Tag Archives: teaching

The High Cost of Low Teacher Salaries – how can I disagree with this?

When we don’t like the way our students score on international standardized tests, we blame the teachers. When we don’t like the way particular schools perform, we blame the teachers and restrict their resources.

Compare this with our approach to our military: when results on the ground are not what we hoped, we think of ways to better support soldiers. We try to give them better tools, better weapons, better protection, better training. And when recruiting is down, we offer incentives.

We have a rare chance now, with many teachers near retirement, to prove we’re serious about education. The first step is to make the teaching profession more attractive to college graduates.

via nytimes.com

I really can’t disagree. I think they are right on. Of course, this is not a plan, it’s a dream. For dreams to come true, one needs a plan and some luck.

I’ve always cringed at hearing that teachers don’t make enough. They do make more than many other college graduates and in some areas they do quite well when considering benefits. The real problem is not that teachers don’t make enough across the board, it’s that they don’t make enough in certain areas. This is a funding issue that is largely cause by the ways that schools are funded across the country. Schools in wealthy areas pay quite well, maybe not enough for the teachers to live in the town, but still quite well.

I am excited about the idea of making teaching more competitive. The recent teacher crunch has done this to the small degree. There are more teachers than there are jobs, which is good for recruiting (not so good for recent graduates). Next step is to increase pay at least 50% and, at the same time, devise assessments that are difficult enough to filter (yes, many good teachers may be filtered out this way, but it is still far better than hoping the best show up). Set conditions in which becoming a teacher is competitive.

I do find it kind of interesting that the author starts out with a call not to blame teachers and then essentially states that we need better teachers. Huh?

Open CALL Resources for the 4 Skill Areas – Prezi

I’m giving a talk today at Hanyang Cyber Univerity in Seoul to TESL students.  I decided to give a broad overview of Web services/sites that could be useful for learning/instruction for listening, reading, writing, and speaking.  It’s a 90 minute talk and I’m sure we will use all of it as you can see from the scope of the presentation.

Of course, after I finished with this first iteration, I realized that I completely ignored Opensource software and Open Educational Resources (OER).  I figured that I’d hold off on that for now considering this group might not be ready for that discussion.  There are so many fun applications in those categories.  I guess that will be a part 2 that will have to wait until later.

The handout is here: http://tinyurl.com/opencall4skill

And the Prezi presentation is embedded below.

<a href="http://prezi.com/lwllwrdjvm-o/open-call-resources-for-the-4-skill-areas/" title="This presentation accompanies a handout at http://tinyurl.com/opencall4skill on free Web resources for language learning”>Open CALL Resources for the 4 Skill Areas on Prezi

 

Let me know what you think.

U.S. Urged to Raise Teachers’ Status – No easy task

To improve its public schools, the United States should raise the status of the teaching profession by recruiting more qualified candidates, training them better and paying them more, according to a new report on comparative educational systems.

Andreas Schleicher, who oversees the international achievement test known by its acronym Pisa, says in his report that top-scoring countries like Korea, Singapore and Finland recruit only high-performing college graduates for teaching positions, support them with mentoring and other help in the classroom, and take steps to raise respect for the profession.

“Teaching in the U.S. is unfortunately no longer a high-status occupation,” Mr. Schleicher says in the report, prepared in advance of an educational conference that opens in New York on Wednesday. “Despite the characterization of some that teaching is an easy job, with short hours and summers off, the fact is that successful, dedicated teachers in the U.S. work long hours for little pay and, in many cases, insufficient support from their leadership.”

via nytimes.com

I don’t see that ever happening. Just like a junky, the US is going to have to hit rock bottom before steps are taken to improve. Not just with education, but a whole host of issues.

I guess I’m just feeling a little pessimistic today.

S.Korea schools get [racist] robot English teachers (via @daylemajor )

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via news.yahoo.com

Do I find this implementation racist and insulting to non-Caucasian teachers, hell yes! They are taking a teacher from the Philippines and putting a white women’s face on them. This could have been done a lot more realistically with true videoconferencing without having to add a layer of animation, which will end up deadening much of the facial cues leaving the animation nearly useless in this regard.

One defense of this could be that they want to maintain consistency in the appearance of the teacher even when using a variety of staff on the back-end. However, that still doesn’t explain the white-washing.

With that said, this is the first implementation of robot teachers (robot-assisted language learning–RALL) I’ve heard about that make some sense. This is basically videoconferencing with a mobile monitor (with some ability for arm and leg movements). This is much better than the stuff presented before that is basically a rolling tape player with some ridiculous voice recognition. Having a skilled teacher behind the robot is key and, at least for the foreseeable future, the only way to provide an optimal educational experience.

As I saw in a presentation by KICE a few months ago, the biggest problem with using videoconfernced teachers in classrooms is having a trained (and motivated) teacher/facilitator physically in the classroom with the videoconferenced teacher. Local teachers tend to sit back and watch or, worse yet, just leave the classroom during the videoconferencing time. In addition, there is little planning time afforded local teachers, thus they tend not to plan classes with their videoconferenced co-teachers. This finding is nothing new to native English-speaking co-teachers in Korean public schools. The same complaints have been heard for years. They were hired as co-teachers, but end up planning and conducting classes alone as a result of both teacher apathy and poor oversight and training.

With all this in mind, I’d say where is the time and money for training local staff? Without it, these high-tech innovations make for great publicity, but lousy education.

Corporal Punishment Ban Undermining School Discipline – should read, lack of training undermining…

Around 12:30 p.m. Oct. 15 in a middle school classroom in Suncheon, South Jeolla Province, a teacher approached a female student and asked her what she was writing in her notebook.

When the teacher tried to take the notebook, the student protested. The teacher hit her on the head and the student revolted, saying, “Is it right for a teacher to hit a student? Just teach!”

The student tried to leave the classroom but the teacher grabbed her neck and hair to force her to sit down. The student then grabbed the teacher’s hair.

An official at the education office said, “What teachers want most is alternatives to corporal punishment,” adding, “We will encourage implementing alternatives next week at the earliest.”

via english.donga.com

Aside from the fact that these problems occurred before the ban and stories are plentiful of large students beating their smaller teachers, this is a natural process of adjustment. There is a culture of violence in classrooms that relied on a mixture of affection and abuse to “control” students. New bans on corporal punishment are, thus, causing great consternation for teachers who relied on this method.

Schools need to provide better training and options for handling difficult students. One idea that some schools have implemented are “reflection rooms”. A mix of positive and negative engagement is probably best. The best way to improve student behavior is to engage them as individuals. Give them choice in their studies, projects, and interactions in the classroom. Respect their contributions. Of course, there are always going to be those who will not respond to this treatment (and teachers who are unable to do so for reasons of skill or simply oppressive teaching conditions and requirements). For those, more punitive measures may be more (at least immediately) effective. Detention, suspension, expulsion, labor (cleaning, volunteering), extra homework, seclusion, and removing of freedoms/opportunities discussed above are all possibilities.

Above was my measured response, and this is my emotional response. If you hit your student, you should not be a teacher. In fact, you should be arrested and charged with child abuse. Teachers who cling to these outdated, brutal classroom management techniques would be comfortable as prison camp guards, as their approaches are more akin to this profession than education. Those who cry that they cannot control their classroom without this brutality should ask themselves whether it is worth it? Is it worth torturing your students to help them? I hope that sounds as silly to you as it does to me.

Wanna be a School Reformer? You Better do Your Homework! – Nice list of school reform books. Some must reads.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gary-stager/wanna-be-a-school-reforme_b_765199….

Take a look at the list and descriptions. No need to do it here.

Nice list of verbs for writing educational objectives – good for teachers and teachers-in-training

via cfmmodules.mc.duke.edu

I like these list not because they make for better objectives. Good objectives will shine through poor language in general. However, these are great words to better explain what you mean. This is particularly important for non-native speakers as they struggle to fully express their thoughts in English.

I further like the categorization, because this is a problem I run into all the time. Getting students to think about what success in an objective should mean. In other words, what should they be able to do, feel, know, …. after this instruction. It’s tough to get people to pin this down.

The Evolution of Classroom Technology – Interactive Feature – NYTimes.com

The Learning Machines

PRODUCED By CHARLES WILSON, MARVIN ORELLANA and MIKI MEEK/THE NEW YORK TIMES
via nytimes.com

Not sure if this will show up in the Posterous post.

If not, go here: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/09/19/magazine/classroom-technology.html

Neat timeline (though limited) of learning-related machines through the years.

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