Quote:
Originally Posted by kane
I completely agree that the number of actual, high quality, teachers is pretty low. I enjoy watching baseball. I like putting on the mitt and throwing the ball around in the back yard or going to a batting cage and taking a few swings. I even played baseball in grade school and high school. This doesn't mean I could ever in a million years play at the pro level. The same goes for teachers. Many like kids, have a passion for teaching and want to do well, but don't have the actual skills to do it. Not to mention a system that is in place that hinders them at every turn.
The Finnish lead the world in education and they do it in an interesting way. In that country teaching is considered a very noble profession. They only have a few schools that actually teach and train teachers. They accept one out of every 18-20 applicants to the school. After graduating you work as an assistant for a while before you ever actually teach a class. They want to make sure the best of the best are teaching their kids. By placing such high value on the job and demanding such high results they are able to get the cream of the crop as far as teachers go so every classroom is led by someone that really knows what they are doing.
Going back to my original point, I was just explaining some of the reasons public schools cost more per student than private schools. More money doesn't solve the problems. You can throw money at things all day and never fix them, but there are inherent costs that a public school has that most private schools do not.
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The Finnish example is also used in that book and another - The Talent Code which is also a great book on excelling and learning.
I had a teacher in my gym that was pretty lazy. Actually very lazy. It was group classes - Crossfit type training and there was maybe 40 people in the group. I slowly shifted from playful banter and joking around to push her to just saying "look, if you aren't going to push yourself or make an effort, you can't be helped". She stopped and looked at me and said "everyone's best is different". I was floored. First, the superintendent of her school district was also in the same group working out. This woman is feared by all the teachers and we had a lot of them because of our location, referrals etc. I said something like "your best... are we seeing your best right now?" and she started explaining that everyone has different abilities and has to be treated differently etc etc etc and I told her "everyone rises to the expectations you set for them and demand of them" and she started arguing that I didn't know anything. I stopped the music and told her that I was deeply offended... not because she was lazy and didn't even pretend to try, because I saw that often, but because she was a teacher.
What baffled me most though was how she could be employed as a teacher with her attitude AND talk like this in front of the one person that has to ultimately decide whether or not she has a job in her school district or not.