11-29-2016, 02:46 PM
The culture needs to be changed entirely. Just graduating from High School in 2011 I still remember it pretty well. I went to a large suburban High School with like over 700 in my graduating class then switched to a rural school with 60 in my class so I've seen 2 different sides.
Teachers need to be encouraged to be innovative and find a better way to get kids engaged. In most of my classes the year started with teachers handing out a massive amounts of books while the teacher teaches out of the "teachers edition". There was little time to teach anything that wasn't out of these books because there is always a clock to beat with the next big test always around the corner. You cover something for a day or two and you move on. No time to make sure everybody is on the same page and if you get left behind it's the student's job to hunt down a teacher and get them to finish teaching you even though they will look as bad as the student if you fail. Then once it's time for the test everybody has crammed and a week later hardly anybody can repeat what they apparently just learned. We need a system in place where schools aren't obsessed with funding and test scores.
Why rely on these books so heavily? Why a gauntlet of tests? Why can't teachers teach on their own terms while being helped by books but not lean on them so much? If teachers aren't qualified to teach without a teachers book guiding them the whole way are they really teachers? Let's pay them more, raise the standards and make teaching a more respectable position to bring in better teachers who actually want to teach kids not just people who couldn't think of anything better to do with themselves. So many of my teachers just seemed burnt out and like they hated their job. Only a small portion actually wanted to help students and not just take a paycheck. This was a lot worse at the larger school then the smaller one but an issue in both.
Let's start showing the public school system some respect and update the system. K-6th should be learning your basic studies, 7th-9th should be doing more basic studies but more practical classes start being thrown in the mix. Classes that teach you how to manage your funds, classes that teach about auto repair and etc. At this point we need to be getting the bug in student's ears about life after public school. What's your plan? 10th-12th start putting that plan into motion. Let students experiment with different occupations through classes and field trips and only teach them what they want/need to know. If you want to be a journalist why the hell are you required to take Trigonometry? 10th-12th needs to be focused on transitioning kids out of school and into adulthood. Giving kids a series of math classes they might not ever need isn't accomplishing that.
We need to change our attitude about giving our schools money. My senior year of High School we got a brand new large LCD sign donated from someone in town that sat in the front lawn. Meanwhile there was hardly any modern technology in the building and we just lost the enitre art section of our school due to lack of funds. That's messed up. Generally I don't think people even realize how lacking a lot of schools are.
Kids aren't as dumb as they seem. The quickest way for a teacher to lose my respect was for them to fail the question "Why do we need to learn this?" or to act like the teachers book was the entire class.
Everything that happens to us as children influences us for the rest of our lives so why aren't we more up in arms by our joke of an education system? Kids spend more time there then they do at home. I can't even imagine what it's like in ghetto areas.
Teachers need to be encouraged to be innovative and find a better way to get kids engaged. In most of my classes the year started with teachers handing out a massive amounts of books while the teacher teaches out of the "teachers edition". There was little time to teach anything that wasn't out of these books because there is always a clock to beat with the next big test always around the corner. You cover something for a day or two and you move on. No time to make sure everybody is on the same page and if you get left behind it's the student's job to hunt down a teacher and get them to finish teaching you even though they will look as bad as the student if you fail. Then once it's time for the test everybody has crammed and a week later hardly anybody can repeat what they apparently just learned. We need a system in place where schools aren't obsessed with funding and test scores.
Why rely on these books so heavily? Why a gauntlet of tests? Why can't teachers teach on their own terms while being helped by books but not lean on them so much? If teachers aren't qualified to teach without a teachers book guiding them the whole way are they really teachers? Let's pay them more, raise the standards and make teaching a more respectable position to bring in better teachers who actually want to teach kids not just people who couldn't think of anything better to do with themselves. So many of my teachers just seemed burnt out and like they hated their job. Only a small portion actually wanted to help students and not just take a paycheck. This was a lot worse at the larger school then the smaller one but an issue in both.
Let's start showing the public school system some respect and update the system. K-6th should be learning your basic studies, 7th-9th should be doing more basic studies but more practical classes start being thrown in the mix. Classes that teach you how to manage your funds, classes that teach about auto repair and etc. At this point we need to be getting the bug in student's ears about life after public school. What's your plan? 10th-12th start putting that plan into motion. Let students experiment with different occupations through classes and field trips and only teach them what they want/need to know. If you want to be a journalist why the hell are you required to take Trigonometry? 10th-12th needs to be focused on transitioning kids out of school and into adulthood. Giving kids a series of math classes they might not ever need isn't accomplishing that.
We need to change our attitude about giving our schools money. My senior year of High School we got a brand new large LCD sign donated from someone in town that sat in the front lawn. Meanwhile there was hardly any modern technology in the building and we just lost the enitre art section of our school due to lack of funds. That's messed up. Generally I don't think people even realize how lacking a lot of schools are.
Kids aren't as dumb as they seem. The quickest way for a teacher to lose my respect was for them to fail the question "Why do we need to learn this?" or to act like the teachers book was the entire class.
Everything that happens to us as children influences us for the rest of our lives so why aren't we more up in arms by our joke of an education system? Kids spend more time there then they do at home. I can't even imagine what it's like in ghetto areas.
