How Many Teachers are There in the Lounge?

[Chris Copeland]

Dear Loungers,
I just wrapped up the first Nine Weeks of school (a standard grading peiod in my part of the world). I am neck deep in Parent-Teacher Conferences for the rest of this week and the beginning of next. I'm a busy teacher, to say the least. It's cutting into my table-top time!

I've been wondering: how many other educators doe we have here in the BoLS Lounge? Any elementary teachers (like me) here? Middle school? High school? College educators? I'm curious.

To all of my fellow teachers out there: keep up the good work! Don't let the crazies bring you down or reduce your love of educating young minds! Keep on trucking!

Peace! Cope

[Drunkencorgimaster]

Elementary school? Chris, I'd say you earn your pay.

I'm at a university. It is probably much less real work than you have to do admittedly, but the research requirements can be tricky. Publish or perish and all that. Once I got tenure though the pressure was greatly reduced.

[Wildeybeast]

Elementary school? Chris, I'd say you earn your pay.

I'm at a university. It is probably much less real work than you have to do admittedly, but the research requirements can be tricky. Publish or perish and all that. Once I got tenure though the pressure was greatly reduced.

That makes you lecturer, not a teacher. They're practically adults. :p

I'm one, though I don't know about your fancy American age system. I'm secondary which is 11-16 and we have a sixth form so they stay on until 18. I just broke up for half term holiday so I'm demob happy!

[Drunkencorgimaster]

That makes you lecturer, not a teacher. They're practically adults. :p

I'm one, though I don't know about your fancy American age system. I'm secondary which is 11-16 and we have a sixth form so they stay on until 18. I just broke up for half term holiday so I'm demob happy!

What is a "sixth form" and a "demob?"

[scadugenga]

What is a "sixth form" and a "demob?"

I've taught both fencing and martial arts.

But somehow I think that doesn't count...

[ElectricPaladin]

7th grade science, represent!

To head off questions from those outside the American system, that's 12 year olds. 7th grade in California is life science, which is sort of pre-bio, plus some ecology, and a little pre-physics at the end (because what's consistency?).

[moffom]

Hi from France from an english french teacher in high school and prep school. I concur with the idea that the hardest job is elementary school anywhere in the world because in the grim classroom, there's only whining ;)

[Houghten]

What is a "sixth form" and a "demob?"

Sixth form is an old term that's somehow stuck around when the first through fifth forms have all faded away. It refers to students in Years 12-13, two years following the end of compulsory education but before university.

Demob isn't a noun, or rather it is but not in this context. It's short for "demobilisation," a military term. "Demob happy" is "as happy as a soldier going home."

[wittdooley]

Do I count? I did it for 5 years before being laid off when the job market tanked completely and Ohio budgets were slashed like a cheesy 80s horror flick, but am no longer in the industry now.

Oh yeah. High School lit and journalism.

[ElectricPaladin]

Do I count? I did it for 5 years before being laid off when the job market tanked completely and Ohio budgets were slashed like a cheesy 80s horror flick, but am no longer in the industry now.

Oh yeah. High School lit and journalism.

You can still be our battle-brother if you let us put you in a dreadnought.

Which would be... a photocopier, I guess?

[Deadlift]

No not a teacher, the mrs is the chair of our daughters schools PTA. As such I get roped into helping out with fairs and fund raisers etc.
I usually end up having wet sponges thrown at me or judging pie bakes. I also have a teacher friend who has set up a hobby night for the youngsters in our area which I help with when I can.
But as much as I love kids I fear my cerebral skills are lacking lol. Maybe I could have been PE teacher

[ElectricPaladin]

But as much as I love kids I fear my cerebral skills are lacking lol. Maybe I could have been PE teacher

Dude, you have no idea how badly we need good PE teachers. My school's PE department is filled with more suck than a vacuum cleaner convention, and it shows.

[Chris Copeland]

Brother, you served your time in the trenches! Why is it that what we do (which everyone claims is the MOST important job) always gets the ax first when budgets get tight?



Do I count? I did it for 5 years before being laid off when the job market tanked completely and Ohio budgets were slashed like a cheesy 80s horror flick, but am no longer in the industry now.

Oh yeah. High School lit and journalism.

[Wildeybeast]

Brother, you served your time in the trenches! Why is it that what we do (which everyone claims is the MOST important job) always gets the ax first when budgets get tight?

I think it's because we are an easy target. The UK teaching profession is getting hammered at the moment. When governments cut back on public spending, we are the first ones to get hit. Useless civil servants would be the best choice, but the public don't notice this. They don't touch nurses because they get crap pay as it is, doctors would be an easy one, but they are more essential and harder to come by than we are. So the government picks on teachers, trots out the same old line about long holidays and being out the door at 3 to generate public resentment, then freeze our pay & cut our pensions whilst changing grade boundaries so they can say we are lazy and failing the kids. Throw in some pointless reforms of the education system and the government has an easy PR win to show the mindless masses how they are cutting back on 'wasteful' public spending whilst improving life for your children.

[Psychosplodge]

But the old way of setting grade boundaries made more sense.

You have a standard curve and the top x% acheive the A
the next y% acheive B and so on... it accounts for variation in difficulty from year to year a lot better than the system we sat our gcses under.
But moving boundaries mid year was just stupid.
And any public sector worker will probably get little pension sympathy...

[Wildeybeast]

It's not the system for working out the boundaries that is the issue, it's that it was changed part way through the year, and that we weren't told about it. In what possible world is it fair that pupils sitting exactly the same paper in January and getting exactly the same marks get different grades simply because the papers were submitted at different times?

As for the pension issue, I know public sector ones are much better, but if someone tried to shaft your pension, regardless of how good or bad it is, you'd fight it wouldn't you? And an increase in pension contributions along with a wage freeze for god knows how many years means we've had a real terms wage cut. TBH, that would be tolerable if we weren't being constantly told how lazy we are, how much we fail kids etc etc, by the minister in charge of education and his lackey in HM inspectorate. And they wonder why they are struggling to recruit 'high calibre' applicants to the teaching profession.

[Psychosplodge]

Well obviously as I said, they shouldn't have changed it mid way through, but the system I described is apparently how things used to be done before, when we didn't have record passes every year...

And of course any one would fight for it. But you can see why you don't get sympathy generally, I'm dreading the idea of the compulsory pension they're bringing in, it's just another reduction in net pay with nothing guaranteed at the end of it and no doubt something else we'll get taxed on.

We've had a real terms wage cut also, but there's plenty of money for the bosses new M6 ¬_¬

[Wildeybeast]

Oh yeah, I get the lack of sympathy. I just find it baffling that the general public is swallowing the government 'everyone else has crap pensions, so teachers should too' line, rather than turning round to them and going 'hang on, how about making our pensions as good as their instead'. It just shows how easy it is for the government to generate anti-teacher sentiment in the public.

And the record passes thing really pisses me off. It's got nothing to do with the fact that kids are getting smarter or, god forbid, we teachers have improved the quality of our craft and got better at teaching them how to pass the exam paper (which is what we have to do now rather than give them an education). No, the papers are getting easier, that's it. And all this is determined by people who haven't even seen the papers or have any idea about how hard they are compared to previous years.

[Psychosplodge]

That's anti-competitive, we'd all be out of work like the greeks... :D

Well I don't know about you but our A-level maths teacher gave us all O-level papers to practice on, and we all failed, and not a single person in that class had got less than an A at GCSE the supposed O-level equivalent(This was the year they brought in A/S levels so there were no actual previous test papers anyway). And the idea of the standard distribution curve and % is precisely that - that no one year is smarter than another generally.

[Wildeybeast]

GCSE's may well be easier than O levels, that was before my time so I can't comment on it. The issues with GCSE's is not that kids get smarter or the papers get easier, it's that when you have a standardised paper which is marked in the same way every year, teachers simply get better at enabling the kids to write exactly what the examiner wants. And I don't really see what changing the grade boundaries, or even making a harder exam system accomplishes. It simply means that instead of everyone getting A's they now get B's. Unis end up lowering the entry requirements, employers lower their expectations. Making the papers harder doesn't actually do anything to improve the standard of education. All that will happen is we start the cycle all over again as happened with GCSE's where we learn new ways to teach them how to pass until 20 years down the road a new government thinks exams are too easy and they need to do something about it.

[Psychosplodge]

Yeah they shouldn't be using arbitrary boundaries that's the point I'm making, it should be a percentage are awarded the top grade and so on, so you know the grades retain meaning... if only the top 10% can get the A every year it really means something.

Yeah but we were failing O-level papers when using them as practice papers for the new style A-level... So there's definitely something off.

[Wildeybeast]

Ah, I get what you are saying now. That would seem a better system, but it makes a mockery of us making predictions about what grade they are going to get since we have no clue about what percentile they will end up in.

[Psychosplodge]

Well you'd have previous percentile boundaries and exams to estimate from, but its only an estimate anyway....