Visiting with Friends and talking about teachers

Tweet

This weekend my wife and I visited some friends, some teachers and other not in education, but all had children or grandchildren in school. It was interesting when the discussion turned to schools and education everyone had a horror story about what had happened to one of their children in school and how a teacher or a couple of teachers made school miserable for their child. In one case the teacher was grading how good a student colored a worksheet on Math, because in some spaces the colored in up and down and other parts they colored side to side. In another case the teacher had a video every Monday and on Tuesday the students took a test. If they missed the Video there was no makeup. In a third grade class the students didn't start to write sentences until March and had to write a paragraph for the State Standard Test in April. When the principal was asked why the response was the teachers get to select the curriculum (the contract allows for academic freedom) To be fair they all had good stories also. Their biggest question was why can't schools do something about the poor teachers and why don't the good teachers get more pay than the poor teachers. Most of the people outside of education did not realize the power the Unions had over the schools and how little control the administration and school board has over the workings of the school. Some teachers expressed concern that if a teacher called in sick it was up to the school to prove that they were not sick if any action were to be taken against them,, again because of the "working conditions" language in the contract. Needless to say the talk of schools and teachers was interesting.