Waiting for Superman to Fix All These Shitty Parents
Herein you will find Part II of my review of the blockbuster film Waiting For Superman. Part I can be found here. Part II of the review first appeared, in more or less this form, as a guest post at White Group Mathematics.
At a certain level, it makes no difference whether parents are willfully negligent, stupid, or genuinely incapable of being good parents due to forces beyond their control. At the end of the day, you’re just a shitty parent and other people have to deal with your kids. They do this for a living.
And that’s a big problem if you are a child of such a parent. With shitty parents you miss out on a whole bunch of useful habits and orientations that, having not learned, will mess you up more and more with each passing year. You will offend and generally disenfranchise yourself with more and more people because nobody ever taught you how to act. You’re going to pay for it, and you won’t even know why or when it’s happening. Then we’ll all blame something else, but chances are that won’t help you either.
As The Onion has reported, “there is a big social stigma in this country against lazy, self-centered assholes”. That’s the natural state of childhood and adolescence. Unless there is a strong force, usually in the form of parents, to counteract this, everybody’s default setting between the ages of 5 and 25 is “asshole”.
Waiting for Superman goes to great lengths to avoid exploring the possibility that particular neighborhoods may have a critical mass of shitty parents that take everybody down with them. Perhaps good parents who are already struggling economically now have to struggle extra hard with their kids in school because you are a shitty parent and your shitty kid is taking up a HUGE amount of resources in MY KID’S school. My kid is there to learn and doesn’t get in trouble. I make sure of that. Being poor doesn’t give you or your kid a license to be an irresponsible dick.
Basic shit.
In this movie we do not see crack-head parents. We do not see abusive or incarcerated parents. We do not see parents who do not know who their kids are. We do not see what really brings neighborhoods down and keeps them down.
And we learn very little about the specific motivations of the featured parents to get their kids into different schools. As I mentioned in Part I of this review, the story about the white girl was pretty thin and there was an equally thin storyline about a teacher not calling back a parent…indicative of bad teaching and the rot therein. But that’s it. I think what those parents wanted, the parents working to get their kids into charters, is an environment as far away as possible from the shitty kids and parents in their neighborhood schools. But we never hear their real stories or motivations.
To turn this into a story of how teachers and schools have failed children is nothing but a lie.
This movie takes the entire self-regenerating inter-generational quagmire of poverty and shitty parenting and simply says “it doesn’t matter” or “it doesn’t happen”; I’m not sure which. Here’s the real problem. It’s bureaucracies. It’s unions. It’s that teacher who we videotaped that one time reading a magazine.
I’m calling bullshit.
(I’m not even going to talk about the union bashing because that whole line of argument was predicated on the assumption that unions exist primarily to give bad teachers lifetime economic security without ever explaining how we would know the difference between a good teacher and a bad teacher.)
Shitty parents=Shitty kids=Suck up all the resources. That’s it. This is not the fault of the teachers who work there or the kids who go to school there. The teachers are already working their asses off to pick up the slack of what other people have left undone. It’s time for kids and parents to get off their asses, too….and not just the 16 who appear in this dumpster juice excuse for a movie.
Waiting for Superman pretends this is not the case. There must be something else that causes black boys who live in shitty neighborhoods and have no idea who their dads are to do poorly in school….it’s most likely teachers unions and low expectations. That’s the only thing that makes sense.
Here’s my absolute most favorite example of the ridiculous logic that is the lifeblood of this film:
Some reformer in some district in California (LA?) was quoting stats from his school. It was something outrageous, like, 60K students had been to this school in 40 years and only 20K had graduated…something crazy like that. And here is his evaluation of these statistics:
“That’s the damage this school has done to this neighborhood”.
REALLY!?!?! Are you fucking serious?!!??
THAT’S why this neighborhood sucks? Because of the damage done to it by the school? There was no crime, mostly stable families, two parents, solid middle income, a prosperous and diversified commercial sector, strong churches and civic organizations in this part of town…and then the school showed up and ruined it all? You think the school is making your neighborhood suck? Really?!? That’s your argument? Are you stupid, or just a terrible liar?
FUCK YOU.
It’s all on teachers. No doubt. But the movie ultimately falls in on itself because it holds out charters as the answer. But not just any charter schools. There is a particular breed of charter schools that are the cream of the crop. Boarding schools, year-round schools, and schools with an aggressively extended school day and year are the winners.
So, what are the lessons?
1) If you have a good parent, even just one who is poor, he or she will work to teach you that you shouldn’t litter and will try to get you into a school that doesn’t have all of your shitty neighbors in it. All of the parents in the movie, and parents like me, will work their asses off to make sure you don’t have to spend all day surrounded by kids who were raised by wolves;
2) The best charter schools in poor urban districts are the ones that implicitly admit everything I am saying: PARENTS AND NEIGHBORHOODS MATTER. That’s why the most successful schools are the ones that take kids away from their parents and neighborhoods for the most time possible by extending the school day and year. This is an admission that the environment you came from is messed up and it really, really matters;
3) Many good parents are trapped in shitty neighborhoods with shitty schools. They should have a choice and the ability to send their kids to a better school. Agreed. But let’s be honest about what makes a school fail. It’s the kids who go there. C’mon…you’re going to judge my performance as a ninth grade teacher according to my students’ scores on the ninth grade test when we already know that only half of them could have passed the fifth grade test? Garbage in, garbage out. It sounds harsh, but that basic principle holds true for almost everything. Literally…almost everything. I’m saying “almost everything” because I am not mentally capable of thinking about “everything” all at the same time. There may be exceptions. Perhaps mediocrity in, mediocrity out, would help smooth the edges.
I’ll make you a much better meal if I start with a two-inch thick slab of aged, grass-fed rib-eye steak and a $40 bottle of Cabernet than I will with a can of SPAM and a two-liter bottle of Hawaiian Punch. We are teachers, not magicians.
America, give us magic wands, or be reasonable. Seriously.
Mr. Teachbad
Thank You.
Peter, this is far and away the single best review of that shitty movie that I have ever read, in no small part thanks to its strategic use of the F-word. On behalf of teachers in shitty schools everywhere, thank you.
And thank you for pointing out so succinctly the idiocy of blaming teachers’ unions for the failures of children who have nothing, but nothing, going for them once they walk outside a school at the end of the day (and those who do not bother to walk into a school, given that nobody is making them go).
Just to give an example of the stupid non-logic: the popular story is, as you say, that teachers’ unions exist to provide safe harbor for bad teachers, and THUS it is our fault that there are kids who never learn to read or behave themselves in public, and THUS neighborhoods crumble and crime skyrockets and the family disintegrates…
I am the union rep at my school…as well as being a teacher too, of course, and one who more often than not puts in 10+-hour days (though she is only being paid for 7-hour days by contract). Recently, the administration finally decided (after nearly 30 years) to do something about a really crappy (REALLY crappy) teacher at our school. (Why now, and not 28 years ago, I cannot say…the system has been in place this whole time. They could have done it anytime they wanted. Alas.) As the union rep, I had to go to the meetings with him and ensure that they were following procedure and that he knew what was going on, etc. This was done; the administration was doing things the right way; etc. I never spoke up on his behalf or fought their right to put him through this process precisely because the process is part of the contract and they were fully justified in what they were doing. My job was just to make sure no corners were cut, and that’s exactly what I did.
Further, administration asked ME to be his “peer mentor,” as he is in my department. I did this as well. I was appalled by what I saw in his classroom. He observed me during a class that was all but impeccable (a bit better than usual, I admit, but not out of the ordinary). I gave him suggestions, only to get told (by him) how to teach myself, and to get told that he couldn’t teach effectively because he didn’t have an LCD projector. I told administration what happened…what I saw, the suggestions I made, his reaction to them, etc., as I was supposed to do as his official peer mentor. They expressed to me that they held no real hope of him improving significantly and would basically appreciate it if he could keep kids from blowing up the classroom.
(By the way, yes, this teacher is a union member…his official “peer mentor,” chosen by administration, i.e. myself, is a union rep…we have many excellent teachers at my school, some of whom are members and some of whom are not; and a few crappy teachers at my school, some of whom are members and some of whom are not; it has never seemed to make an iota of difference to anyone’s job performance.)
Then I find out that, after observing him again last week, administration is suddenly satisfied with his performance and sanctions are off. While this lets me off the hook from having to do anything more with this man–no small blessing–it irritates me at the same time because, though I am his union rep, I would like to see him fired or at least pushed out at the end of the year. Nothing personal. I just don’t like incompetent people working in education and giving justification to everyone who badmouths us in the media. He is a poster child for all the bad laws that have been passed in this state and others across the country, though he is a minute minority.
And here is my point (arrived upon at very long last)…at the end of the day, it was not the union that kept this incompetent man from getting fired. It was administration that, for no discernible reason, decided to drop it…and certainly not because they were under any pressure to do so from me, which is so far the only union involvement in the situation.
Sorry that was long…just trying to make a point. I’m a union member and leader because I believe we should have a voice in what happens in our profession, and because I believe in the right to organized labor and collective bargaining. I want the few bad teachers who do exist out, and the ones who are struggling to get help that will allow them to improve. Period.
same story, different school district here in south Texas….I am the union rep for our district and want to get rid of the crappy teachers just like everyone else, but it seems it is too much of an inconvenience for administration to put forth the required effort… districts “cut off their noses to spite their faces” time after time and we union members collectively get the bad rap…even in the “right to work” states where unions aren’t even full force…
EXACTLY. They implemented a new law to eliminate teacher “tenure” here this year, but it was nothing but a union-busting technique. The rhetoric goes that it is near impossible to fire a teacher. There was already a process in place, and teachers did get fired under it…we had no “tenure.” We had a professional service contract that guaranteed you the right to due process before getting fired. That is all. People still got fired. Granted, not as many as could have/should have, but in my experience that is due far more to administration than the union. In fact, there are cases where members have been fired where we don’t really do much, because there was just cause and it was proved and there was nothing to be done…and we don’t want to defend people who don’t belong in the classroom. The cases we DO defend strongly are cases where people are being railroaded for personal reasons, or because they dared speak up against unfair policies or policies that hurt children’s education…and the new law passed means that from now on, anyone can be let go from year to year for any reason or no reason…so if you dare question policies or speak up for what you know is right and what you know is good for kids, you too can be fired, and there will be nothing we as the union or as individuals can do about it. This is precisely why the maligned “tenure” laws existed in the first place…what has been lost is not protection for crappy teachers (as you can see, my school apparently intends to keep its crappy teachers), but protection for speaking out, and having ideas, and believing that teachers should have a voice in what happens to their profession and to the children they devote their professional (and often personal) lives to.
But that is the whole point…strip us of our voice, strip us of our professionalism, create a revolving door of cheap, young, inexperienced teachers (a la TFA) who will not stick around long enough to demand better salaries or adequate working conditions…won’t benefit the kids who will never see an experienced teacher again, but then again, who really cares about those kids anyway?
The kids these people care about are already in expensive private schools anyway…
I love everything about this review.
I really wanted to watch this movie, but I was afraid of having a stroke from how pissed off it would make me. My husband has even gone so far as to delete it from our Netflix queue three times and has threatened divorce if I watch it.
Now I know why.
Fuck them all. Michelle Rhee, Charter Schools, the lot of them. Fuck. Them. All.
This is undoubtedly the best review of this movie ever. I wish there was some way that this could be read to every person who ever watches that movie.
Nothing more needs to be said. Perfect essay. Now if you’ll excuse me, I want to link (ok, share) this on Facebook.
You, Mr. Teachbad, are made of awesome.
yup.
“they” send you 30-40 kids. many don’t show up. many don’t show up on time. many don’t listen to you. they don’t do their work. many talk with ea other rather than listen to you or do their work. many get up and walk around for whatever reason. they take a nap or listen to their headphones or play on their phones. they write on their desks or their books or see if they can get pencils to stick in the ceiling or hit another student or even the teacher with something.
many of these kids parents or grandparents did everything they could to get to this country to help their kids through education move out and up. and this is how they use their education? or maybe they were just born into this situation and again, education is their way out and up. and again this is what they do with it?
(i teach social studies so we talk about political issues including education, immigration and welfare, for example) and i asked my kids why they don’t take the opportunity to move out and up and they basically said “because we’re ok with where we’re at” – meaning as long as they have a roof over their heads and food in their bellies and a phone and enough sex drugs and rock and roll (literally) – they’re good. the government keeps giving them everything they need. (look at how much more this is the way things are in other countries. like look at sao paulo for example. anyway.)
so there is who comes into my room. and omgsh i actually get them to at least sit and be quiet so i can teach the kids who actually want to use the education to move out and up. but i spend an enormous amount of my time with these kids aptly described as “raised by wolves” that it really strains me to teach the other kids as well as i’d like. they suffer. the kids that “get left behind” aren’t the bad kids but the good kids.
anyway long post short – what i do isn’t good enough. i need to “MAKE” these “bad kids” “better.” and if i don’t then im a “bad” teacher. and in order to make these “bad kids better” i need to do these hundreds of things (that haven’t been shown to work and that frankly aren’t my job) or else im an even worse teacher.
its MY fault they’re “bad” and its MY fault if they don’t become young scholars. its my fault if they don’t come to school and don’t come on time and don’t listen, etc. etc. etc.
that’s the lame message this movie seemed to send to me. teachers and their unions are to blame. so yeh, thanks for the f you.
O.k. but what about all those successs stories -whether they be public or charter schools, that manage to teach the most challenged children? What is it that those schools have in place that we need to replicate? Small school; small class size; teachers who are professionals and collaborate; high expectations; engaging, relevant curriclum; strong code of conduct; ability to earn priveleges;layer upon layer of supports for students; a school nurse; social workers; mental health programs; in-house clinic; strong, supportive school leaders and of course all this in a functional district.. but seriously what do we need to to have in place to be effective even with the most hard to reach?
Wrap around services, a conduct contract between parents, students, and the school, and the dedication and last but not least *money* to implement all of it. Even with all of that in place, however, the kids and their parents have to support it or it won’t work.
In our district, we have some more successful programs in high poverty areas, and some less successful ones.
and the ability to expel anyone who doesn’t go along with the program (which the neighborhood school on the corner does not).
You need all those things…and when you start talking about successful CHARTERS in the worst neighborhoods, they often have a combination of some (or all) of those things AND the inestimable ability to CHERRY PICK and WEED OUT. Just because a student is poor or comes from a bad neighborhood does NOT mean he is unintelligent, has a bad attitude, or doesn’t want to learn. But, as Teachbad aptly points out, parenting has a hell of a lot to do with that. Occasionally you stumble upon a miracle kid whose parents (if he has any he knows) are real pieces of shit, he has no support, maybe no roof over his head at all, goes to the worst school in town, and somehow rises above and ends up in Harvard and goes on to become the shining personification of greatness. We call that “beating the odds” for a reason.
At my school, about 70% of students are on free and reduced lunch. We have a lot of lazy jerks (though I have to admit that most of them are at least relatively polite lazy jerks; they’re not a bad bunch of kids behavior-wise) who do the bare minimum to pass, or not even that. We also have some truly amazing students who excel in all their subjects and end up with full scholarships to Ivy League schools. In a few of these cases I’ve come into contact with, the parents don’t really push them that much and they just have some crazy intrinsic motivation. But the majority of the outstanding ones, their parents are either educated themselves (and are relatively poor mainly because they are immigrants–this is a VERY immigrant-heavy school) and hold education as a priority, or else their parents have a strong work ethic and believe in the power of education even if they lack that education themselves, and have therefore made education a priority. In either case, the common factor is, education is a priority, and the kids have learned that from day one.
We get told we’re making excuses when we say the kids don’t study or do their homework. Yet what if it’s the truth? We are told to hold high expectations of them; I do. That is why so many students fail. Because I expect them to be present and on time; I expect them to pay attention and take notes; I expect them to study and do their homework, and I’d say the majority–at least half–do not do that.
My question is, what good does it do for me to have high expectations of them in my classroom if their parents do not have high expectations of them at home? Most of my students will tell you that as long as they are passing their classes, their parents don’t really care about their grades. And the ones who are failing? You guessed it…their parents don’t really care, or just seem lost and confused as to what to do about it. When we get them this way in high school, where they know what minimum grade they can come home with and feel not the slightest negative consequence (C, D or F–or many of their parents never see a grade at all and don’t think to ask the school why their kid doesn’t get report cards anymore), explain to me exactly how it is that we’re supposed to make them care?
The sad truth is that, by high school, if they don’t already care, they probably never will, or at least they won’t until they’ve already graduated from high school (or dropped out) and can’t get anything but the shittiest job at Wal-Mart or McDonald’s and can’t make ends meet and the light bulb suddenly goes off, “Wow…maybe I should have worked a little harder in high school. It wasn’t that hard after all…”
I just got home from day 2 of our spring term. I had a 12 hour day at my public HS in LA where I am the only theater teacher in a school of 3,000 kids. I also teach English 9 and have 5th period hellions that swear, interupt and call each other the n-word. Several kids can’t hold still and wander around and disrupt 40 classmates. It is not my fault these kids who come from an environment of sewage have potty mouths, low self esteem and negligent health care. They have no school supplies but their family has tattoos, fancy cars, Iphones and flat screen TVs. It is my fault their child won’t sit quietly, stay on task and take in their free education.
The additional hours I spent today was photocopying materials for 150 kids since the school had no text books for drama. The is no board to write lessons on in the theater. My classes are in a rat infested Eisenhower-era theater that has a sloped floor, brick walls, tiny wooden seats with fixed porkchop desks, and almost no climate control. I know, my fault.
The rats are eating materials I brought over from my previous school where I taught english for 6 years. I was normed into teaching drama or join the subpool. So I am assigned to a school twice the distance from my house and is rat infested. The kids had 5 weeks of subs before I arrived and had becone an unruly mob. Had the school used textbooks to anchor the subs, the chaos and diminshed education they got, could have been avoided. The administration could easily have used a long term English sub til they hired a Drama teacher. I know, my fault.
I’m Waiting for Decency and some respect. I have 3 degrees and I was raised proper nor rich. Ill mannered people, rich or poor, make for bad classrooms. I’m gracious, polite and struggling to live paycheck to monthly paycheck. I know, my fault.
The rat control man from the district, the principal and the plant manager all asked me why I had boxes of books and materials. I said I am a prepared teacher. Where are the metal file cabinets you promised three months ago? I know, my fault the rats are there.
The have not seen the Waiting for Superman movie because I know it will piss me off. There are such bigger issues than what is publically addressed and I am tired of being blamed for a bunch of other peoples half-assed work.
My district is huge and poorly run. They can’t keep their payroll straight and spend millions of dollars on wasteful stuff and personnel every year.
The rats in the theater are consuming english lessons faster than I can teach my unruly 9th graders of Satans spawn. Blame the teacher.
Teachbad,
I’m with you on the bad parenting thing. I really am. I think lack of parenting is a plague on this country and nothing burns my blood like a lazy parent that cannot be bothered to take an active role in raising their children to be responsible, contributing members of society.
However, just like the movie is too one-sided against teachers, you’re too one-sided for them. I personally went to a public school system with horrifyingly bad teachers; teachers that would remind us on a daily basis that they get paid whether we learn or not. Teachers that would literally abandon the lesson plan to preach to us out of the bible. Teachers that knew less about their subject than I did by the age of 12, and on and on.
I went to college and had to take classes with education majors that were borderline retarded (in fact, I happen to know a person who is getting a masters in education right now and literally has a mild mental retardation). Nobody wanted to be in groups with these people because they were almost universally lazy, painfully uncreative, and had great difficulty with the most basic academic skills like spelling. They showed a stunning lack of curiosity and interest in anything intellectual that rivaled our last President. As with anything, there were exceptions, but I am talking about the vast majority here. It was no secret. Professors in other programs routinely complained about the impossibility of trying to teach education majors, and their lack of intelligence frequently made the “letters” pages of our school newspaper.
Parents are awful. Teachers are too. As long as we deny either of these facts, we’re not going to make any progress in improving our increasingly embarrassing system of public education.
no one ever wants to go the bottleneck – teacher education and selection programs. want to get rid of bad teachers and improve schools? weed out poor candidates during their bachelor’s program.
and while correlation does not equal causation, there is a strong positive link showing that student achievement is related to teacher salaries (international study). that is to say, when you increase teacher salaries across the profession, you increase the prestige of the profession and suddenly find yourself increasing the number of qualified applicants and ultimately qualified teachers in the classroom.
I was a teacher. I think everyone would agree that there are bad teachers out there, but this does not excuse parents from taking an active role.
Which is more likely to have a larger positive effect an exceptional teacher or an exceptional parent?
Related to teacher quality. I quit 5 years in for several reasons, one of them being the money. I went and got an MBA, and now work in business, and now earn about 3 times what I did as a teacher. Yes I work long hours, but guess what so do good teachers. Why would someone with a lot of potential and multiple career options opt for the one where they work long hours, and get paid like shit (as well as a host of other challenges)?
This is so critical! I remember seeing a comic the other day that was satirizing the state of education and the role of parents today. It basically made the comparison that in the 60′s, when a kid screwed up, the parents were on the side of the teacher; demanding results for the poor grades. By contrast, the parents of today were glaring at the teacher, wondering how they could have given their darling child such a poor review.
I’m currently working towards my online Master of Education degree at this site: http://www.cu-portland.edu/ and as a future teacher, the #1 thing I most fear are poor parents who refuse to see the flaws in their child/ren.
I thought it was interesting this came across my after reading your post…
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/12/opinion/kristof-the-value-of-teachers.html?src=tp
Wow…I just read the Kristoff article and the executive summary of the study…will get back to it later. I just can’t imagine how al these links can be made with any degree of confidence. The causal chains at work here are very long and many, many assumptions have to be made along the way. If I understand the summary correctly, I should be able to go back to my 4-8th grade test scores and apportion some part of the blame that I am now unemployed to my teachers in the early 1980s?
I’ll have to get back to this…
Interesting as in yes, we have a lot of influence, but again, it isn’t even in the national debate. And the parents and environment is ancillary.
This article is awesome! I’m a former teacher who worked in some pretty bad neighborhoods (with some pretty bad parents) and I applaud you for calling bullshit on the line of the Rhee-esque reformers, who like to blame teachers for all the ills of the world. In reality, teachers aren’t the problem, the parents/environments of the students are the problem.
Unfortunately, the result of bad parenting and home environments still sucks for the kids (and isn’t fair) but the situation is not going to be fixed by pretending the reason that these kids do poorly in school is because of their third period math teacher.
I really hate to keep playing spoiler here, because I work in education and I want to take educators’ side by default, but it is disturbing as hell to see all the teachers here trying to completely absolve themselves of responsibility.
Look, I can put this VERY simply:
-Teachers are a problem
-Parents are a problem
A reasonable person has to accept both of those statements as true, as far as I’m concerned. Now, of those two, which is easier for us, as educators, to change?
I hope you all don’t teach your students to run from accountability as fast as you’re doing here.
In my career working at 2 urban schools I have worked with over 300 teachers. Obviously I didn’t know them all closely but I got a good feel for many of them. I have had two coworkers who weren’t working hard and who wouldn’t have been ‘successful’ given reasonable working conditions. By reasonable working conditions I mean a student population that is somewhat respectful, attends school most of the time, are at least marginally interested in school, curriculum to start from, standard discipline policies, proper student placement in courses, class sizes below 30, etc. Without these conditions met it is essentially impossible to be successful. Anyone who tells you there is some type of super teacher out there who is able to solve all those problems is selling snake oil. In reality it takes hard work from experienced professionals to run a school properly and work out the institutional issues. It takes funding for resources and to reduce class sizes. It takes committed parents and community to help fight the cultural battle against apathy. And of course it takes teachers who know their content, are patient, and are willing to work hard. I have seen dozens ,probably 50 by now, motivated, highly educated professionals leave education to pursue other careers. These people were well qualified to teach, many possessed masters degrees within their content areas. The exact type of people you’d hope would become a teacher. There is no pool of super teachers out there who can magically solve the problems I have listed to replace these people when they leave.
Go to a “bad” school, and you find mostly bad kids raised by bad parents. Go to a “good” school, and you find mostly good kids raised by good parents. At a “bad” school, yes, bad parents are the primary problem. A teacher cannot force a bad parent to care for and raise their child properly. A teacher can sign-up for as many professional development courses as possible, and can implement as many novel instructional methods as they can fit into a class period, but they cannot stop a parent from neglecting their child’s academic and emotional upbringing… Some teachers suck, yes, but you’ll find shitty people working in every profession. In a “bad” school, bad parents are the main problem. Stating that “Teachers are a problem” is a pathetic acquiesence to the anti-teacher movement. Maybe you’re the problem. Maybe you should quit.
I don’t think teachers are trying to absolve themselves of responsibility. I think what you’re picking up is two things. 1) As a country it seems we have just decided to accept the fact that there are huge swaths of the population that cannot be expected to raise their kids in a way that produces a social gain; and 2) Now that getting parents to be responsible in raising their kids is off the table, teachers are expected…no…it is demanded that teachers pick up all this slack because we know that really super duper teachers will be able to make all children shine and perform at the highest levels.
Nobody is average.
Nobody is stupid.
Nobody is lazy.
Everybody is awesome and, if they aren’t, the teacher is doing something wrong.
>1) As a country it seems we have just decided to accept the fact that there are huge swaths of the population that cannot be expected to raise their kids in a way that produces a social gain; and 2) Now that getting parents to be responsible in raising their kids is off the table, teachers are expected…no…it is demanded that teachers pick up all this slack because we know that really super duper teachers will be able to make all children shine and perform at the highest levels.
Nobody is average.
Nobody is stupid.
Nobody is lazy.
Everybody is awesome and, if they aren’t, the teacher is doing something wrong.
Yes, that’s a shame and a HUGE part of our education problem. I’m sure it’s a bigger part of the problem than bad teachers, but as I asked before: which one can we, as educators, change?
It’s like when you’re in a relationship that isn’t working out; do you try to change the other person or try to change yourself? Most people try to change the other person, because it’s easier on the ego, but I promise that the only option with any chance of success is to try to change yourself.
Including private schools, there are more teachers in this country than there are doctors, lawyers and accountants combined. Almost 5 percent of all working-age people with bachelors degrees are teachers. That’s a lot of people. It is unreasonable and unfair to expect them all to be miracle workers and they should not have to be. This is a job. If it’s a magical calling for some, that’s great.
I think if there was any clarity at all as far as what teachers should do in order to make themselves better, they would do it. And I think that even if every teacher did everything they could, we’d still be in much the same place…it’s not enough and responsibility falls again to you. You have to do more to reach out, engage, coddle, differentiate and make things up..
My concern is that this is becoming a worse job all the time. I predict that when the economy turns around in two years that we will have a shortage of teachers. Why would you do this to yourself?
But, most importantly, let’s respect the forum. This is, after all, Mr. Teachbad’s Blog of Teacher Disgruntlement: Where Teachers Laugh and Complain.
Eli: I wanted to address your response to my comment above. I agree with you that there are *some* bad teachers out there. However, as many people have pointed out, there are some bad teachers all over (in rich and poor schools).
I worked in both high and low income schoools over my teaching career and I saw pretty much the same array of teachers at all the schools: Some young energetic teachers, some very experienced teachers, some cynical teachers, some idealistic teachers, and many exhausted teachers. There were proportionately more inexperienced and burned out teachers at the rougher schools, but overall the general quality, effort, etc. of the teachers was pretty equal.
The main difference between the high performing and low performing schools isn’t the teachers (or administrators or textbooks) — It’s the students (and their families, peers, communities and other related issued).
All I can say is, “Wow!” You have hit every nail square on the head.
And, to Eli, yes there are bad teachers, but there are far more shitty parents. Think about that. When a classroom is filled with 30 kids and 25 of them have shitty parents, it doesn’t matter who is in front of them. The class is doomed. It won’t matter if the teacher is shitty.
Oh, and people, please stop refering to people as “that”. For example, “…nothing burns my blood like a lazy parent that cannot be bothered to take an active role in raising their children to be responsible, contributing members of society.” This should read, “…nothing burns my blood like a lazy parent WHO cannot be bothered to take an active role in raising their children to be responsible, contributing members of society.”
Thanks and peace out. Teachbad…You ROCK!
>Oh, and people, please stop refering to people as “that”. For example, “…nothing burns my blood like a lazy parent that cannot be bothered to take an active role in raising their children to be responsible, contributing members of society.” This should read, “…nothing burns my blood like a lazy parent WHO cannot be bothered to take an active role in raising their children to be responsible, contributing members of society.”
Gutentag, Frau Ally. It’s a beautiful morning in the Third Grammar Reich, ja?
Actually, either is acceptable. I consciously chose “that” because I was referring to a more abstract and general concept of “the parent,” rather than anyone specific, for whom I would’ve used “who.” It was a style choice.
>Including private schools, there are more teachers in this country than there are doctors, lawyers and accountants combined. Almost 5 percent of all working-age people with bachelors degrees are teachers. That’s a lot of people. It is unreasonable and unfair to expect them all to be miracle workers and they should not have to be. This is a job. If it’s a magical calling for some, that’s great.
I think if there was any clarity at all as far as what teachers should do in order to make themselves better, they would do it.
For some reason, this post didn’t have a “reply” link. I hope that doesn’t mean I wasn’t supposed to reply to it.
Anyway . . . I realize that there are a lot of teachers in this country. Multiply that 25 or 30 and that’s how many students there are. I think we could make some systemic changes that would really help the situation and bring us back into educational competition with the rest of the world:
-Make university education programs more selective and much more difficult.
-Reform the student teaching process. A person should not have to pay full university tuition to go work in a classroom for 30+ hours a week. At least at public universities, tuition should be subsidized or waived during these semesters.
-Promote teaching as an honorable institution. In Finland, teaching is considered patriotic. Why is going off to war and killing foreigners considered patriotic in America but teaching our own youth isn’t?
-Cut WAY back on standardized testing. It’s gotten to a point where we’re letting the tests dictate the entire curriculum and that stifles any attempt at educational creativity or a holistic approach to teaching/learning. There should be some standardized testing to catch major deficiencies and make sure everyone is learning certain universal topics, but right now it’s overdone.
-Pay teachers better. This is such a no-brainer. I just don’t get why conservatives can’t get on board with this. We need a campaign of facts that show how good public education benefits everyone.
-There has to be a way to get rid of bad apple teachers. I understand and agree with strong general protection for the profession, but when someone abuses that, they need to be thrown out the door to protect the integrity of everyone else. I’m all for giving plenty of warnings, but at a certain point, a bad teacher has got to go, tenure or not.
Those are all pretty simple and doable, and could make HUGE positive changes within a generation, as opposed to trying to make people better parents, which . . . I don’t even know where you’d start with that, but I think you’d fail.
Regarding your statement about those pretty simple and doable systemic changes: you have a horrifically unrealistic view of things. Do you really think it would be simple to change America’s perception of teachers, or to raise teachers’ salaries? I would love to see those things happen. They may yet. However, neither are simple to accomplish. Why? Because the dipshit parents that send their dipshit kids to ruin our classes are also the dipshit constituents that politicans pander to at election time, and few politicans are willing to say to their dipshit constituents “Hey, you suck as parents; get your shit together!” It’s far easier to say “Teachers suck, let’s scapegoat them!”
These issues are not simple. Dealing with them on a day-to-day basis in the classroom is not easy. If you were a teacher, you’d get that. (You’ve stated that you work in education, and that you took classes with borderline retarded education majors -fuck you on that point, by the way- so I take it that you’re not a teacher. If you were, you’d state it, directly and proudly.)
By the way, in case your incredibly superior ability to logically analyze complex issues missed this point: this is a place for teachers to vent their frustrations. Here, we don’t say “Yeah, we suck, we’re the problem, it’s all our fault.” We take enough shit from EVERYONE in every other capacity, so we don’t self-immolate here. (Sorry, Teachbad, if I’ve overstepped any boundaries.)
Ah, fuck me, real mature. But people are often offended by that which hits close to home…
Simple does not equal easy, but everything I said is possible. We went to the moon; you can’t tell me anything I proposed would be harder, and – as much as it pains me to say this as an astronomy enthusiast – it would all be much more practical and beneficial to society.
And, finally, I thought I made it clear that I’m not a teacher. I certainly never claimed to be. I am in technology and curriculum development. But I am passionate about education and I have children, so it’s not as if I have no chips in the game.
Honestly, reading all of you whine has left me less optimistic about teachers than I was when I got here. You people need to man (or woman) up and take some god damn personal responsibility. You sound like the children you’re bitching about.
Eli-
Play nice.
Not surprisingly, I have to side with the teachers here. If you work in technology and curriculum development, that really doesn’t mean you know a thing about what teachers do and how it can feel to really want to catch kids up who are not prepared, not interested and not willing to help you help them. That’s like telling us you know what it’s like to be a bird because you are a tree and have seen many birds and many birds have landed on you. (Some people would also argue that people writing curriculum who have not been teachers is at least a small part of our problem.)
I will point out, again as have others, that the subtitle of this blog is WHERE TEACHERS LAUGH AND COMPLAIN. Right? This is a place of satire and blowing off a little steam. Not for lectures on the history of the space program and self-righteous correctives from you.
How does pointing out the obvious and talking about how it makes our jobs much more difficult equate to not taking responsibility? If a doctor complains that his job is harder because some of his patients keep smoking, eating crappy food and don’t finish their prescriptions; is he not taking responsibility?
If we have upset you so, you needn’t come back.
Respectfully,
Mr. Teachbad
I’m not saying teachers can solve everything. I realize that you can’t. I realize that bad parenting is a HUGE problem, and I’ve acknowledged that many times here. What disturbs me is so many teachers throwing their hands up and saying “well, these kids are poor, I can’t help them.” It’s a self-perpetuating attitude and it does far more harm than good. Poor kids are just as capable as anyone else. I know a girl who grew up in south central LA on government assistance and went on to graduate from Stanford. Yeah, you may have to battle some bad attitudes that they learn in the home – battles you don’t have to fight with middle class kids – but that’s the great thing about kids: they’re malleable. They are *teachable*. And great teachers can do it. I’ve seen them. If you are a great teacher, stop selling yourself short. If you aren’t, then get the hell out of the classroom.
Right on!
J: Way to tell it like it is. I think that people who blame teachers for the academic problems associated with poverty, bad parenting, transience, and many other issues, are completely detached from reality and have probably never worked in a low income school.
Anyone who’s ever taught in a low-income school would immediately realize that these students have problems reaching far beyond things that can be addressed by a history teacher in a 42 minute class period with 35 students.
Decent teachers can teach generally well-behaved, normal students with good results. The same decent teachers will struggle (and often fail) trying to teach students with serious behavior and emotional problems, which problems are highly associated with poverty and its attendant manifestations.
Pretending that all it takes is a caring or intelligent teacher to fix years of parental neglect is an appealing concept that falls apart when it hits reality.
yeh that article pissed me off. why? because SO MUCH IS PUT ON THE TEACHER. i mean omgsh – now whether or not someone gets pregnant is up to me? whether or not someone makes 25k more per year is up to me? if i’m not a “good” teacher look at all the good stuff my kids miss out on and look at all the bad stuff that happens? all because of ME?
whatever happened to how well a person did in life being up to, oh i dono, THEMSELVES? or as we have discussed their PARENTS?
please understand im not saying dont get rid of “bad” teachers. and yes i believe that such a “bad” teacher can be detectable and either not get a license or get fired. but the way the language of so many in the media and society sounds its like you suck unless you work freaking miracles.
eli think of what we are being increasingly demanded to take responsibility for.
using tb’s doctor analogy its like you make the drugs (design the curriculum etc.) THATS IT! what happens next is NOT your problem.
we as the “doctors” we do EVERYTHING after that. and if as tb described the kid doesnt show up to his appointment, doesnt follow directions there, doesnt take his meds, goes and gets into more trouble, gets pregnant, makes 25k less per year, and on and on and on and on – its OUR FAULT!?!?! we suck?!? we should get better trained? we should get fired?
were being asked WAY too much. to do freaking miracles.
and why us? because you’re right – you can’t administrate the parents or the neighborhood. you cant make them be good parents or live in a good area.
so ALL the focus of ALL the ills falls on 4th grade teacher and if he doesnt make miracles – he sucks.
New teacher here. I’m teaching at a low-income high school and feel shell-shocked after one semester. I teach ESL English as a Second Language) but that doesn’t mean my students don’t speak English. About 95 percent of them were born in the U.S. and spent their lives in the public school system, but cannot read and write anywhere near grade level because their parents are illiterate in their first language, and/or poor and/or dysfunctional in some other way.
Great commentary on that idiotic “documentary” that appears to be an ad for Kipp charter schools. Of course the charter schools are succeeding where public schools fail, because they can cherry pick good kids and dump bad ones. Also, I’ve been told by a former Kipp teacher that to work there, it’s best to have no life. You will get excellent pay but will work 60-hour weeks and be on call constantly.
One thing that has occurred to me that might be one of the main problems with teachers — the profession tends to attract people to whom it makes sense to sacrifice their own immediate rights and comforts to serve the greater good. In other words, teachers generally are people who are good at being patient and understanding of other people’s needs and problems, but not great about sticking up for themselves. They get clobbered and can’t defend themselves because they’re not mean enough. I have this fantasy that as more and more lateral-entry teachers like me) enter the teaching profession as refugees from corporate downsizing, we may see more teachers willing to say they’re mad as hell and unwilling to take everyone’s abuse anymore. Just a fantasy, probably …
Eli clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.
Word up, Eggs.
Excellent argument. Hard to disagree with that kind of bulletproof logic. Even though you forgot to say nanner nanner boo-boo, shall I retreat nonetheless to stick my head in doo doo?
Dear Eli,
I taught KG for 6 years in an inner city school where 94% of the student body qualified for free lunch. My first year at age 25 I was older than most of the parents of my students (at least the 4 or so I actually met each year). Many students arrived in my classroom not knowing their last name nor how to hold a pencil or a book. Like all the teachers at the school, I was expected (threatened with losing my certificate)to bring these students up to grade level. 23 5 year old kids in a class, always at least 5 with no English language skills, 3 or 4 with severe behavior issues (including many children erratically medicated for a number of reasons – you better believe the days their meds “ran out” were a wild ride) a classroom aide assigned to my room for 45 minutes a day (the only time I was able to use the restroom) who more often than not was pulled to sub another class so the school didn’t have to pay someone from outside….. These are just some of the challenges. I would never stop writing if I listed them all.
Here’s the thing, Eli. After a while I noticed something. The teachers who had been in that environment for over 7 years or so fell into two distinct camps.
1. Completely numb. There is only so long that you can pour your heart and soul into making a difference into the lives of children that start with nothing, only to be called into meetings once a week which itemize all the ways you are failing. Eventually you shut down.
2. Completely insane. For the same reasons as above. Just depends which kind of personality you’re more prone to develop. I’d see these people walking down the hallway and do a 180 in the opposite direction because I knew a whole lot of crazy was about to be coming out of their mouths..
Have you never had so much more work to accomplish than you could ever hope to finish? At some point I just shut down and was unable to do any of it. No matter what I did someone thought it was the wrong thing – so why do any of it? I realized I was on the path to being one of the numb ones – so I quit.
Those “bad teachers” who are “part of the problem” most likely didn’t start that way. They are worn out and either numb, or nuts. The teachers who feel like they can do something else…ANYTHING ELSE….get out. The ones whose self esteem is low, and/or student loan debt for their education degree is high, are the ones STUCK in the classroom, with no hope, no help, and no energy.
Then again, we did not have a technology and curriculum development specialist. I guess that was probably the problem.
Jessica, don’t get me wrong. I’m happily married. But if I was single…
Amen.
Oh, let’s not require people to know what they’re talking about in order to enter the fray. That’s not stopped anyone yet.
I went to 4 years of voluntary PD to learn to implement discovery learning, with self-paced projects, small groups, and differentiation.
My administrator told me the “good” students in my class (i.e. the ones who could read) were doing too much better than the “lower” students ( i.e. the ones at the 2nd grade level who are unable to reliably add two single-digit positive numbers that will fit on the fingers of 2 hands). So this high school teacher was removed from the classroom and put in charge of a computer lab that kids can come to if they would like. Replaced in the classroom by one of those teachers who don’t know the subject – but can certainly recognize that putting in grades greater than 60% make her very popular.
Evidently the way to close the achievement gap is to stop teaching the teachable, remove the teachers who actually know the material, and keep reporting that our school has no problems.
I think we have made the mistake of thinking that anyone wants to fix this problem in some sort of logical way. Think of the number of administrators who would be unemployed if there was actual school success.
And yes, Mr Teachbad, I do “blame” your 4th and 8th grade teachers. They actually educated you. Sorry. ‘Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.’