How Has Teaching Changed?
Posted by Debra Liverman on 13 Nov 2008 | Posted in: Teachers and Teaching
As I was going through some old photos, I ran across a picture of my fifth-grade class from my very first year of teaching. I tried to imagine what some of those students, now in their midtwenties, might be doing. I’m sure they’ve changed so much that I may not recognize them. Then I started reflecting on all the changes I’ve seen in teaching over the years. There have been many of them!
So here’s a question for all the veteran teachers out there: how has teaching changed since you started your career?
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32 Responses to “How Has Teaching Changed?”
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More Comments Pages: [1] 2 3 » Show All Comments
The purpose of education is to perform well on a battery of tests designed for profit by big business that are neither valid nor reliable.
Statistics can and are being manipulated.
Why are not the politicians fighting to get education funded as it is written in the US Constitution that “education is the responsibility of the State”. That certainly does not hold true in one of the poorest funded states in the Union- Illinois.
Why are classes being held on stages, closets and in bathrooms, sometimes in 90 degree heat? I have taught in all of them!
When I started teaching the standardized test were used to assess progress. The teacher’s professional insight and experience was far more important than the results of any capricious tests.
Standards have been raised under the illogical assumption that if you teach “higher” skills, if you cram in more material the children will learn more. Have these so-called bureaucrats ever heard of readiness skills?
The bureaucrats are so busy trying to teacher-proof the curriculum that they cannot see the underpaid, talented, dedicated, highly EDUCATED professional job pool staring them right in the face. We have already been trained as to how to teach and often forgo somewhat higher salaries as we are committed to the welfare of these children who lack advantages for a myriad of reasons.
The notion, the premise is absurd. The end result will be a dangerous lack of intrinsic motivation on the part of the students which is so crucial to success in education.
What will happen when the drop-out rate reaches an all-time high? What ever happened to the joy of learning?
Did you pursue an education to perform well on a standardized test?
Children learn by doing. They learn best through play. They work hard all day long and need time to be kids in order to assure their total physical development which is crucial to their intellectual growth.
Why not teach long division in first grade before the little ones can even count? I’d receive first graders inner city youngsters year after year who did not know how to even hold a pencil.
Although they lived a few miles away, many third graders had never seen Lake Michigan but knew the names of all the wrestlers on cable tv.
In this so-called information age, if one needs to know what a rhombus is, just how difficult would it be to access that information?
Children are not being taught how to think but rather to placate the bureaucrats with an extremely limited political agenda. It is a shame to watch the children suffer from their unADULTerated ignorance of the elected and appointed officials. FOR WHAT?
I have been teaching preschool at a Head Start program for 7 years. I feel that if I taught the way my director wants me to teach my kids would not be ready for Kindergarten. I am not suppose to have a letter of the week. I can not hang the alphabet up in my classroom. I am not allowed to hang anything store bought. Apparently only child made decorations are meaningful to the children. No patterns on our borders, no decorations on our door and no bulletin boards unless the children make everything. We are suppose to teach a theme every week. I thought I was suppose to get these kids ready for Kindergarten?? I do teach and focus on a letter of the week anyway and the children love it. I think that four and five year olds need to be prepared for Kindergarten. I don’t want my students to be behind. I love to teach and be creative. But I feel like they are trying to take that away from me!
In an effort to have some say in what I teach my kindergarteners, I took executive offices in our community teacher organization and started researching and questioning what was happening. (This year we started mandatory spelling test every Friday at the beginning of November! -Not to mention our grade card objectives are not developmental.) I was told to sit down and keep my mouth shut over and over. I agree with everything we are frustrated about, but I want to know what to do about it. Our building has had 100% turn over in 5 years, and our district teacher retention rate is below the Missouri average, but the only thing they seem to be doing is putting more mandates in place for new teachers. I know teachers need more control, kids need to be kids, and we have to quit teaching to the tests, but I want to know HOW??? I’m ready to fight for what I know is right. I just don’t know how. I’d rather be a leader than someone who just gives up.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately. I’ve taught preschool for 15 years. We are going through our NAEYC accreditation process and I am spending hours doing paperwork to document all the activities we do to meet their hundreds of criteria. The irony being that now that I’m spending all this time on paperwork I don’t have time to spend preparing and adding new fun activities. The director fills in with associates while I’m out of the room doing documentation and for the first time ever I have children in the room who know less now than when they started school. I spend so much time assessing children, who has time to teach?
Ayesha;
I graduated from Zayed University in UAE. My major focus on Family Science Sciences. My courses were in consulting and social workers. I started my job as assistant Librarian and especially teaching kindergarten kids librarian skills. Also, I deal with different groups of years from Grade one to grade nine. but I could say that our education still related to teaching way which teachers required students to mom many of their subjects. In addition of all that, many subjects they must have as major classes. under this atmosphere they lose the real purpose from education. As being a students, mother, teacher-assistant librarian and based on my university education in my opinion, teachers can implement the official curriculum they should teach through it by using the play as way to transfer the curriculum in fun way to make the students interest in learning and created new generation who be able to start their own projects and ideas.
In many of the above comments the concepts of having fun and learning seem to be two separate things. As teachers we need to find ways for the government mandated curriculum to be fun and entertaining for the students. Mailbox is the answer. Many of the activities that they provide in their magazines are in alignment with the state standards. The students are tested on the state standards. If only administrators could see that good resources such as mailbox, provide fun activities that allow students to develop skills in ways that are fun and interesting to them, I think we could all win.
Teaching to the test…yes, that is what we do. On a daily basis I feel more and more like a Who in Who-ville. We are shouting out for help, but feel no one will ever hear us. It seems that those we can talk to, in our administrations, have too many pressures above them so all they can do (for their job security) is continue ‘believing’ in these tests.
I have been blessed with the opportunity to spend the past 6 years home with my children, and this is my first year in 5th grade. Each day I feel frustrated and overwhelmed with student behaviors, pacing guides and now budget issues. Right now I do not think that there is time to point fingers towards legislators, teachers, or parents. What we need to do is take back the autonomy that teachers should have within the classroom. We have been trained, we are professionals, and I feel extremely confident in my ability to teach these students. Even the bad ones; in fact, even more so the bad ones.
This is because I believe that the educational system is equally to blame as parents in the behaviors of these children. Since the focus, and implementation of NCLB has become so far off-balance these students have lost so much. They act out and display negative behaviors because they are the products of an unbalanced system. I would compare them to a soda bottle being shaken up, this is the pressures and constraints we place upon them, and we are the thumb on top. In fact, as a parent I would begin to blame the school for putting this turmoil on my child. A child who does not have the coping skills to deal with these formidable tests. Perhaps schools are to blame for these kids coming home and being ‘too much for their parents to handle’. At the end of the day we take our thumb off and shoot these kids out of the building.
So what do we do? For me I have come to the conclusion that I HAVE TO cover all the required strands, because my students WILL BE tested on them. But I do not have to always use the ’suggested’ methods and materials. I have two great Title I specialists at my school who have a focus on getting more students to pass the test, and they have many great instructional ideas. Yet, they are even limited to controlling their enthusiasm for what the classroom could be, to place their emphasis on improving students test-taking skills and overall district goals. These specialist roles have been bent towards studying the tests to determine exactly how to teach the students to “best” answer the questions. Our curriculum places more value in teaching test-taking skills over life skills, and I think we need to prepare our students for life rather than a multiple choice test.
How many jobs will they have which requires them to “best” answer the question with these four options? Not many.
In closing, I am glad to see this topic being openly discussed and I feel that teachers need to speak out more often so the TRUE tales of our classrooms can resonate into the ears of Horton’s (those willing and in position to take action) everywhere.
I have been teaching for 5 years and am also concerned with the NCLB and the impact within the normal classroom. My district does not have a GT program, but it is Title 1 school wide. However, the Title 1 teacher is only allowed to work with kindergarten and 1st grade!? One the district’s directives is to close the achievement gap. I agree that the lowest achievers need the most attention when it comes to learning, but in my district it seems to be at the expense of the average and above average students. I serve on my school improvement team and I made a startling discovery when comparing the data over the last 6 years. The data shows that the achievement gap is closing–the gap between the lowest and the highest is closer. I also noticed that the high and average achievement scores are on a noticeable decline. Yes the lowest students are making gains, but 75% of the student body has lower scores overall. Is this what NCLB is doing to other districts too?
My story varies a little…I taught for a few years and then was able to stay home when my children were born. When the youngest entered Kindergarten, I did too, again. What I noticed was the difference in the parents.
In the early years, I would have to deal with a fit or two a week, the screaming, stomping and yelling. These days, I and lucky if I have only one per day. In my opinion, too many parents are too busy to be parents. They find it easier to give in to allowing a child to eat a quart of ice cream for supper, since that is what he was hungry for.
In our state, we do not have to give the NCLB tests in Kindergarten, but I do see a difference in the maturity of the children coming into the classroom at five.
This is my second year teaching kindergarten. I taught pre-k in a private preschool for 7 years before going back and getting my degree. I agree with everyone that tests should be more balanced and teachers should have more say. I have painted two times so far this year and it is December. To me that is very sad. When I got my job it truly was my dream job and still is but I would love to have more time for painting, fun projects and just exploring. We spend so much time on behavior that my day just goes by so fast. We need to let kids be kids especially in kindergarten.
Have a great holiday!
This is my 9th year of teaching and I love my job, but loathe all of the paperwork and paper pushing that goes with it. I am gone twice a month to meetings to “make” me a better teacher, I do learn from these meetings-LETRS training (literacy) and 6+1 Trait Writing-but when I am gone, my students are receiving a substitute education…We are on such a time crunch and our state tests are in April, so May is such a joke to try and teach since the kids think they are done learning since we took the test. It gets kids so upset and worried and if they do poorly, we have to monitor them, put them in a special club to try and raise their scores. It is so frustrating. I live in Missouri and pray that Obama changes NCLB and gives us back some of the ownership that we earned with our degrees. I also agree with the woman who said we spend so much time teaching character education (which, yes, should be taught at home by the parents, not us!) that it leaves little time for “real” teaching. God bless you all, we are doing one of the hardest jobs in the world with little thanks. Have a wonderful holiday season!
This is only my 3rd year of teaching, and I must say that I’ve become very disappointed in our public school system. I went into teaching because I loved my elementary school experiences; sadly, those experiences no longer exist for children. Many things are done in my district to meet state and national standards and expectations, but as an educator I see very few things that are actually done for the betterment of our students. My 1st graders are not allowed to go out to recess, and are expected to sit quietly at their lunch table once finished eating (does anybody out there know a first grader that takes 30 minutes to eat their lunch and then is ready to rest quietly?). It’s very difficult to get through the afternoons when these children have had no time to run, play, laugh, and socialize as children should. As for me, administrative pressure, large amounts of paperwork, and too much time spent in meetings all wear me out and take the fun out of my job. I feel like a machine made to program students for higher test scores. On top of it all, I teach in the state that receives the least amount of funding per capita, and my district is in a financial crisis. Teaching these students how to be respectful, responsible, intelligent, and successful human beings on top of all these factors really makes me second-guess my career choice.