Teaching is what I want to do with my life; that is, I would love to teach creative writing at the college level for my actual job. However, teaching public school is almost unbearable, and that is what a lot of colleges are moving towards-- you have to deal with incessant bureaucracy, and the students are being forced away from actual curriculum that can help them learn in favor of curriculum that are easily quantifiable and measurable by the federal government. Kissimmee Middle School, the school at which I taught 7th grade, was ranked a 'C' school by Florida grading standards; however, a large part of that grade was based on our "technology" fulfillment, since we had a large number of computers on campus, although few of the computers were actually hooked up, and the students were rarely allowed to use the few that were except for standardized testing, but just the fact that they were present was enough to fulfill the technology criteria. Additionally, we all had to drop our regular curriculum for a month in preparation for the FCAT , Florida's standardized test, another way schools were graded; we didn't teach them actual knowledge during this time, but our school instead spent $10000 for this guy to come and teach us teachers how to teach the students "tricks" for taking standardized tests (the false answers, the misleading answers, etc). Of course most schools do things like this, because the lower a school is graded, the LESS funding it gets in the future, which makes perfect sense to me, thank you Jeb and George Bush.RATING (teaching) - 92%
RATING (teaching at public school) - 11%
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3 comments:
The plural of curriculum is curricula.
I think, to some degree, quantifiable learning objectives are a good idea. Tying them directly to funding was a really stupid move, though, and the objectives they're actually using are behavioural rather than content-oriented. So not only is it easy for teachers to make up bullshit rationales about how any old lesson fits the learning objectives, but the tests are nearly impossible for students to prepare for, since the human mind remembers the actual stuff it learns much better than a bunch of abstract "skill sets" that are only detachable from facts, stories, formulae, etc. in the imaginations of constructivist Ed. D's. So it's no wonder kids are being taught tricks, since teaching them actual things goes against most of what teachers have been learning at teachers' colleges for the last 40 years.
In unrelated news, I listened to Iron Maiden with my special ed. math class today. Math sure makes me want to "run to the hills." He he he.
If you school was rated a C in Florida then that dumpster picture pretty much says it all.
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