The idiots they let teach our children

[ALS]

This a part two of the Idiots they let into college. Long rant.

I got reamed out last week by a teacher because of my constant complaint that at least 30% of them need to be fired and replaced with competent people.

Let me give you a little background on this little lady. For your information this is one of those teachers we all want teaching our kids.

She is getting frustrated in her job. She was one of those "I wanted a nice easy part time job with summers off for full time pay types.

Well Mrs. Wonderful teaches in a Catholic school here in the area and it seems she getting very stressed over the extra time she is having to put into her students instruction. Finally she let me have it the other day with a comment that I should sit in her class for a few days and see how hard she has it.

Here is the real problem with her. She is good, real good at what she does.
She got passed over for three high paying Union teaching jobs in the Government School system and this job pays about half of the public schools.
The problem I heard from one of her teaching friends is she is too good for the public schools.

This woman during her student teaching days was well received and her training teacher was quite intimidated with her abilities to get difficult kids wanting to learn and eagerly participate in her class.

This is an example of the incompetent teachers running our schools. This so called career training teacher asked her why she was correcting her students papers the way she was. She explained to her that she wanted the kids to see how it was done correctly. She was making comments and replacing incorrect grammar and poor sentence structure with the correct way it should have been written. This training teacher said and I quote: Why waste your time doing that, they are as stupid as their parents.

The next year she got her own classroom. When the state testing came around 87% of her kids scored above the state and national average. 96% of her kids score at or above the average. This particular school district scores at the absolute bottom as a whole. This was the only classroom in the whole district that performed at this level.

She was honored by the School Board, Superintendent of the school district as well as her Principle of her school. They even threw an assembly at the school honoring her for her achievement with these kids.

From that point on most of the other teachers started to make her life miserable.
You see according to the teachers it is all the parents fault that your children are not learning. Snotty comments such as "Well here comes miss Super Star" were common as the days went by.
Well the reason for the change in the other teachers attitude was because she was set up to fail by her training teacher. You see her class was cherry picked to make sure that all the kids at the bottom of the academic ladder were placed in her classroom.

Well her husband gets transferred to Pittsburgh and she leaves that school district and she is now looking for a job. She does some substitute teaching only to find she is raved about the quality she brings to the job plus the kids like her a lot.
We are talking about principles that say she is best teacher in the school and she is a substitute.
Three times in three years when a full time teaching position came about in the school district where she was teaching at she got passed over.

I have heard this from the teachers she has for friends in these districts.

She scored in the top 5% of all teachers who have taken the state certification test here in Pa. Last summer a teacher was hired instead of her due to the fact that this woman's parents gave money to a school board members re-election campaign.

This lucky teacher had to take the certification test three times to pass it by the skin of her teeth. She is now teaching your kids. Nice!!!

Well my little teacher friend is getting frustrated because she is working on her masters, plus having to spend money out of her small paycheck to make sure her kids have the proper supplies to learn in her class. Add to that she has to work much harder to bring her kids up to speed because the previous teachers didn't do their jobs educating these kids. These kids come from poor neighborhoods and at least their parents realize how bad the public schools are and want their kids to get a good education.

No one is ever going to let her into a public school in the area because she would prove to everyone that the problem is with the teachers not the kids or parents.

One of my employees moved out of the city of Pittsburgh last year after two of these "quality" teachers recommended last year at a parent/teacher conference that she and her husband get their kids into one of the suburban school districts. These teachers said they wouldn't let their kids be taught by some of the teachers that were employed in Pittsburgh City school district.

[Emptymag]

Without getting too long with this post, my neighbor is an elementary school principal and the tales she tells scare the Hell out of me AND I DON'T HAVE CHILDREN. The liberal agenda (sorry libs out there, perhaps I should say FAR left agenda?) is frightening in its power and scope. You can forget about teaching your kids between right and wrong, because what they are being taught in school is that everyone is right and they are all winners. My neighbor's life at work can be very rough because she does not "conform" to the views of her co-workers.
She used to be a high school principal, but soon tired of calling the police to the school on a daily basis and "fighting" with parents who questioned why their child is being punished for bad behavior. The fact that she began referring to the students as "criminals" is SAD. She is a VERY decent person and really likes the kids. Her thinking is that the kids are there to LEARN, unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the focus any longer.

[billamj]

It is stories like this that were our primary reason for sending our daughter to private school. We have full access to everyone involved in the school through the superintendent, they actually return our calls and don't try to blow smoke up our asses. If we have any choice in the matter she will continue through private school all the way through college. I am so tired of the far left trying to take over the country by brainwashing the kids.

[axmdr40]

You have no idea how bad it really is:

-Once had a teacher tell to my class that the Big Bang Theory explained how the continents separated.
-4th grade teacher threw a desk at a kid 2 years ahead of me...still teaching.
-9th grade Computer teacher was a perverted old man, used to use the "drop a pencil trick to look up skirts.
-9th grade Math teacher also a perv. made assigned seats, all the girls were at the far side of the room, to get there the had to squeeze through about a 6inch gap between the students desks and his, so their butts were in his face...hot girls always got A's, no matter what.
9th and 10th grade Biology teacher taught us that "You are a fool if you believe in any religion."
-10th grade English teacher was a pothead.
-11th grade English teacher use to get drunk in class and sing to us. She even rubbed my face once...very weird...very funny.
-12th grade AP English teacher graded on the basis that every single text we read was about to be applied to feminism, and if it didn't, we were wrong.

[Lucas]

You have no idea how bad it really is:

-Once had a teacher tell to my class that the Big Bang Theory explained how the continents separated.
-4th grade teacher threw a desk at a kid 2 years ahead of me...still teaching.
-9th grade Computer teacher was a perverted old man, used to use the "drop a pencil trick to look up skirts.
-9th grade Math teacher also a perv. made assigned seats, all the girls were at the far side of the room, to get there the had to squeeze through about a 6inch gap between the students desks and his, so their butts were in his face...hot girls always got A's, no matter what.
9th and 10th grade Biology teacher taught us that "You are a fool if you believe in any religion."
-10th grade English teacher was a pothead.
-11th grade English teacher use to get drunk in class and sing to us. She even rubbed my face once...very weird...very funny.
-12th grade AP English teacher graded on the basis that every single text we read was about to be applied to feminism, and if it didn't, we were wrong.

That sounds just about exactly like the school I went to. Scary.

[LittleRedToyota]

reminds me of a writing professor i had in college.

her theory (actually, i think it was the accepted theory of the entire english department)...which she taught as "fact" was that text had no meaning until it was read and then the meaning was put into by the reader.

now, i can see where they were coming from to some extent...each reader will bring their own experiences and biases to the text and, therefore, extract somewhat different meaning from it, but to say there is no meaning at all in text until it is read is just plain silly.

somehow, i think the author probably meant something when he or she wrote the text. different readers might *misinterpret* what that meaning is/was in various ways, but that doesn't mean the text does not have inherent meaning.

it does give you some insight into how these people (mis)interpret the constitution though...after all, it doesn't actually have any meaning until it is read--and the meaning comes from the reader. the founding fathers didn't mean anything when they wrote it. a rather convenient way of claiming the constitution/bill-of-rights means whatever the heck you want it to mean.

good grief.

[axmdr40]

That sounds just about exactly like the school I went to. Scary.

That's because it is....

[Turbinesaint]

No one is ever going to let her into a public school in the area because she would prove to everyone that the problem is with the teachers not the kids or parents.

This opinion is part of the problem. Nobody thinks teachers do a good job, people don't value education, and the majority opinion is that teachers are dumbshits looking for a free ride. That's a blanket statement, just like it's a blanket statement that every bad kid is the parent's fault. There are garbage teachers, garbage students, and garbage parents; just like there are great examples of each of the previous. It takes effort from everyone, not just the educators who see their students on average of 6hrs a week (middle / high school setting). That's about 220 hours per student in a given school year. Most parents see and interact with their children 10X more than that, but are willing (in some cases, not everyone) to place the blame solely on the teachers. Almost every good kid I see has a strong parental influence in the home (of course their are exceptions to every rule). Scapegoating accomplishes nothing. This applies to many avenues here, not just education.

[ALS]

My problem is the same old excuse that the teachers union puts out it is the parents fault never the teachers when asked why the schools are failing.
We pay more and more money per student and the scores are stagnant or dropping. So paying more money for mediocre employees isn't helping the problem. I want to pay the good teachers top dollar and kick the slackers and unqualified teachers to the curb. I would be willing to pay the cream of the crop $80K to $100K a year. But there is no way I'm letting money like that go to the bottom 30% who are worthless goldbrickers.
This is the same argument we hear from the government on Gun control. It is the guns not the criminals that misuse them. Replace guns with parents and criminals with Teachers.

[RandomTask]

One of my employees moved out of the city of Pittsburgh last year after two of these "quality" teachers recommended last year at a parent/teacher conference that she and her husband get their kids into one of the suburban school districts. These teachers said they wouldn't let their kids be taught by some of the teachers that were employed in Pittsburgh City school district.

Or ANY urban school district. I taught for 3 years in Philthydelphia, and the amount of dead wood siting behind teachers' desks was amazing. What more is that the school district is extremely top heavy and many teachers aspire to get the hell out of the classroom and become administrators.

Oh, and as for private schools, I've observed first-hand, that left-wing tripe is served up steaming hot there as well.