Bob Shepherd has a long and distinguished career as a teacher, curriculum developer, assessment developer, textbook writer, and more. He returned to teaching. He describes here what the state of Florida required him to do:
Years ago, I attended Indiana University, where I took a double major in English and Psychology and completed all the work required to receive what was called, then, a “lifetime certification” to teach high-school English, which I did for three years before taking a job in educational publishing so that I could actually support my family. For twenty-five years, I wrote and edited textbooks for use in K-college English classrooms. The list of my textbook publications (and online educational materials programs) runs to twenty-five pages, single spaced. At one time, it was difficult to find a K-12 English classroom in the United States where one or more of my textbooks was not being used—books on writing, literature, grammar, African-American studies, and much else.
The Hindus say that in the latter part of a life, one must quit the things of this world and devote one’s self to things of the spirit. I decided to do that. At the end of my career, I returned to my first love, teaching, which would give me an opportunity to apply in classrooms what I had learned from several decades of applying myself assiduously to learning how to teach English language arts. Teaching and nursing are the two holiest of professions.
In order to get a teaching job in Florida, I had to
–Pay for and take SEVEN tests prepared and administered by the Ed Deform simpletons at Pearson
–Complete a 20-page online application form
–Submit letters of recommendation, and
–Provide body fluids for drug testing
On the job as a teacher of English, Film, and Debate, I had to
–Prepare, in the first year, an 800-page binder documenting every aspect of my teaching
–Submit to three formal evaluations and countless informal ones every year
–Complete a yearly Individual Professional Development Plan
–Complete 300 hours of utterly useless online ESL training that seemed, from the factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors throughout the materials, to have been prepared for five-year-olds by people with severe cognitive deficits
–Fill out several thousand 504, IEP, ESL, and PMP (progress monitoring plan) updates
–Prepare Data Walls and materials for Data Chats—exercises in pseudoscientific numerology
–Attend a summer AP English institute
–Proctor absurdly designed, punitive, soul-destroying standardized pretests, benchmark tests, and test tests
–Serve as a crossing guard every morning and afternoon
–Attend parent-teacher conferences weekly, sometimes daily
–Deal with parents who wanted to sue me because I insisted that their 11th-graders put end marks at the ends of their sentences
–Attend ”trainings” (“roll over, sit up, good boy”) for people with IQs of 65 on gang violence, bullying, drugs in school, blood-borne illness, test data, test data, test data, test data, test data, and more test data
–Prepare, for each class, a two-page lesson plan form and have these in binders for review whenever an administrator entered my class
–Keep a log of every parent contact—emails, telephone calls, meetings
–Post my grades and attendance both in a paper book and online
–Coach extracurriculars (speech and debate, theatre)
–Chaperone dances and numerous other evening events
–Prepare materials for and be present at parent nights
–Prepare to teach 22 or 23 classes a week (one year, for FIVE separate preps)
–Print and post reports of my ongoing data stream, in particular formats, with charts and graphs
–Grade, grade, grade, and grade some more. If I assigned my 150 or so students a single paragraph to write, I would have a novella to read and respond to. All day and evening, every Saturday, spend doing this, and often on Sunday as well.
–And somehow find time actually to interact, one-on-one, with my unique students, each with their enormous, unique needs, proclivities, interests, and potentials
And that’s only a partial list. I worked FAR, FAR harder as a teacher of high-school English than I did as an Executive Vice President at a billion-dollar-a-year publishing company.
And all for a salary less than what a checkout person at the local grocery makes.
Who wouldn’t want to do this?
Do you think that Florida doesn’t want teachers?
Four thoughts come to mind immediately: 1. Yes we need to examine the steps in place to become a teacher and consider their usefulness. That said some of the steps seem reasonable in this case, 2. Mr Shepard includes on the list things like IEP plans and preparing back to school material – not sure why he thinks such things shouldn’t be included in the expectations of a teacher, 3. Yes teaching is a challenging profession – one that involves lost of moving parts. In some ways the post seems to imply that Mr Shephard may have thought teaching would be this easy gig, which sadly too many folks believe, 4. The language describing the modules on ESL training (I believe the word a were “written five year olds with disabilities” – or something like that – doesn’t help the conversation at all. Why do folks have to include such insults when trying to make a point. It only takes away from the main point and leads to more division rather than discussion
I believe the comment was intended in most cases (like IEP plan) to slam the sheer volume of pps & doctn reqd, which is obviouslly ludicrous. Believe me, as the parent of 2 SpEd kids, if you put the two plans together, the # of inches thick rivalled that of our mortg refi agreement, & reqd MORE signatures/ initials. Somehow our SpEd& Guidance & teaching teams did a great job of it despite all the non-teaching/ planning, simply bureaucratic legalese ppwk reqd of them. Probably ONLY because ours was such a wealthy district that they could afford to have enough hands on deck to manage it all.
These plans are extraordinarily important–too important to be made into a bureaucratic paper-pushing exercise. The problem was lack of time to attend to them properly. Our guidance counselors were able to do precious little actual guidance because they spent all their time either filling out paperwork or proctoring required standardized test torture sessions.
“In some ways the post seems to imply that Mr Shephard may have thought teaching would be this easy gig.”
Or, he may spent more hours pondering the ins and outs of teaching than 99.9% of the people who go into it, which I believe is closer to the truth.
Thank you, TC. Much appreciated
“Mr. Shepard [sic] may have thought teaching would be this easy gig.” jlsteach: I taught at the beginning and at the end of my career. Throughout my career, as a textbook author and editor, I was in and out of schools a lot and spent more time talking to teachers than just about anyone. Sigh. If you would like, I can post my critiques of some of the modules we were required to study. They were appalling–full of factual inaccuracies, errors in grammar and logic and organization–clearly written by profoundly uninformed and uneducated people
Sorry for the typo in your name, Mr. Shepherd…Look, feel free to post critiques about the modules., Or even better I ask – did you approach those from the state or district about the inaccuracies and how they could fix them? “Clearly written by uninformed and uneducated people” – Way to stereotype someone that you don’t even know. Is that really fair. Is that how you would respond to students if they didn’t know information or wrote it incorrectly? I am not saying that the product was well done. I haven’t seen it. And in my experiences I too have had to have dealt with really bad training. that being said,. instead of complaining,. I sat back and tried to do something about it…
I wonder WHY there is mandatory ESL training in Florida – maybe because there has been a large Hispanic population whose needs have not been met in the past due to language barriers…
ESL training and special ed both EXTREMELY important. Important enough to do right. With regard to cognitive deficits–we all have them. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. My point is that these have to be done right. If it were up to me, EVERY STUDENT would have an Individualized Education Plan, and there would be space and time enough to do these properly from conception to fruition. The problems with the modules seemed to be deeper than simple lack of education, though that was definitely the case. I tried to capture that. But the piece above was a quick entry on her blog in response to someone else. Diane graciously picked it up and posted it. Perhaps I would have tinkered with my language in a piece for publication. I would have to think about that. But right now, I have more important things to do.
Fair enough. Again my suggestion is that you do consider your language as it matters. in fact, I can tell you that in reading your entire list there were many components that I nodded my head along to and agreed with – even the part about the ESL modules being meaningless. Yet that last line stuck with me. Why – in part because I have a 33 year old sister in law with Down’s Syndrome. Words matter. If you were trying to make a case for change, I was an ally with you on some of the items til I saw that line. Then you turned me away.
I will also add that if you want to make a case, don’t include things that all teachers should be doing – like creating plans for back to school night or working on IEP plans. In my opinion (and yes I taught HS for 10 years)…it sounds like whining. Like the ESL training, the IEP plans are put in place to support and make sure that students are getting what they need. Is there redunency and could it be done more efficiently. For sure. So…you say that all kids should have an Individulaized plan – how would you make that happen?
We need much, much smaller teacher-student ratios and time in teachers’ schedules for Japanese-style Lesson Study–reflection sessions with colleagues. Ours is one of the wealthiest countries in the world, but we run our schools the same way that people run tanneries in India–as sweatshops that make people sick and unable to attend to what’s most important–like having individual mentoring relationships with students who are, after all, individuals, each with unique proclivities and gifts and, yes, deficits, which all of us have. Down’s syndrome people are a great gift to us. They have much to teach us about being better than we are–about achieving their level of emotional presence.
So I agree with you on this on many part s- the lesson study aspect, etc. And there needs to be some changes in how we do run schools – a challenge of course is doing so on such a massive scale…But it’s not one that cannot be overcome
As for DS folks – I agree with you too…But more importantly hopefully you took away that the words you wrote impacted my thoughts on your message..
Namaste, jlsteach
Are you a teacher? Some of those training sessions are agony to sit through. Wouldn’t you complain if you were treated like an elementary school student?
The point was the excessive amount of expectations ofFlorida (and other states’) teachers without a cempensatory remuneration or at least a recognition. That’s not to say that some of the items listed aren’t an integral part of the job, but a lot of the others are simply busywork.
I agree with Robert about the IEPs. Two of my children had them and I was impressed when as a parent, the teachers/administrator met with me and my child and discussed his/her options for the future.
Every child would benefit from such a discussion.
So I taught HS for 10 years, and yes, I sat through some horrific meetings. But I did one of two things – tried to get the central office or the local admin to make adaptations to the meetings, or made better use of them. For example, when I taught and we had to all sit in an auditorium and watch a recording that described something, I would usually have my laptop and use the time to plan for the first few weeks of school.
Bob and I have already rehashed some of this, but as I mentioned to him before, my main concern was the language he used in describing the ESL as being created by five year olds with cognitive deficiencies. At least one other person on this blog seemed to feel similarly in the response to the words he used.
I agree that much of what is piled onto teachers could be simplified…What i do wonder is if folks like Bob or others simply complain or if they try and make changes. Yes, I know in some places the squeaky wheel ends up getting fired, but if that’s the case, do you really want to work in that district in the first place…
Please call us “people” not “folks”. Also, he was trying to show the aggregate of administrator required work a teacher has to do now. It’s leaving little time for the creative teaching that students crave and deserve, not voluminous written lesson plans and repetitious paper work that make it appear that the administrators and district “require teacher documentation of everything to insure accountability”.
Kathy – I’m not sure why you didn’t like
folks (I was raised in the South where the term is used often), but my apologies
So yes he noted the many things teachers need to do. And some of them are redundant but some to me are part of the job. He joked about giving fluids, but if one of us had a drug user as a teacher would we want that? Are fingerprints going too far?
Yes I agree that there has to be a balance between accountability and bureaucracy. And in some cases education can have more of the latter. But instead of just dismissing it I think more needs to be done to examine why measures were put into place and then consider reasonable measures
Consider reasonable measures?
That would be nice.
But you have to remember whom we are talking about here.
The people setting education policy in Florida have made it clear beyond any reasonable doubt that reason does not even enter into many of their decisions.
A perfect is example is that they come up with VAM scores to evaluate teachers that in some cases are based on students the teachers never taught and tests that were not even intended/designed to assess academic attainment in the subjects taught by the teachers. That is not simply unreasonable. It’s Insane!
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2014/03/15/teacher-i-was-evaluated-with-test-scores-of-students-i-dont-have/?utm_term=.bc489f34779b
The Florida teacher in the article was assigned a VAM score of 26.6583, as if somehow their score was precise to several places past the decimal point.
That’s just dumb, even by Florida politician standards. And it is even dumber for anyone who claims to be a scientist doing measurements because such a person should know better.
The reality is that Florida VAM scores are not precise even to the tens digit — not even by Florida’s own reckoning. In about half the cases the standard error associated with the VAM score is actually larger than the VAM score for a teacher, meaning that anyone who claims that such a teacher’s score means something is simply lying. Their own data prove they are lying.
As a result of the large standard error, VAM scores can vary dramatically from one year to the next, making a teacher appear good one year and poor the very next. The whole thing is basically a random roll of the dice. Junk. Not the least bit reasonable to be basing even part of a teacher’s evaluation on. But that is precisely what Florida does.
http://www.tampabay.com/news/education/k12/confused-by-floridas-teacher-performance-scores-so-are-award-winning/2168062
“Unreasonable Reasoning”
Reason only works
With reasonable folks
It doesn’t work with jerks
And doesn’t work with jokes
It doesn’t work on those
With evil moneyvations
Unreasonable to suppose
That reason rules relations
He’s including these points to show the huge amount of work that teachers face in their everyday world. He’s just making a point. You are trying to minimalize his argument because he included these points. I’m sure he never thought it was going to be easy. None of us did!!!
With your disdain for those with cognitive disabilities, I am SO glad you were never my son’s teacher.
Believe me, I have no disdain for people with cognitive disabilities. Quite the contrary. You have committed the Either-Or fallacy here.
Bob – if you have no disdain for people with cognitive disabilities, then why did you describe the ESL training as “to have been prepared for five-year-olds by people with severe cognitive deficits” – Words matter Bob. I am sure as an editor you know that. Could you have chosen other words that were less demeaning?
Cognitive deficits are real, jlsteach. They do not just go away because you want to practice some sort of word magic and pretend that they aren’t. But I am not interested in engaging in flame wars. I have much more important things to do. One of my favorite cartoons, a husband late at night, “Yes, honey, there in a minute. There’s someone wrong on the Internet.”
So, you think that colorful language is the best way to make progress to what you want to accomplish (which is to make changes to the steps that teachers have to jump through)? If so, well, you’re right no point in engaging in a real discussion. My point is that words matter, and when either side (left or right) uses words that can be interpreted by some to be demeaning, it leads the other side to only focus on the words as opposed to goal of what one wants to accomplish.
And there’s this: “Attend ”trainings” (“roll over, sit up, good boy”) for people with IQs of 65 on gang violence, bullying, drugs in school, blood-borne illness, test data, test data, test data, test data, test data, and more test data”.
So twice in this piece you have used stereotypes about intellectual disabilities to communicate the uselessness of the activities you were subjected to. And then you minimize my opinion by calling it a “flame war” and equating it to any other irrelevant thing on the Internet. What fallacy is that? Please mansplain it to me…
My point was that people were being treated according to that stereotype. Teachers are talked down to in these meetings, as though there were some one thing called intelligence and they didn’t have it. OF COURSE Spearman’s G is nonsense. This was a comment that I made on someone else’s post, not a carefully designed piece of writing. Diane graciously reposted it without my having vetted it again. I hope that that does not sound like mansplaining to you. A great evil, that, as you so accurately point out.
“–Complete 300 hours of utterly useless online ESL training that seemed, from the factual inaccuracies and grammatical errors throughout the materials, to have been prepared for five-year-olds by people with severe cognitive deficits”
On the basis of this comment you accuse Bob of disdain for those who are cognitively delayed?! You really had to reach to feel outrage over his frustration with the bureaucratic nonsense that gets in the way of actual face-to-face teaching. Actually disabilities is not considered politically correct any longer, at least in politically correct circles. As a matter of fact, even “cognitively delayed” is being replaced with the all encompassing term “learning differences.”
Thank you, speduktr. If it were up to me, ALL students would have individualized education plans but those working with students would have the time to do them right from conception through implementation and fruition. With regard to cognitive deficits–let he who is without them cast the first stone.
As I already posted, no matter if Bob did or did not have distain for folks with cognitive disabilities, don’t you agree that other words could have been used?
I made the mistake once of complaining about the inaccuracies of a test we were proctoring. My supervisor turned to me and said, “I wrote the test.” Oops!
And I apologize if it sounded as though I minimized your opinion. I SHARE your opinion about the evil of disdain for persons with cognitive differences. I responded from defensiveness about your assuming that I do not. My feelings about my actual position there are quite strong.
This person had to try really hard—I mean, really—to read any “disdain for those with cognitive disabilities” into your excellent remarks. When I grew up in the South, we would have said that this person was “lookin’ for a fight.” Once again, thank you for sharing; your passionate descriptions only underlined your salient points. Good on ya!
Greg – as here’s my question – does the terminology used enhance or take away from the argument? As I described already (and it seemed to do for one other person), it took away from them
Well, this is not my fight nor did I want to get embroiled in what I think is a petty criticism, but you ask… First, as anyone who has paid attention to my comments on this blog, I don’t think I take a back seat to anyone when it comes to issues of language, especially when applied to human beings. I won’t bore you and others by rehashing them.
As for your specific criticism of Bob’s cogent, impassioned remarks, I think you overlooked—intentionally or not—of “seemed…to have been”. Not once in Bob’s remarks did he disparage an individual or any groupings of people. His colorful descriptions underlined an understandable frustration. Indeed, taken together, he and his profession are ones being marginalized, abused, and disrespected by corporate and bureaucratic overlords.
There are times when terminology that is offensive to some can simplify and emphasize an argument. You may be a better person than me in that way. But I won’t judge someone if, at times, they underscore their arguments with terms that might make some see only the occasional flippant word and lose sight of the points being made. I often resort to terms like “idiot (or idiocy), moron (or moronic), precious (sarcasm intended), or pinhead.” I like it when others do as well, especially if it fits with the intent of the argument. These are relatively innocent abstractions. There are limits. Like Justice Potter said about the definition of obscenity, I can’t always explain them, but I know ’em when I see ’em. And I know Bob never crossed that undefinable line. He taught me a lot in his beautiful rant. His perspective makes me want to stand up even more for teachers everywhere.
Greg
I am not sure if you read all of my posts here or not but I’ll summarize. Yes I think many of not all of Bob’s points are on target. I do think we need to do better as a profession on things such as mandatory trainings and the bureaucratic components of teaching
As to the choice of word if he would have written “seemed to be written by (insert horrible term for Hispanic or black) would you be ok with that? I think there’s a big difference between idiot or pinhead and the language bob used. He even admitted more than once that this post was a either a blog post or a response somewhere else that Dr Ravitch picked up. I’m at peace with Bob understanding my point on the use of language. While I appreciate your defense I also think it’s important that one admit when better word choices can be used
…Justice Potter Stewart…
Two quick points: If you are OK with the use of idiot—as am I for certain rhetorical purposes—then you need to beware of offending those who understand it in the archaic form, which Webster’s defines as “a mentally handicapped person.” Sometimes you can offend someone with anything you say, or you have to internalize Justice Stewart’s intent and know the when it’s inappropriate. The example of “would you be OK” fits under that too.
Idiot comes originally from idios, “one’s own”–meaning someone who could not see beyond his or her own nose. A wonderful, rich etymology, there. So many of these mines in languages!
Really Greg? Now to me you are the one nit picking here. As I said in my post – I have a 33 year old sister in law with Down Syndrome. So yes I was more aware when Bob used the term he used.
How about this – just don’t use the term at all – because as you see here what has happened is that you and I have gone back and forth over the use of the words, and completely taken away from the main point of the discussion…
And yes, I think that most reasonable people would agree that using the term idiot or pinhead (which is way more common in the lexicon these days). I will say that I stand corrected on one thing – I originally thought that Bob had said the training was written “by five year olds with severe cognitive…” not “for five year olds by people with…” No matter. The point here is that words do matter. More than once I have said things in anger or frustration in an email, a blog post, a response, etc. and have come to regret the words that I used…
Yes, really.
“in order to get a teaching job in Florida, I had to
Provide body fluids”
Oh, Bob, you’re such a whiner. Get with the program.
Everyone knows that adulteration of the precious bodily fluids is the way the Commies infiltrate and undermine our entire system from within.
So testing your precious bodily fluids is absolutely necessary to make sure you have not been compromised.
Do the Governor, Legislatures and School Boards give body fluids . If not the fluid they are made to give should be RED.
LOL, ahimsa, Joel!
Hate to nitpick, but a lot of this is not what was involved in becoming a teacher in Florida, but rather being a teacher in Florida, most of which I suspect is just part of being a teacher, period.
My point, Dienne, that these were all requirements beyond actually dealing with the students. I was attempting to make people understand that there are opportunity costs of those requirements. From the comments here, I clearly failed with some people. Aieyieyie. . .
And yes, I knew a lot about what it requires to be a teacher. I have worked in education for some 30 years, in and out of schools.
Reblogged this on David R. Taylor-Thoughts on Education and commented:
Is he writing a manual on “How to Discourage People from Becoming Teachers and Create a Teacher Shortage!”
Who needs a manual? Common sense shall prevail.
Common sense is not in the vocabulary of billionaires and politicians.
I rather work for McDonalds than teach in Florida. If the information is correct then this is the worst job in America right now. For sure, there will be a teaching shortage if they think they can put people through the windmill for a buck tree eighty?
You had to subject yourself to all these cumbersome requirements so that you could be an “at will” employee that was easily dismissible and disposable. Of course, you still had a feckless union in your corner.
Scott has shown he does not care about public schools with his new law that will provide charters partiality and a lot of funds for capital projects. Scott made this deal with the legislature, that has several members heavily invested in the charter industry, so he could get $50 million dollars to lure more industry to Florida. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/florida/articles/2017-06-15/florida-gov-to-sign-bill-that-shifts-students-to-charters
The thing that struck me reading this list of duties was, this is really a job they think they can automate with online education? If there is a self driving car, then just program a robot to do the duties listed by Mr. Shepherd. I recently watched the movie ‘most likely to succeed, which says robots will do all work. Hahaha. Why is there a shortage of agricultural workers? Is planting and picking a vegetable more complicated than driving a car or translating? Where are all the automated painters, plumbers, or carpet layers?
Hate to be a cynic, but the technoboobs have a long way to go before they walk their talk. And, education is one of the least codable jobs there is.
I just got finished tiling a shower and one of the things that occurred to me is that there will probably never be a machine to do everything that was involved
Perhaps a machine could do certain parts, eg lay tile on the floor of a huge open warehouse that involves repeating the same process over and over, but to tile a shower? Not a chance. Not now and probably not ever.
The trades are actually very good for job security.
But make no mistake. As with teaching, there is a huge amount involved in most trades, both with regard to knowledge and expertise.
Tiling, is one of the most exacting, requiring geometry and all sorts of precise measuring, cutting and fitting.
Neither the trades nor teaching are for dummies and politicians (forgive the redumbdancy), that’s for sure
I have already seen a robot that can lay brick. The mason still has to do the finishing.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MVWayhNpHr0
The daughter of a friend of mine recently enrolled in the law school at Chicago. At orientation, they told them to be grateful that they were going to so prestigious a school because in the near future, most of what is now done by run-of-the-mill lawyers will be automated, and most of them will be out of a job. Even now, you can go online and fill out a form and automatically generate a will, an incorporation of a business, divorce papers, etc.
Show me a machine that can do this
Even if a bot could somehow manage the superficial cosmetics, the shower would probably leak like a sieve because, as with everything, the important stuff (eg waterproofing) is all beneath the surface. The last step — laying the tile — is actually the easiest part of the process, though not simple by any means.
Pearsonalized learning is like the bot that lays brick on a surface made of mud that will dissolve after the first rainstorm. It’s just a cosmetic covering up underlying flaws.
I worked in the high tech industry as a programmer for quite a while and if there is one thing that bugs me more than anything else, it is all the hype about what technology can do.
Well said, as always, SomeDAM
SomeDAM: Beautiful shower! Machines can do the rote, repetitive tasks, but the more complex tasks will still need humans, but not so many of them. This is a big problem.
And by the way, having worked with lots of programmers over the years, I would no more let a programmer code a bot to tile my shower than code a bot to drive my car. The ignorance and arrogance of many of these people is frightening. Many of them think they know it all, when in fact, they know very little about the things they are writing code for. Coding is the ONLY thing many of them know — and some of them don’t even do THAT well.
After the accidents Elon Musk’s self driving cars have been involved in, I would not go anywhere near them. One of the cars failed to identify a giant semi truck crossing the road on a clear day. Any fool driver who saw that truck ( the images are online) would have easily recognized it as something to avoid, certainly not something to plow into as the Tesla on autopilot did (killing the driver)
Tesla claimed their image system failed because the ” white” truck (which was actually not uniformly white and had clearly identifiable horizontal dark bands at top and bottom, as well as baffles and vertical rows of rivets) blended into the background but anyone who looks at the images and notes that it was a clear day can see that they were lying. Their system failed because it was a piece of junk that was clearly not up to the task. They should just have admitted that rather than make excuses. But of course, they had to cover their legal ass.
Well a machine can not do that , however the and greatest is modularized housing units built on factory platforms and plugged together on site. How much can be automated in that process????.
However your second point is a good reason that climate change is a big problem. We will not “evolve” our way out of it with technology.
latest and greatest
They can make modular tile walls but the pieces still have to be put together. And I’d really like to see the guys who are carrying, lifting and attaching 150+ pound pretiled walls in place. I sure as hell would not want to be one of them
And for a machine, it would be an exceedingly difficult undertaking, especially since, in the case of the shower I was doing, the machine would have to have fit into an area only 4 feet by three feet. Just getting a machine into such a space (which was two floors up, by the way) would be hard enough. (And the machine itself would probably weigh several hundred pounds) But for it to do the kind of detailed work involved would be well nigh impossible.
Machines can do amazing things, but personally, I don’t think they will ever be able to replace skilled tradesmen. Which is a very good thing for tradesmen and for anyone now learning the trades. Of course, such jobs also can not be outsourced, although people can be brought in from other countries to do them (eg, on h1b visas)
Even if machines could somehow do all the work involved, there is still the intellectual aspect — the issue of planning and doing problem solving on the fly when things do not work out as planned, as so frequently happens with construction projects — and as happened in my project (I had to do some things that were “not in the book”, so to speak. A computer would not have had a single clue how to do what I did.)
Now, a GOOD/reasonable application of computers for construction is a database of expert information on things like tiling. That actually makes a lot more sense than trying to make a tiling machine, which in all likelihood, would be little more than a gimmick.
Nice job. I have a good friend who is a tile guy who has also done camera work for film. He claims dislexia. He says tile laying changed his life.
Computers are supposed to make life easier and streamline laborious tasks. In some cases this is true, but if Big Data collection is the goal, computers make tasks more laborious and less useful. When does the “data stream” become more important than meeting the needs of students? Teaching, preparation and grading are a lot of work without constantly feeding the data monster.
Thanks for the kind words about the shower.
It took me a lot of time because I had only done one before, and that one had used a prefab shower pan so did not require making a sloped mortar pan with waterproofing membrane on top.
I tell you, I now have a huge amount of respect for people who do this kind of thing, just as I have huge respect for teachers, also having done that.
As I alluded to above, I think a lack of understanding — and respect — for what is involved is actually behind many problems, not just those associated with teaching and education in general.
If we had more politicians who are willing to learn about what other people do before they open their mouth and pretend they know everything, we might actually make progress.
But I won’t hold my breath because most of the politicians who make it to the top re not willing to listen to ANYONE on any thing. They alone know what is best and nothing and no one is going to change their mind.
I don’t know about automated plumbers, painters and carpenters, but I do know that all three make more than fifteen thousand more than middle career teachers working for the Broward County School Board. What does it say about a District when the compensate the above professions well beyond what they pay their mid career teachers many of whom hold advanced degrees. When I quit, I had thirteen years experience. The Head Custodian was two years in and was making twelve grand more than me. Stay away from Broward County they give not three but zero $hits about their teachers and to top it off, The Superintendent is about to get a raise bringing his salary near $400,000 and the man has been an abysmal failure thus far. Florida is a joke!
Don’t know about janitors, but most of the construction trades require several years of apprenticeship and it takes a long time to get really good, so I’d have to say that such people SHOULD be well paid for their services.
I think the basic reason plumbers get more than teachers is that we as a society have decided that our pipes are more valuable than our children.
Very sad, bit I think it is true.
Skilled/experienced tradesmen should be well compensated. I think the point is that well trained teachers should be at least as well compensated.
This is an outright disgrace! This just proves how little teachers are valued in Florida. This is from a former District of mine which happpens to be the largest District in Florida with an annual operating budget of over cive billion dollars. The first link is the teacher salary scale. The second link is the skilled trades for the same District. Anyone see the blatant disrespect for teachers.
http://salary.dadeschools.net/Schd_Teachers
Click to access HO_Jul_1_2016.pdf
Base pay in the last district for a BA was around $30,000. Of course, this was in one of the poorest districts in the state of Illinois almost 10 years ago and salaries vary widely depending on the property tax base. From what I can tell, the base has not gone up that much. with a quick look, I found a full time teacher making $34,000! Look at your districts people. You may be surprised what the trade people are making compared to teachers even taking in years of service. I don’t begrudge them a penny of their salaries, but it does put into perspective how your district rates teachers.
Don’t expect support from the community. When the Buffalo teachers were fighting for a new contract with a decent wage increase (which took over ten years to settle), the scuttlebutt/propaganda was that this was the public sector and wages should reflect the current wages in the city. Since the majority of the city is impoverished, I took this to mean we were lucky to get anything over minimum wage. The reality was the private sector in the city was paying their professionals a decent wage, way above the average teacher salary. We won’t mention the suburbs whose teacher wages averaged $20,000 a year higher.
I don’t want to complain because NYS does pay their teachers much better than Florida, just to let you know that the taxpayers think we are overpaid for what they consider “babysitting”.
There was no “tax base” where I was teaching, so I can’t blame the tax payers. Few were in a position to pay more although, interestingly enough, those at the very top of the salary heap seemed to make out pretty well.
It certainly IS a disgrace.
Then again, so are the people Floridians choose for governor.
Maybe there is a correlation not just between the governor and teacher salaries but between the people who choose the governor and teacher salaries.
Anyone who would vote for Jeb Bush has some serious issues that extend well beyond his or her judgements about how much teachers should be paid.
I have lived and worked in California most of my life. Although not as accomplished as Bob (I was never a corporate VP – never made it above manager). When I left research in the magnetic recording industry to become a teacher, the demands were quite similar to those listed by Bob. I too feel that my job as a high school math and physics teacher was way more demanding than any previous employment I ever had.
I was particularly irked when I had to spend two years attending weekly new teacher induction meetings. As part of the program, I had to complete a binder full of work-sheets that were base on materials identical to materials from two of my masters in education program classes. They were based on the California teaching standards. The only real difference was the masters program required a much deeper dive into the standards.
A friend of mine was a teacher, and she decided to go back to get an MBA. She left teaching worked for Lucent in New Jersey for about a decade. When Lucent collapsed, she returned to teaching French in a New Jersey high school. After she was teaching for about a month, she called me up to say, “I forgot how hard teaching is. I barely have time to go to the bathroom.” I said, “Welcome back to my world.”
Actually, this post tells you how crazy teachers are because they continue to do it despite the ridiculous demands. It is really a bad sign when districts cannot find qualified teachers. Could it be that teaching conditions have gotten so bad that the powers that be have actually succeeded in making teaching so unattractive that too few people are willing to enter teaching?
Almost everyone I’ve known who teaches these days spends his or her days in a frantic panic–crazily trying to meet all the expectations. Teaching and learning are require a great deal of calm reflection. Not possible under such sweatshop conditions. Opportunity costs, and psychic costs . . . enormous.
And people think you take the summer off. Hah!
I did my best reflective work after school in solitude. Then, I went home with the radio off before I greeted my own two children. I think I had to clear my mind from the sensory overload of the day.
Wow. Beautifully written, retired teacher. I could SEE this so clearly. Powerful.
They continue to do it because they know that along with teaching, it is the most important of jobs. But it beats them down. Pass them in the halls and they are scurrying, scowling, shaking their heads. I spent a lot of time on the job trying to cheer people up–giving them the pep talk–remember all the good you are doing. But many were just plain burned out–trying to function as the cinders they had become.
In Buffalo the teachers have to predict how each student will perform at the end of the year exams in their subject area based on five data points. They are graded on their accuracy as part of their evaluation.
This is only one of many ridiculous tasks.
Since NYS adopted Common Core the teachers in the BPS are counting the days until they can retire.
Insanity on top of insanity. Like those data walls I was required to post. Mind-blowingly stupid. And every teacher in the school knew it but all were afraid to say so.
How horrible! One of my best friends, a former college roommate, is a high school English teacher in Florida. Now I finally get why is frustrated and feels abused and disrespected. You describe a system that has little, if anything, to do with education.
The disrespect is the worst part, in my opinion.
It’s what made me leave teaching.
Perhaps most annoying of all was hearing incompetent, unethical politicians (forgive the redumbdancy) — people who can’t do anything else — badmouthing teachers.
I was at a party once, standing with a group of people, talking. One asked what I do. I said, “I’m a teacher.”
“Oh, which university?” the fellow asked.
“I teach in a high-school,” I answered.
“Oh,” he replied, with a little smirk, and walked away.
Teaching is the profession of the Buddha, of Lao-tze, of Yeshua of Nazareth, of Rumi, of Mullah Nazreddin, of the Baal Shem Tov. Heck, it’s the profession of Diane Ravitch. With nursing, it is one of the two most holy of professions. The proper attitude toward teachers: honor and humility and gratitude.
Teachers and nurses, so true!
redumbdancy. what a gift, SomeDAM, that is. Entering my vocabulary!
I taught high school English for twenty-three years, from 1977 to 2000…and each year the administrators got worse. I ended up getting suspended without reason (“teacher jail” in LA)
having to hire my own attorney, and getting transferred to middle school.
Retired since 2010, I empathize with local Oregon teachers who start out so dewy-eyed and idealistic, and end up having to leave the profession and work a job that pays a “living wage”…
I laughed when Robert mentioned the year he had five preps – an inordinate amount of work Even if you’ve already taught those classes and have some lessons on reserve.
But it reminded me of the time my husband had three preps – biology, biology lab, and earth science. When he complained the principal told him it was only two preps – lab didn’t count.
Okay, he thought, two preps – two lesson plans! This did not go over well with the assistant principal who graded the lesson plans and wanted to see all three sets. (Of course my husband did have plans for the lab, he just didn’t do the formal write up). The Science Supervisor was called and laughed, but told my husband to play along.
Sometimes you have to take a stand to make a point (and it helps to have a strong union, plus a good reputation).
Lab doesn’t count.
Because as all science teachers know, labs don’t take any time to prep for. Why would they? The students do all the work.
The teachers should pay the students, without a doubt.
Ha ha ha.
lol
Yes! The poor guy! I remember how, in teacher preparatory classes, it was emphasized that students needed to write compositions. And, yes, if I assigned only a paragraph, I had 150 paragraphs to grade. And that was back in the 1960s! So sad to read Bob Shepherd’s post. Keep heart, dear man.
Bob: I must say that I envy people like you who can get all that done. When did you ever get time to learn to glue guitars together?
Before I returned to teaching, Roy, when I was only an Executive Vice President, LOL. At least then I had, usually, Sundays. Love to you and yours and to that extraordinarily talented luthier cousin of yours.
And I ‘m sure charter teachers and private school teachers don’t have to do that, either.
Sent from my iPhone
>
Now add an additional 100-150 students to the list, and most of this is required for Utah. Stack ’em deep and teach ’em cheap is the motto.
“If I assigned my 150 or so students a single paragraph to write, I would have a novella to read and respond to. All day and evening, every Saturday, spend doing this, and often on Sunday as well.”
…and it’s a benefit to the students if you have time to write comments on their papers.
Class size matters.
It certainly does. Anyone who says “Class size doesn’t matter”–a regular Ed Deform trope–has NOTHING WORTH ATTENDING TO to say about education. He or she is CLUELESS. Better to spend your time on something and someone else.
Speaking of which, funny how often someone posts a blog entry hoping that a discussion about her topic will ensue, and then it is sidetracked endlessly . . . .
Ars longa, vita brevis
There ya go speaking a foreign language again!
And it is an excellent aphorism.
OMG…….I can sure relate! “Stack ’em deep and teach ’em cheap is the motto.” We found out today that kindergarten can go up to 29 in a class. If they hit 25 then an aide has to be hired. Special ed. can go past 10 which is really terrible.
Now that I have a few minutes, I would like to comment on some parts of the original post.
First, most of the things you mentioned were in addition to the number one job of the teacher, supervision. Few of the jobs can be done while supervising youngsters.
Second, many of the jobs are conceived by administrators who have so much time on their hands that they can dream up things for others to do.
Third, the degree to which people who are not in contact with the children have the idea that writing on paper what you did with the children is a meaningful occupation is often determined by the degree of separation from the children themselves.
Finally, most of the things you wish you could write down you never have time to. Notes on what works for you, ideas you would like to pursue, or extra books you would like to read all go begging while you fill out forms for this and forms for that.
I was a librarian in a large district and while I had some input, I was not the decision maker on district policy. I couldn’t even correct a district wide library test that had a few bad questions (see my other comment).
Of course, that was before NCLB and the Common Core. The states are calling the shots backed by the federal government. I remember the days when the curriculum committees sent suggestions to the state to improve the standards. Now we have no say, everything is regulated with schedules posted and “walk throughs” by teams of downtown administrators to make sure we are following the rules.
A lot has changed in the past ten years. Teachers are forced to put the paperwork and other requirements first, and squeeze student needs between the administrative activities.
As for as wording – let it go. Robert was trying to make his point with “hyperbolic” language. He has explained he meant no offense. Please give him the benefit of the doubt and move on.
I remember when teachers got together and decided what textbooks they were going to use, what approaches they were going to take in their classrooms . . . discussed what was working and what wasn’t . . . when administrators thought of them as the experts on teaching Spanish or world history or English or whatever. Now, they are interim implements until the machines can be put into place. Ignorant and clueless. Not interested in any long conversations about that last remark. LOL.
What I wouldn’t give for one year teaching the way it should be…
Some interactions are gifts to teach us patience.
And the salary – check out Miami salaries – shocking – https://kafkateach.wordpress.com/2017/10/29/contract-negotiations-2017-18-update-for-dummies-a-collection-of-memes/