A teacher speaks out

SouthernN'Proud

SouthernN'Proud

Southern Discomfort
Kudos to this teacher

American students named native intelligence, and some said the home environment. But a clear majority of U.S. students put the responsibility on their teachers. A good teacher, they said, was the determining factor in how well they did in math.

"Kids have convinced parents that it is the teacher or the system that is the problem, not their own lack of effort," says Dave Roscher, a chemistry teacher at T.C. Williams in this Washington suburb. "In my day, parents didn't listen when kids complained about teachers. We are supposed to miraculously make kids learn even though they are not working."

As my colleague Ed Cannon puts it: "Today, the teacher is supposed to be responsible for motivating the kid. If they don't learn it is supposed to be our problem, not theirs."
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Can't much disagree with this opinion.
 
Knock it off, SnP. Next you'll be suggesting that common sense appear in a court room. You're a hazard to the national safety, you are.
 
My kid sometimes complains about one of his teachers. She's too boring. I just point out how lucky he is. He could have had to deal with me in his classroom.
 
I don't think that's completely true.

I'll use a friend of mine as an example. We were both enrolled in a Physics class and a Calculus class. Both classes are a similar workload and difficulty. My friend put out a lot of effort in both classes, but after a short time, he failed out of the physics class. It's not that he didn't try, or that he was stupid, it's just that the teacher does a very poor job explaining WHY you need to do something. He will say "Well first do this, then do this" which works fine if the problems followed the same format every time, but whenever he put in a different wording or something that needed the same knowledge to solve but required you to think differently, very few people would know how to do it. OTOH, the calculus teacher would tell you what to do and help you figure out why it is what it is. My friend did very well in Calculus because the teacher explained it to him properly, instead of just telling him what to do.

Of course, it varies from person to person. Myself, on the other hand, I had no problem with either class. I'm just saying that some people need it explained differently in order to be able to understand, and not all teachers do a good job of that.
 
Your friend does not have to be stupid & the teacher need not be useless to fail calculus or physics. They're difficult subjects.

If he was a good friend, though, you might have volunteered to help him. ;)
 
Altron said:
I don't think that's completely true.

I'll use a friend of mine as an example. We were both enrolled in a Physics class and a Calculus class. Both classes are a similar workload and difficulty. My friend put out a lot of effort in both classes, but after a short time, he failed out of the physics class. It's not that he didn't try, or that he was stupid, it's just that the teacher does a very poor job explaining WHY you need to do something. He will say "Well first do this, then do this" which works fine if the problems followed the same format every time, but whenever he put in a different wording or something that needed the same knowledge to solve but required you to think differently, very few people would know how to do it. OTOH, the calculus teacher would tell you what to do and help you figure out why it is what it is. My friend did very well in Calculus because the teacher explained it to him properly, instead of just telling him what to do.
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BUT, Did your friend ask for more help from the teacher?

Our daughter was having a hard time with fractions, she would say the stupid teacher won't explain it to me and such. Through further investigation it came out that she was not asking the teacher to help her understand that she wasn't getting it. Most teachers if you just simply ask they will gladly help you, they normally do not like to see a child fail out of their class.
 
Grade 7 Gifted math class. Mr. Webster was trying in vain to teach us about negative integers. (as in -*+=-, and -*-=+). It was mostly -*-=+ that drove us insane. Weeks and weeks it went on. We were way overthinking, and could not understand the theory because of it. Couldn`t get our heads around it. We argued and fought it and didn`t get a thing done cause we of course couldn`t start till we understood it, and we spent class after class going wtf and discussing the theory.

One day, after he had given us yet another assignment from the text, someone yet again asks but HOW? WHY? And Mr. Webster went off. This nice, calm, quiet math geek just lost it. He threw his books down, and bellowed, "I don`t care if you understand it. You don`t have to understand it. You have the rules. Now sit down, shut the fuck up, and just DO IT!" :eek:

We did it. In about 5 minutes we all understood it perfectly.

:tardbang:

I feel bad for the man having had to teach us. :eyemouth:
 
*snickers*

I've always had trouble with maths, but the best way for me to get it was to just sit quietly, follow the rules, do the numbers, and eventually some of it would start to make sense.
 
When I was in Navy Nuclear Power School, one of the instructors had us pull out a sheet of paper and draw a big circle on it. He then had us tape it to the corner of our desks, and write the words " I Believe" in the center. This class, BTW, was Reactor Principles, sort of like nuclear physics on steroids. He told us "I'm just a simple mechanic. I know how all of this works, but I cannot always explain all of it. Whenever that happens, I'll say 'Push your I Believe button, and deal with it.' You won't always understand the theory, bur you have to understand the principle concepts. That I can teach any of you"
 
Much like standing at the lift-off end of an airport runway.

No matter how well you understand coefficient drag & thrust theories, it's still amazing to watch a jumbo jet take off.
 
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