However, the thread had turned into defending what appeared to be extreme outliers in teachers who did not meet valid professional requirements. I would argue that there does need to be some awareness if, for example, a teacher is failing to protect students' safety.
________________________________ Wed, May 26, 2010 3:10:29 PM Alan Rudy wrote:
There are too many kinds of learners and educational standards, priorities and interests are too divergent to establish any meaningful and coherent standards. I LOVED a number of teachers and faculty other students hated and couldn't understand the attraction of many that my fellow students adored. We know parents who are ecstatic with teachers we know would be horrible for our older boy and others who wish their kid had our teacher because of the voluminous amount of homework (in second grade?!) she assigns. We know parents who think our school is too discipline focused and others who think it is too lax. The key, as a number of people have noted, is that none of this really means anything to the majority of students and families in East Lansing, because its a robust, well-off, educationally-focused, parent-involved (though THAT clique's a more than tough nut to crack - not that we want to be that cool) community.
The crisis is in Lansing, or Benton Harbor, or Flint, or Detroit or... and there, measuring a teacher's quality by student performance when many of the worst have been made bad by a completely irrational educational system and completely contradictory fit between educational priorities and community dynamics, is just idiotic. The focus on teachers is a distraction, and a deeply political one. "Good" teachers will increase proportionate to the extent to which the contradictions of the system - not the characteristics of individual teachers or students - are addressed. Disciplining teachers in the contemporary context simply serves help those responsible for underfunding schools, establishing irrational standards, imposing ridiculous mandates and obliterating the wider economy surrounding so many "failing" schools off the hook.
Hell, my own student evaluations completely flummoxed some administrators at my previous institution. One third of my students love the relational, trees and forest at the same time, approach I take, an approach flush with politics, provocation, and pulchritude (needed another p-word) - but this has no correlation with grades. (" heard this from a kid driving by me today: "Dr. Rudy! Thanks for the C in Sociology!") One third of my students despise the ways I provoke them, hate the fact that they have to take their own notes, can't stand the ways I respond to student comments with real world examples about things and from places they've rarely heard of, deeply wish that I'd get through every slide of the powerpoints every session, resent the fact that I make them read the book before coming to class, really really really want to be told EXACTLY what they need to know for the exam, by a study guide, and wish I'd stop presenting my opinions (sociological things they disagree with) and just provide the facts. Another third don't meaningfully fill out the form. Am I great? Do I suck? Why don't so many care? (No, I'm not whining, I'm just saying standards vary [kinda like Til Tuesday's "Voices Carry"?!])
The repeated reference to American anti-intellectualism is, I think, really important, here... particularly among the majority of the students who're now going to college who never would have in the past, and even more particularly in a world where many students want very specific job skills, not critical consciousness and inquisitiveness, so that they can get one of the few jobs out there... a perspective reinforced by parents, teachers, administrators and a number of faculty. Oy.
I'm pretty much with Carroll, and totally with Joanna, on all this. By comparison to a million other things that really need addressing, and have far more of an impact on education and educational achievement, "bad teachers" need to be the least of our worries.
On Wed, May 26, 2010 at 1:24 PM, Gail Brock <gbrock_dca at yahoo.com> wrote:
> I guess I wasn't clear enough. Yes, I can give you quite a long list of
> the attributes of good teaching. The point is that no one has all of them,
> and some of them are even incompatible. And determining whether a teacher
> has the attributes is impossible. In practice, even deciding whether a
> better teacher entertains the students sufficiently to make them like the
> class or pushes through on difficult subjects is problematic. Or, whether
> the class results in mastery of the proscribed subject matter or in a
> critical, questioning attitude towards the material.
>
> Of course, meritorious teachers do it all, and everybody knows who the good
> teachers are.
>
> ________________________________
> Joanna (Wed, May 26, 2010 12:49:22 PM):
>
> Gail writes:
>
> "I have yet to find anyone who could really balance out all the different
> teaching strengths and weaknesses, including what kinds of students they
> reach, what strengths they help the students with, how much trouble they
> cause the administration (hint -- social status of the parents is not
> excluded from consideration), and so on. So I find any merit system an
> exercise in delusion. However, my experiences with bad doctors and dentists
> leave me believing that there is a level of incompetence and professional
> neglect that colleagues have a responsibility to address."
>
> It is hard to define good teaching, especially because there are different
> styles of teaching and teachers can be good in different ways.
>
> But some things come to mind: the teacher
>
> -- knows her subject well
>
> -- understands how to convey difficult concepts
>
> -- instills a life-long appreciation or love for the subject
>
> -- creates a space in which the student can learn and develop
>
> Probably many other things too.
>
> One other thing. Sometimes it takes years before the effects of good
> teaching manifest themselves. So, a little survey at the end of class is not
> enough.
>
> Joanna
>
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