Paging TSM Teachers....

[JaMarcus Russell's #1 Caucasian Fan 0]

So after almost a year of searching, I finally landed my first post-grad job which is substitute teaching for my local elementary school district. Just have to finish processing and should be getting going at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure if I want to go all the way this (like actually becoming permanent), since I am studying to go to law school , but I figured this would be a good way to test the waters just to be sure (I've gone back and forth with teaching for a while).

 

I don't have any experience teaching kids and I have little experience working with K-6 kids. I have no problem with patience or anger and like the idea of teaching elementary school kids opposed to high school or junior high. I realize and am prepared to get tested from the kids since I will be a sub.

 

I figured I would sit in on a couple classes first to get a good idea of what to expect, but I figured I'd ask for some advice from some teachers here. So TSM teachers, any words of wisdom?

[Grungy Punk 0]

I wasn't going to reply to this because I knew I wouldn't be able to reply to this in a mature way but since nobody has replied to this and given you any advice yet I guess I will. So my advice to you is....

 

Don't forget your guns!

 

 

[CanadianChris 0]

I have no problem with patience or anger and like the idea of teaching elementary school kids opposed to high school or junior high.

You are wise. Junior high kids are the purest form of evil.

 

Basically, be prepared, don't forget your sense of humour, and don't try to be their friend.

[Guest Vitamin X]

still fly, which school are you going to be teaching at?

[JaMarcus Russell's #1 Caucasian Fan 0]

Not too sure of the exact school yet, but it's in the Saugus Union School District which consist a bunch of elementary schools around the valley. Didn't you live in Canyon Country?

[Guest Vitamin X]

Fuck no, I didn't. I lived in the older part of Valencia, by Granary Square. I guess you won't be teaching at any school I was familiar with though, since every one I went to was in the William S. Hart district.

 

Canyon Country... yikes. If you ever need proof of rednecks in Southern California, dive off on to the 14 from I-5 going north and discover the methamphetamine charged white power of Canyon Country, Acton, and Palmdale/Lancaster. Yuck.

[JaMarcus Russell's #1 Caucasian Fan 0]

I'll assume you just attended junior high and high school out here (just high school for me).

 

Believe it or not, Canyon Country has gotten worse lately (damn economy). Shootings, hate crimes (some wise guys painting swastikas, and there was black male beaten not too recently) , robberies and just general bullshit. Like, the area around Canyon High is fucking scary at night now (just being black in Canyon Country is a dicey proposition now). It's like there is two SCV's now, the upper middle class soccer mom plastic surgery crowd and the redneck meth underbelly (don't forget the Mexicans!). Seriously, if anybody want to see a real world example of the effects of classism, Santa Clarita would be a good place to start.

 

[Guest Vitamin X]

SCV in general is an interesting study in sociology. I don't think I belonged to either one of those two groups, but I went to La Mesa Jr. High in Canyon Country and then Valencia High. So I've seen all of that- glad to have left back in 04, though.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

I left high school teaching because the job was intellectually stultifying and I really don't like the direction public education is going in. I also feel like the profession is given little to no respect from most quarters these days--students, parents, administrators, and in terms of pay.

 

I also found that your bosses, the administrators, tended to be people who weren't very good at teaching, so they left the classroom to do admin.

 

Also, I would just make really really really sure that it is the right fit. If you don't have the right personality for it and if you don't truly enjoy it, you will be that miserable burnt-out teacher that we all hated.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I left high school teaching because the job was intellectually stultifying and I really don't like the direction public education is going in. I also feel like the profession is given little to no respect from most quarters these days--students, parents, administrators, and in terms of pay.

 

Yeah, education in this country is pretty f'd. This is partially because the conditions you outlined tend to dissuade most of the best and brightest from considering the profession in the first place (I heard somewhere that Education majors have, on average, the lowest high school GPA of all students entering college. That's kinda fucked up). This is then exacerbated by the fact that a lot of "Teacher Education" programs seem to treat teaching like a vocation instead of an intellectual enterprise, and so you wind up with a bunch of people who know "how to teach" but remain largely ignorant when it comes to, like, actual content and shit.

[Guest Czecherbear]

I agree that a lot of teachers don't know things, but there's something to be said for knowing how to impart the knowledge you have. Math teachers are the worst offenders.

[PUT THAT DICK IN MY MOUTH! 0]

I'm not disagreeing with that. High school teachers obv. need to be at least somewhat schooled in the art of pedagogy to be at all effective. All I'm saying is that I think the privileging of method/theory over expertise is having a detrimental effect on our education system. This is way more noticeable in the humanities than it is in math/science, as it's slightly harder to bullshit your way through the latter. Like, it's pretty obvious if a Calculus teacher has no idea what he's talking about, whereas a History or English Lit. teacher can sometimes get away with being semi-ignorant/misinformed (eg remember when pbone was talking about learning about "Ultimate Communism" in his AP History class or w/e?)

[Guest Czecherbear]

Oh yeah, I remember ultimate communism now. Haha.

 

My two worst teachers in high school both taught communication arts. It was one semester of "media literacy," and one semester of "interpersonal." It was just a grocery list of bullshit, from mandatory community service (there's a way to make this a valuable part of education, making it 55% of your grade to spend time you don't have is not it) to 7 Habits to any sort of sappy feel-good crap you can imagine. The media literacy class was the travesty, though, because the guy had no fucking clue. I knew more about the subject than he did. He'd spend the first five minutes just kind of dawdling waiting for announcements and Pledge of Allegiance (fuck that, by the way), then he'd do brain teasers, then he'd share the fluff stories that you hear on bad morning-drive adult contemporary radio shows, like the guy that won a "free toy Yoda" from a Toyota dealership and all that crap. The absolute nadir of my 2ndary-educational career was, and I'm not making any of this up, when after all the aforementioned timekillers, he got up, and wrote on the chalkboard,

 

I MET A STRANGE LADY

SHE MADE ME NERVOUS

SHE TOOK ME IN AND MADE ME BREAKFAST

 

Then he asked, "what is this from?" A few crappy guesses were hazarded just to keep the room from dying, and then he exclaimed "IT'S 'LAND DOWN UNDER!'" and played it on his boombox, ostensibly having had it all cued up since the beginning of class. So we sat and listened to motherfucking "Land Down Under" in our media class. It was the most surreal and pointless event in all of high school, and this was a high school career laden with surreal and pointless events, like being put under lockdown because the iguana escaped the biology room. This guy had a wife and kids, but I swear there's no way this dude didn't take pipe. At a party with some old high school chums this June, one of my friends recalled the time I walked into the classroom, he had "What Is Love?" by Haddaway blaring, and I stepped out of the room backward. I guess it was funny. But who am I to talk, I liked that song too.

[Grungy Punk 0]

Teachers are the biggest two faces I've ever known.

[Big Ol' Smitty 0]

Touche.

[Gert T 0]

So after almost a year of searching, I finally landed my first post-grad job which is substitute teaching for my local elementary school district. Just have to finish processing and should be getting going at the beginning of the year. I'm not sure if I want to go all the way this (like actually becoming permanent), since I am studying to go to law school , but I figured this would be a good way to test the waters just to be sure (I've gone back and forth with teaching for a while).

 

I don't have any experience teaching kids and I have little experience working with K-6 kids. I have no problem with patience or anger and like the idea of teaching elementary school kids opposed to high school or junior high. I realize and am prepared to get tested from the kids since I will be a sub.

 

I figured I would sit in on a couple classes first to get a good idea of what to expect, but I figured I'd ask for some advice from some teachers here. So TSM teachers, any words of wisdom?

 

 

Be prepared, elementary school kids have a tiny attention span. Hopefully the teacher has given you LOTS of plans.

 

Don't be scared of being "mean" if need be, but don't go looking for it. (I teach in a HS setting and it is incredibly painful to watch the ineffective teachers have no control of their classroom, and pick the pettiest battles to blow up at.)

 

Establish that it is your room early. (Not as important when subbing, but it can't hurt to show you are in charge.

 

Don't be afraid to ask other teachers for help, and leave detailed notes of how the day went (this should get you repeat business).

 

If all else fails in classroom discipline, make sure that the kids are at least all in their seats.

 

 

[kkktookmybabyaway 0]

...like being put under lockdown because the iguana escaped the biology room.

 

[Red Baron 0]

My buddy teaches History, English and Law at a high school in Calgary. The first day of teaching he said that the school reminded him of High School High.

[Maztinho 0]

I'm not disagreeing with that. High school teachers obv. need to be at least somewhat schooled in the art of pedagogy to be at all effective. All I'm saying is that I think the privileging of method/theory over expertise is having a detrimental effect on our education system. This is way more noticeable in the humanities than it is in math/science, as it's slightly harder to bullshit your way through the latter. Like, it's pretty obvious if a Calculus teacher has no idea what he's talking about, whereas a History or English Lit. teacher can sometimes get away with being semi-ignorant/misinformed (eg remember when pbone was talking about learning about "Ultimate Communism" in his AP History class or w/e?)

 

In theory No Child Left Behind solves that since you have to have a degree in the subject matter you are teaching, which in turn cripples small districts ability to hire since you can't have the chemistry teacher double as a lower tier math teacher.

 

I didn't get my degree because the semester before my student teaching I had to fight with my professor (one of these pedagogy experts that had little in class experience) on every assignment.

 

"How are you going to keep your class actively engaged?"

 

"It's band, I'll tell them to play the music."

 

"What about ESL kids?"

 

"Music is it's own language."

 

"You seem to be doing the same thing every day in your lesson plans."

 

"Actually I'm being quite diverse. I'm working different parts of the pieces on different days."

 

"This says Ghost Train everyday."

 

"That's a 4 movement piece that's half an hour performance time, I'm working different sections which are totally different from one another each day."

 

"But it's the same song."

 

Then it hit me that I'd be having this conversation for most of the rest of my life, and just walked out of the classroom never to return.

[Edwin MacPhisto 0]

I'm not disagreeing with that. High school teachers obv. need to be at least somewhat schooled in the art of pedagogy to be at all effective. All I'm saying is that I think the privileging of method/theory over expertise is having a detrimental effect on our education system. This is way more noticeable in the humanities than it is in math/science, as it's slightly harder to bullshit your way through the latter. Like, it's pretty obvious if a Calculus teacher has no idea what he's talking about, whereas a History or English Lit. teacher can sometimes get away with being semi-ignorant/misinformed (eg remember when pbone was talking about learning about "Ultimate Communism" in his AP History class or w/e?)

 

In theory No Child Left Behind solves that since you have to have a degree in the subject matter you are teaching, which in turn cripples small districts ability to hire since you can't have the chemistry teacher double as a lower tier math teacher.

I think you can also qualify to teach a given subject by passing a state exam, which is probably the easier option. Too bad NCLB is a complete disaster in every other aspect.

 

"What about ESL kids?"

 

"Music is it's own language."

Okay, Mr. Holland.

[Angle-plex 0]

I could never be a teacher, because a high school teacher fucking his students is a fetish of mine. I suppose maybe the younger ages I could teach, but what is the cutoff, you know? I'm pretty sure I would fuck some seventh or eighth graders if I thought no one would find out.

[Lord of The Curry 0]

I agree that a lot of teachers don't know things, but there's something to be said for knowing how to impart the knowledge you have. Math teachers are the worst offenders.

 

I hated math in high school but at least those teachers had a proven formula to fall back on as to why you're right or wrong as opposed to english or drama teachers that are going off of their own subjectivity in regards to evaluating how well you do with something.

 

Case in point: final year in high school almost 80% of my drama class fails on our final essays and goes off on the teacher. We hand them in to various teachers in the media and english department who proceed to go to the school principal on our behalf to say that the drama teacher was off his rocker with the grading.

[Guest Agent of Oblivion]

Am I the only one who never had any indignant moment with a crazy teacher? Someone else here had to sleepwalk through high school, stoned on the days I bothered to show up, without an extracurricular activity to my name.

[Kinetic 0]

Am I the only one who never had any indignant moment with a crazy teacher? Someone else here had to sleepwalk through high school, stoned on the days I bothered to show up, without an extracurricular activity to my name.

 

Yo.

 

Except for the part about being stoned, that sums up my high school experience quite nicely. I was in a play in 11th grade because a girl I was interested in asked me to do it. And then I went to one Young Democrats meeting in 12th grade because a girl asked me to go. That was it for extracurriculars. It never would have occured to me to complain about a shitty grade, as I more than earned every one that I got.

[Kinetic 0]

I kind of regret it now. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble in my adult life had I not been such a lazy shithead for those four years. But maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe the system failed me.

[Guest Czecherbear]

I was in a play in 11th grade because a girl I was interested in asked me to do it.

Yo!

 

I hated math in high school but at least those teachers had a proven formula to fall back on as to why you're right or wrong as opposed to english or drama teachers that are going off of their own subjectivity in regards to evaluating how well you do with something.

That's a lame yeah-but. If you're smart, subjectivity can work for you. Not always, though! That crazy aging-hippie dyke interpersonal communications teacher hated me and made sure to give me a really hard time, though never as hard as the time she gave other students who would be given failing grades and thrown out of the class never to be seen again. If I had been one of those can't-fog-a-mirror asswipes instead of just an incorrectly opinionated smartass, there's no doubt I would've gotten a zero in that class. Everywhere else, though, my ability to be me covered a multitude of sins.

[Red Baron 0]

During high school, Math was one of my stronger subjects, but my one teacher was lazy. She only looked for the answer and the structure of how a formula works. If you got the answer wrong then there were no marks given. None of the students liked her.

 

I do love religion and geography in high school. Always debated when it came to religion, beliefs, policies and philosophies.

[Copper Feel 0]

I truly believe that my interest in a subject has been all that has determined how well (or badly) I've done in it thus far into my education. Well, in terms of arts and humanities atleast. I'm just not very good at science.

[Guest Czecherbear]

It's probably the other way around.

[HollywoodSpikeJenkins 0]

I kind of regret it now. I could have saved myself a lot of trouble in my adult life had I not been such a lazy shithead for those four years. But maybe it wasn't my fault. Maybe the system failed me.

 

 

Yeah, looking back, if I actually gave a damn during those four years, things would be completely different now.