ESL position around three years ago. She teaches at two schools, all within a twenty minute commute. So her gas costs are down big time, her salary spiked another 10%, and she is such a happier individual all around.

She hated, hated school politics until her ESL position, and although she still hates school politics, at least now she has a say in matters.

I tell ya Bone, you and my wife would hit it off (as friends mine you. That's MY kool-aid). She rarely, and I mean hardly ever, complains about kids, but can go on a rant about parents everyday. Not just in ESL classes, but in school politics as a whole.

I hear ya on this. I always tell people, "the hardest part of working at a school isn't the kids - it's the parents."

My fiancee is a 3rd grade teacher and also says the same thing!

[KitKatCara]

I hear ya on this. I always tell people, "the hardest part of working at a school isn't the kids - it's the parents."

One of the things I remember most from high school was the freaking parents and their entitlement issues. When the teachers told the snobby kids to sit down and shut up, they would just say something like 'My parents will hear about this!' and continue to disrupt the class. A few times, the parents would get texts from their kids and show up at the school, then get mad when the cell phone was taken away. It always pissed me off when 30 - 45 minutes of my class time was taken up by a parent chewing out a teacher and telling him/her to do their job, when it was their child who was preventing them from doing so in the first place. This happened so often that the class would get lower scores on their tests because of missing class time.

[BoringSupreez]

Power Point slides...

It serves its purpose rather well, but I can't stand PP. I've never, ever watched a Power Point presentation that was memorable. Great for a ten minute presentation, but even a half hour of PP in a classroom is miserable*.

*Unless one slide creates an hour of discussion. But I stand firm on my opinion that PP is lazy, boring, and a short cut.

That's how all of my classes are taught. 50-minute PP presentations every hour from 7 to 2. Everyone loves it when the teacher takes a break from slides and speaks from experience instead. The rest of the time, it's hard to stay awake.

[Luke]

That's how all of my classes are taught. 50-minute PP presentations every hour from 7 to 2. Everyone loves it when the teacher takes a break from slides and speaks from experience instead. The rest of the time, it's hard to stay awake.

Ugh.

I was almost kicked out of the MBA program because I only attended a few of my classes. Why didn't I go to class? Power Point. I could drive to campus, find a parking spot, walk to the Bate (school of business) building, sit in a classroom for 90 minutes, then go back home. OR! I could flip through the presentation in twenty minutes in the comfort of my own home, and show up and ace the test when proctored.

Most professors couldn't care less as long as I was making a solid A in their course, but a few professors who were serious dicks went to the Dean about my absenteeism and some added "Participation in class is 30% of your grade", and if you get one C in the program, your ass is kicked out.

I remember meeting with the Dean and him saying, "You are on my shit list as of now as this isn't the first time a professor has complained about you not showing up for class". Always being the one to put my foot in my mouth I told him, "I'm destroying every presentation and exam. Going to his class is pointless". To which he reminded me "You learn more from the experience of the course, not by making A's on exams".

Again, I asked him "Have you ever been to one of his classes? Have you been to any of the MBA courses? The guy reads power point slides. There is nothing to 'experience'. Some of these classes feel like a waste of my time, but if I'm forced to go to earn my degree, so be it".

He reminded me that some professors have quite the large ego, and that they felt I was disrespecting them for not attending their life changing lectures. Yeah? Well fuck them. The only* lesson I really learned from several of my MBA courses was how to deal with authoritative assholes who think they are way more important than they are.



*I also learned that some professors tend to get pretty upset if you ask them to do some actual work and they do not like to hear "I'm paying tuition, you are getting paid a bloated salary. I don't work for you, you don't work for me, we're expected to work together".

[dsheinem]

must...resist...urge...to...chime in about...professors