In the United States, we are living in a weird time. The country is in a state of unrest and no relief seems to be in sight. Kids love controversy and look to their teachers for guidance. It is our jobs to walk the tight rope of not expressing personal beliefs and keeping the facts straight.
Honesty is always the best policy. Do NOT try and sugar coat or dodge your students' questions; they can tell off the jump. Let them express their opinion, when appropriate, and correct the facts as they go. I find it helpful to let the kids write it down first to get some of the emotion out and focus on facts. These times are great for teaching kids how to support their ideas and beliefs with facts. I love to ask my kids why; constantly pushing them to defend. This makes them better thinkers and better citizens. Times may be tough but opportunity is amble. We are in a golden age of argument and we can help teach the proper way to do it and not the emotional Twitter way. Sneak out, Kyle
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We rank 14th out of 40 countries in education. 14th despite the fact that we almost out spend every other country in terms of education.
We spend three times more per pupil than other countries but we can not outperform them. Why? You often hear people say that if there was more money for schools, our schools would be able to perform better. The data does not bear this fact out. So why oh why does our education system not crack the top ten? Maybe we have too many kids per teacher? That must be it! Our pupil to teacher ration is too high. Our ratio sits around 15:1; pretty much the middle of the pack in comparitive countries. Korea and Finland out perform despite having higher ratios. That must not be it either. Maybe our teachers are underpaid! That must be it. Finland, Netherlands, Germany, Korea, and Denmark all pay their teachers higher salaries, on average, than the teachers in the United States are paid. Those countries are all also higher ranked than the US. This may carry some weight. Teachers in the US in general are not highly regarded and respected as they are in some other countries. Teachers may garner a lot of pity, but do they really get the respect they deserve? Our educational system sucks because we are not be spending our money wisely and our society does not value the education they receive. Education is taken for granted. Education is a "get" not a given. Our system is so desperate for teachers we take any and all comers. This lowers the opinion of the profession for those students that suffer under poor teachers and no one wants to pay for poor performance. Until we increase the competitiveness in the qualifications in our teachers our system will continue to lag behind. There are other countries who outperform us despite having less money to spend and having more kids in the class room. We need to build up the profession and inspire more students to enter education in order to increase the quality of candidates available for the job. We need to evolve and only the strong survive. Sneak out, Kyle |
AuthorKyle is a 34 year old teacher that loves James Bond, history, donuts, and sneakers. Archives
February 2021
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