A teacher needs to teach outside of the subject material

That's because teaching TECHNICAL literacy has been ditched in favour of teaching ****ing social studies. When I did advanced English in high school, it was 100% technical. No social commentary, arts, or humanities - and the only 'literature' involved was used solely to demonstrate technicalities. It was a course which churned out journalists, lawyers, doctors, speech writers, and editors. It was truly Advanced English, not arty BS.

By the time my kids reached that point in high school, advanced English had been dumbed down to art/sociology classes, with very little technical focus.

 

I was giving an example of a natural pairing that I recall. I am generally on the side of letting teachers teach howsoever they want. The only time in high school where that was a problem was physics because the teacher had retired from the navy before becoming a teacher, was old as dirt, getting ready to retire and was the head of the science department. He didn't give AF what anybody thought when I had him. That bastard would have us doing projectile calculations that were essentially scaled down versions of missile intercept math. If you hadn't at least had pre-cal, you were toast in the first semester of that class. Second semester was cake--you could have slept through every class and gotten a C because that was when we were mostly doing silly little labs.

I also had a really good government teacher. He was also so old that when he had his eyes closed, you weren't sure if he had died or not, so I think there may be a generational aspect to it. We did a lot of group activities in the class like your group creating a proposed new law, then pitching it to the rest of the class and letting them vote it up or down as a good idea. We also did lots of current events in there and he really didn't limit what events so if you wanted to talk about a scientific discovery, we would; if you wanted to talk about politics, or the environment, you could. Only requirement was that if it wasn't something widely reported in the MSM, you had to come with a credible source like a newspaper article and have enough copies to give everybody one.

 

There are certain things... that give away you don't know what you're talking about. Teachers have photos of their family on their desks. I mean, it's kinda obvious. I mean, chances are their kids are going to school so they have school photos. It just makes sense that teachers would have photos of their family on their desk.

 

Yeah I am never going to be able to spell. Now that autocorrect is the next generation spellcheck, I just have to get it in the ballpark LOL. I read a lot of British sites, so one thing that stops me in my tracks though is the g word. Is it gray or grey? IDK I never know. I can google it but then will forget the answer 5 minutes later and spellcheck and autocorrect are no help. I am struggling with my keyboarding a lot in the last year or two, but I think that is because I regularly use three different computers that have 3 different sized keyboards, two different sized cellphones and a tablet.

 

See that's why I took a semester off from college. I was 2.5 years into a doctorate program and I was shocked at how bad the professors were at teaching. Mind you they are all experts in their field. But I only encountered one who could actually teach the material effectively. And when covid hit? It was basically all over. The first time I stepped into a classroom I realized "teaching is a profession". I knew it was a profession but seeing how I could barely control 20 3rd graders I was floored. It really is a professional job. And I get what you mean by the math. I don't think it's taught very well, it's not ever relating to other fields and the math teacher I had was just the worst. Luckily though I did have a computer science teacher who could help me.

I know! You would think IT could block the porn at least but we still got kids looking up inappropriate things. At the very least could they restrict youtube to the adults?

The kids are definitely capable of critical thinking. I have seen them work through problems before when I ask them "why". I don't know why critical thinking isn't encourage. You can't do just simple memorization of facts, you have to teach them to critically think. It will help with everything else too. I think teaching philosophy would do wonders for every student out there. Basic stuff, nothing too complex. Just simple problem solving because on the test, they will need to problem solve.

Define 'you'. Because who I was in high school, was a student being molded by the school.

I was in school when common core was starting. I think the teachers were learning what common core was when I graduated. From the sounds of it, the teachers hated it. So I had some freedom. Plus I took a lot of AP classes too so I had more freedom than most students. The one teacher who I think made me relove books was the AP lit teacher who to my face told me "if you take my class, you will most likely fail it". And I told her "well I would still like to try". I didn't fail the class, but I didn't get a high enough grade on the AP exam either for college credit. Still, I learned a lot from her. I credit that teacher with why I love reading. Ironically enough failure to get a good enough grade made me realize the reason I took her class was because I wanted to read more novels with her.

 

No they do not. They need to teach the subject they are qualified in and leave other subjects to other teachers or the parents.

 

Never saw any photos of my teachers family on their desk. lol. somehow. SOMEHOW...they were still able to teach.

Dunno how we got through them dark ages I tell ya.

 

Well I can safely say that for the 10 or so teachers I have subbed for, like 7 or 8 of them did. Heck one of them even had a countdown until they would get married. So... like, have you ever even been in an office setting before? Like with cubicles?

 

And that's part of the problem. You dont need to know their family life, and they dont need to show you their family life.

If my teachers had kids, they sure as **** didn't want their students to know.

 

I can't honestly tell if you have ever been in an office environment, or seen a teacher's desk before.

 

My understanding is that a lot of colleges will just give it to you as an english elective credit anyway and are forcing people to take their first year english and lit classes, they won't accept freshman elglish/lit as transfer credits, etc etc because they are so concerned with making sure people actually can read and write it has gotten so bad. I didn't take the AP exam for that as one of my grandfathers had a catastrophic illness and then died leaving me missing the test as we were out of state. On the late testing dates I had to choose between taking the english one or the french one as they fell at the same time on the same day so I elected for the latter as it was my stronger suit.

 

Yes. I have. And yes...I went through the public school. And no, the teachers that taught me were smart enough to not share their personal life with their students.

That's just the dumbest **** ever.

So there you go. Problem solved. Resist the urge in sharing personal **** with your students. Weeeee! how easy was that! We had invented a problem that was so very easily solved.

 

...
Did you have a teacher that used Miss or Mrs?

 

https://apnews.com/article/covid-he...city-oakland-5d8956fa47149651dc09c506627c8bab

lol!

Sure it's due primarily to the "pandemic" That's exactly why a family would opt to send their children to private schools. The "pandemic"

 

An office is NOT the same thing as a classroom full of minors.

 

We all did.

 

All female teachers were reffered to as "Miss", and all male teachers as "Sir". They still are, in much of the English speaking world. There's no "Mrs, or Ms, or "Julie".

 

Congrats, your teachers talked about their family life.

Cool.

 

The lesson was successful but as you noted with your own criteria, not being fully aware of material, curriculum, teaching, etc means you're sort of half applying words you sort of understand and applying them to your point in a way that doesn't work the way you imagine.

Your subject being discussed is algebra. The questions you bring up might use what some call realia and others call real world examples. The point is to make the abstract more concrete and in doing so it raises your interest and helps you with your understanding of the material.

In allowing concrete examples you are not engaged in what some would call a cross disciplinary or interdisciplinary approach.

Rather this is simply math or specifically algebra and it uses real world examples to make the abstract more concrete which helps with your interest and processing of the material.

They do mean that but not in the way you are imagining. If your Math book was written in English is it teaching you English or is that coincidental? Certainly the book could be nothing but equations, graphs, etc with no language at all but that level of abstraction would be far too hard for almost every one learning that math.

Now to some of the other points. The purpose of the math class isn't to further your politics. The purpose is for you to do math. If you choose to take that mastery and apply it to politics that is your prerogative.

Also real world examples isn't taking the math out of context but rather putting it into context. It's the context of the real world but that doesn't need to be political. If you use algebra to calculate the weight of a bridge or the speed of a train that is a real world example. If the textbook demands that you go advocate for bridges and trains or should hate cars, that isn't math. That isn't interdisciplinary or utilizing other subjects. That's just a political agenda.

You are correct that there is not enough time in a day to teach them everything which is why teaching them the BASICS is so important. If you don't have enough time to teach one subject well, diluting it with a bunch of other subjects just magnifies the problem, it doesn't improve it. It's like that sort of bullshit with divorced parents where they talk about quality time vs quantity of time. It's a nice platitude that doesn't really address or fix a problem.

Now you mention a lesson incorporating learning about Venezuela in the midst of a Spanish class and it captured and kept your attention. Was that because Venezuela at that time was a CURRENT EVENT or was it because the lesson demanded you become a revolutionary and go out and march to make sure what was happening there would happen where you were as well?

As an example if you're teaching history and while discussing past Presidential election you incorporate the current presidential election if it happens to be a year in which that occurs, no one is going to complain about that. If however you demand students vote for a particular candidate, register to vote, work for a particular campaign etc. all with the warning that as a history teacher you know history will repeat itself if they don't do as you say, that isn't teaching history, critical thinking or anything else. That is robbing students of their agency using "teaching" and a biased agenda.

Many of the examples happening in the news with items like this go well beyond teaching. They go into advocacy. You'll read language like "students must be agents of change." That isn't education, that is revolution. You don't need to be an "agent of change" to be competent at math.

I have an advanced degree in the field in question. I can do a lot more than ask a teacher, I'd be the person teaching them.

 

That's a bit of a stretch. It doesn't denote any information regarding her family, her partners, her sex life...nothing.

And I will even be more bold? For K-3, if you can't handle your pronoun as being either Mr, Mrs, or Miss? You have no business teaching that grade. Sorry, no helicopter pronouns allowed.

 

Lmao. You think you can tell stuff about a couples sex life by their family? Is this a perversion or are you for real? A picture of their fam is also not a teaching tool. People just like to see their fam. I have pictures of mine at work but now I’m scared to show people the picture if they think like you suggest some do. I don’t think that’s a normal train of thought though. That seems weird to me.

 

But that has very obviously nothing to do with the current controversy.

 

You do that in some neighborhoods you'come home to find your house trashed. And God help you if you have a cute daughter. And know that isn't just in African American Neighborhoods.

 

That is an extremely strange notion that you can tell about a family sex life through a family photo...smh

 

Why would that even cross someone’s mind out of a family photo? That’s definitely strange to me. Maybe some do look at them that way but I never have. Never even had that concept mentioned to me before