
You think you know what teachers do. Right? Wrong. - mathattack
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/wp/2014/02/22/you-think-you-know-what-teachers-do-right-wrong/
======
sramsay
This is true of being a professor as well (I certainly didn't understand what
teaching really was about until I starting doing it).

I've always thought that our graduate students should be made to take acting
lessons, because there's an element of second-order persuasion you have to do
in a classroom that's hard to learn and difficult to describe but that shares
some similarity to acting -- or maybe just rhetoric in the very ancient sense.

You can't just purvey information and mumble something about its importance.
Ultimately, you're modeling what it means to be an intellectual -- trying to
give your students certain habits of mind by showing them how those habits
play out in practice.

We also spend an enormous amount of time trying to devise strategies for
dealing with students who just don't get it (and you quickly learn -- or
better learn -- that this might be the most important part of the job).

I could say more, of course. It's a very subtle set of skills -- more art than
science, as they say. It's hard to do it at the college level, and I think
it's far, far harder to do it at the elementary level, where the stakes are
much higher.

~~~
barry-cotter
What kind of third level institution do you work at? One is under the impress
that going from passable to outstanding in teaching has much, much less effect
on one's chances of getting tenure than going from mediocre to good in your
research.

~~~
umanwizard
They never said it was particularly important for career advancement. How did
you read that into their post?

Also, what's with the condescending sneery tone?

~~~
adestefan
Because every time a post on education comes on HN everyone thinks they know
all the answers. The comments end up turning into a "Well this is the real
reason..." or "Everyone needs to be just like..."

The discussions end up being so worthless that I now flag every education
related post on HN because it's just not worth the time here.

~~~
jedmeyers
Why do you think it's called master of Arts in teaching, and not master of
Science?

------
Sniperfish
My wife is a teacher. I am consistently shocked how much work she does in
evenings, weekends. I earn more than twice as much as her and more than her
maximum salary cap (we are both early in our careers). She blows me away in
her dedication and effort, it's a great inspiration for me to continually
study and work harder.

I mention it to people and always hear 'well maybe she is different but I've
seen lots of teachers and they just do it for the holiday'. As if everyone is
equally dedicated in any profession. As if the guy that sits at his computer
'working' for hours a day is a more efficient or effective worker just because
he does more hours. As if outside observers of any industry can really spot
who is producing vs who is not.

~~~
montecarl
I can echo your story exactly. My wife teaches and is involved in an after
school program. It isn't football but has a similar time commitment. During
certain parts of the year she works 6 days a week often leaving the house at 8
am and returning at 9 or 10 pm. It is insane. Two other teachers in her
department work similar hours. The pay per hour isn't very good once you
factor all of that in.

~~~
GotAnyMegadeth
At the other end of the spectrum, one of the teachers at my old school used to
turn up at 8:30 and leave at 15:30. She used to put a video on, and then hand
out worksheets to fill in whilst she marked the worksheets from the class
before. Terrible teacher, luckily I only had her for a few weeks.

~~~
numo16
I have a few friends that are teachers and most of their schools wouldn't
allow for this sort of thing to happen. Teachers aren't allowed to sit at
their desk while a class is in session, they must be instructing or walking
around (during a test, video, etc...). They get a planning period, where they
might have a chance to do some grading or lesson planning, if they don't need
to meet with a parent or something. This means they need to either stick
around school several hours after it lets out to grade work and do lesson
plans, or bring it home and work on it that night.

------
saosebastiao
>The problem with teaching as a profession is that every single adult citizen
of this country thinks that they know what teachers do. And they don't. So
they prescribe solutions, and they develop public policy, and they
editorialize, and they politicize. And they don't listen to those who do know.
Those who could teach. The teachers.

Sorry, I cant take this seriously. The teachers unions are one of the most
politically powerful entities in the US. They can make a candidate, and they
can break a candidate. They can pass and tank ballot measures...even ones
completely unrelated to their jobs. They can protect drunkards and criminals
from getting prosecuted, let alone fired. They are fine forcing their agenda
down our throats, but they cant take a little pushback?

~~~
pbhjpbhj
> _They are fine forcing their agenda down our throats_ //

The agenda of ensuring children have access to life-enhancing educational
opportunities?

> _They can make a candidate, and they can break a candidate._ //

You mean a political candidate? You really think that the combined voice of a
group of teachers can do that against the weight of media conglomerates, other
unions, rich lobbyists and other political groups? Any examples?

Presumably under your assertion the education system in the USA is the one
that the teaching unions have won by political action and the politicos and
business people are looking on powerless to influence it?

~~~
PaulHoule
Well, I can say that in two weeks of homeschooling I got my son to write more
than they did in five years.

He was having trouble with bullies and the school did nothing about it. They
pretty much gave up on teaching spelling completely. We found out that our
school is a "magnet school" for behaviorally disturbed "special" kids from
other districts so kids in the rich school and kids in the poor school where
communities complain a lot get to enjoy a safer environment because the rural
school gets all the psychotic kids.

I gave up on them when the superintendent gave a "town hall" where he told the
mother of a "special" kid that he was a partner in his education and he told
me I should just butt out because he was the expert and there's a new paradigm
and homework is obsolete and because I don't have a phone number to call to
get Albany breathing down his neck.

F the teacher's unions.

~~~
king_jester
The problems you experienced go beyond teachers unions. Dumping "problem" kids
into one school is a recipe for disaster and communities are not served by
that kind of thing at all (except those that dumped off students, although I
would argue those communities aren't fixing their underlying problems).
Administrator heavy, top down approaches that override community and teacher
autonomy are a bad thing in general, and the obsession with testing over
standard lessons and homework is a huge problem with the way the public
education system is run.

Ultimately teachers as a professional class deserve a union. We see in other
places and countries that the unions do not serve as an impediment to a
quality public education, so we have to ask ourselves what is really going on
with current systems and unions that make the situation so shitty (esp. in New
York state).

~~~
PaulHoule
I'm not saying that teachers shouldn't have a union, but from my perspective
it is part of the problem rather than the solution more often than not.

For instance, they opened a charter school in our district which seems to be
an honest effort to provide a safe (bullying free) environment for the high
school and there have been two people associated with the union who have just
been consistently hateful trying to shut it down.

~~~
king_jester
The charter school movement is one of those things that draws strong opinions.
Initiatives to provide safe school environments are good, but privatized
charter schools have a lot of downside in terms of how a community, parents,
and teachers can retain control over how education happens. In New York state
in particular, there has been a strong effort to close public schools and open
private charters, which in my opinion is the wrong way to fix problems with
public education. The disagreement over charters isn't just a union thing,
although public educators would be upset to see the system they work for
dismantled instead of repaired.

------
Shivetya
puff piece, if not pure propaganda bordering on hyperbole.

People and students respect teachers as a whole, what they do not respect and
I bet many in the profession do as well is the inability to remove those who
are not good teachers.

It is not a position one walks into without many upon many stories about what
your really getting into. My Aunt retired from the trade, her aggravations in
order that I remember are, Administrative people(usually political
appointees), other teachers, and parents. There were a few others but mostly
the tripe coming down from non teachers within the system seemed to be what we
heard of.

That and the personal money she spent to have supplies because it was more
important to blow money on marble floors than supplied, or having someone's
wife/kid/friend in some advisement position that did nothing but occupy space.

Guess what, I can say the same of some other service professions, having a
neighbor who does night shifts as a nurse and hearing the horror stories of
what she puts up with is enough to let me know some jobs come with extra
mental if not physical stress.

I think in the end we are all more than willing to heap accolades on good
teachers. Its a system where the kids aren't first that irritates

------
steveplace
Teacher worship can only go so far.

Because this post makes the claim that _all_ teachers should be looked up to.

My entire family consists of teachers. They know who the bad teachers are.
You've got Paulina Pensioner who just shows old VHS tapes as a history
cirriculum. Or Carl the Coach that knows, just _knows_ there's only one way to
solve this pre-algebra problem.

And some teachers work hard. They bust their ass and bring grading home and
lesson plan on the weekends.

But they aren't the problem. There's a bad system that keeps bad teachers in
at the expense of the good.

So they design tests and standards as a way to "firewall" these bad teachers
in, to turn their poor performance into mediocre performance. And there's a
cost, because it removes the creativity and initiative from the good teachers.

I understand that the goal of the author is to criticize common core, but
while the conclusion is sound (Core is garbage) the reasoning is not.

And the new standards being developed? One of the main proponents is the
Council of Chief State School officers. Many (probably most) came from the
teaching profession. Who know what it's like to be a teacher.

The author gives us some feel-good patronization about how teachers have it so
hard and we have no right to impose standards upon them. But these standards
exist because we can't fire bad teachers.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
I don't think Core is garbage at all. I think there's a deeply ingrained
culture of anti-intellectualism in US culture that needs to be nuked out of
the school system, and I honestly couldn't care less what the collateral
damage is.

~~~
steveplace
Here's the thing.

You like it when there's wide, sweeping cirriculum on the Federal level...
when you agree with it.

But what happens if there's enough political pressure (it is a midterm
election cycle) to add ID into the cirriculum? Or maybe they look at feel-good
math that is just teaching to the test [1]?

And that's the issue. Centralized power is great when you agree with it, but
terrible in the wrong hands.

[1] [http://www.momdot.com/common-core-is-making-me-
stupider/](http://www.momdot.com/common-core-is-making-me-stupider/)

~~~
rmrfrmrf
I agree with your point. I suppose I'm fortunate enough to also agree with the
goals of Common Core as they are today.

Onto that article, however:

1\. I never use an academic degree as an indicator of intellectual capacity. I
find that some people are so objective-driven that they zoom right past the
point and straight to rageville when they don't understand something.

2\. A simple Google search on front-end estimation would have helped this mom
realize that the example given on the sheet is incorrect. I will concede that
an effective teacher would have realized that the example given is incorrect
and would have corrected it.

(In front end estimation, you round the leftmost digit, so the example should
actually be 400 + 300, not 300 + 200). IMHO 700 is actually a decent estimate
for 645, so I don't think there's a problem with the math itself. It's not
really feel-good math, but I think some people take for granted that
estimation is not an innate ability.

Now, it becomes another discussion altogether when the teacher is so horrible
that they refuse to accept that the example is wrong. But, I don't think I've
seen evidence of that, so I won't accuse anyone of anything.

EDIT: I just read some of the comments in that article, and it looks like some
districts teach front-end estimation with truncation rather than rounding, in
which case 300 + 200 = 500 would be correct.

Here are a few more things to note: the parents here _assume_ that estimation
and rounding are the same thing. That in itself isn't true.

More importantly, though, look at the _goal_ of the estimation -- to see if
the _actual_ answer, 645, is reasonable. That's _not_ the same thing as asking
if 500 is a reasonable estimate of 645. I think the point of this exercise is
for kids to say "ok, if I add these two numbers together, I _expect_ to get a
3-digit number somewhere in the ballpark of 500." That is to say: if I add 354
and 291, I shouldn't expect to get 20000 or 7 or 81 or 9750. It's just a
simple way of checking your work using a quick, easy method that you can do in
your head. Again, I find the value in this -- adding "common sense" to the
curriculum is definitely something I can get behind, but I understand that
parents who aren't used to "common sense on paper" will struggle.

------
mildtrepidation
I hate writing like this. Even if most people don't know the thing you're
referring to, basically telling the entire browsing population of the internet
"we're all stupid and here's why" immediately leaves a bad taste, particularly
for people -- you know, like _teachers_ \-- who _do_ know what teachers do, or
people who didn't make the assumption being assumed in the first place (which
says a lot more about the author than anything else).

Pedantic? Maybe. But to me this is a really childish way to make a point that
could be better stated in a way that doesn't instantly, baselessly denigrate
the reader, particularly when you're writing for a publication that banks on
its credibility and reputation.

------
patmcc
I have tons of respect and sympathy for teachers, but the argument I often
hear for raising their pay ("they work really hard, they're super important,
it's a difficult job") misses the central point.

It seems like we have enough teachers at the wages we currently pay. Teachers
are willing to go into the profession despite the low wages, probably because
they want a satisfying job with good benefits. If we didn't have enough
teachers...we'd have to raise wages. Supply and demand.

~~~
Nursie
And like many other situations which can be summed up as supply and demand, a
race to the bottom is an obvious outcome.

Maybe we'd get better teachers if we paid more?

~~~
patmcc
We'd get better teachers if we paid more to good teachers. The problem is no
one can seem to agree on how to measure what makes a good teacher - one side
is busy arguing seniority should be the primary measure, the other side argues
test scores, and neither one seems to want to spend any time or money figuring
out an actually successful way to measure teacher skill.

~~~
mindslight
You could _ask the kids_. They certainly know which classes are engaging, and
which are time-biding garbage. And ultimately, assuming a teacher isn't
running a movie theatre, student interest _is_ the most important metric.
You'd of course have to keep the actual weighting process a bit fluid to avoid
the inmates gaining control of the asylum, but it should be quite
straightforward to pick out the extreme bad and extreme good teachers.

It would also be a good introduction to the rationale behind secret ballots,
and when it is actually appropriate to lie.

~~~
ameister14
Look at ratemyprofessor and see how well an incredibly difficult professor
that is also engaging and interesting does; now imagine that in a situation
where the people in his/her class are forced to be there.

~~~
mindslight
I took a quick look through that site, paging through my alma mater of a
decade ago. I do see pathologies in the ratings/comments that remind me of
complaints I would hear about professors from fellow students that were
stressed, not getting the material, or used to a more structured environment.
And if these ratings held weight with the university, I can definitely see
professors dumbing down their lessons to avoid bad reviews. So I do see what
you're getting at with it going terribly wrong.

Still, I think there's several key differences:

1\. Every school student would be rating their teachers, rather than just
those that loved a professor, had an axe to grind, or were encouraged to by an
entertaining personality.

2\. The context would be "closed", with each teacher relative to their school,
rather than open cross-institution competition with a front page of featured
"rockstar" professors that make the rest seem inadequate.

3\. The high schools officially sanctioning ratings with real results would
give kids the feeling that they really do have a stake in the process, rather
than simply being its victims.

4\. High school is a more structured environment where the process details
matter a lot more. So a teacher eg giving out an incomplete homework problem
is actually a valid indictment rather than the stressed out nitpicking of a
culture shocked freshman.

5\. In college, there's a certain level of appreciation for the material that
everyone should have but doesn't necessarily, causing them to get frustrated
at a professor with a dry personality. Whereas with high school, the idea is
that everybody should be learning a cursory understanding of all subjects.

6\. In college, there's a huge variation in the level of courses. One specific
professor I had for a seminar where it was basically his PhD research group
and me, an undergrad who'd just started on a simultaneous master's. I learned
_a lot_ in that class, and really appreciated him. I then ended up in a grad-
level "intro" course with him (which I knew was an utter waste going in, but
it was the only thing that fit my schedule). Most of the students were rote-
memorization paying-for-credential types, but his style certainly did them no
favors either, and I can definitely see my recollection echoed in a few of his
current reviews. I'd say that he's still a teaching asset, but not for intro
lectures where most students aren't already committed to the subject.

Really, there just needs to be _some_ extrinsic motivation/reward for teachers
that are truly making a difference versus simply clock-punching, and that's
not more top-down testing edicts that further shackle them. And sure, the
immediate reaction shouldn't be to fire the lowest-reviewed, but neither
should we pretend that they deserve similar compensation to the exceptional
ones.

------
carsongross
You think you know what field workers do. Right? Wrong.

You think you know what factory workers do. Right? Wrong.

You think you know what farmers do. Right? Wrong.

You think you know what oil rig operators do. Right? Wrong.

You think you know what coffee shop owners do. Right? Wrong.

You think you know what lawn care specialists do. Right? Wrong.

~~~
mandalar12
I agree with your point: the title is sensationalist. The difference between
teaching and owning a coffee shop (and the others examples) is that few people
will try to tell you how to handle your coffee shop while a lot think they
know better than you how their children should be taught.

~~~
carsongross
I've seen a close friend work 20 hours a day, barely make payroll, deal with
employee drug habits and try to minimize the legal damage a sociopathic
employee did.

You don't know what it's like owning a coffee shop.

------
jerf
In other words, teachers are human and have real lives. This may be news to an
18-year-old, but I'd really be surprised if it's really news to that many
people above 30. I may not be a teacher but I could fill a very stylistically-
similar paragraph or two with the woes that have befallen me, too. Most people
can.

This strikes me as a variant on the _You don 't know what's like!_ meme... as
a rule of thumb, you should _never_ say that to anybody. You have no idea what
they've been through. Everyone you pass on the street has a story, and no
matter how bad you think yours is, you've got no guarantee that they don't
have one worse than you.

What this essay describes is not specially "teaching", it's _life_.

~~~
Sniperfish
You as an individual and your profession as a whole are different.

There is a very pertinent and legitimate point made in the article that
-teaching- is not a respected industry.

It's not exactly a new comment!

~~~
humanrebar
Come to think of it, I don't think I hear teaching described as an industry
very often.

What would be different if teaching were considered an industry? Would it be
better?

------
VengefulCynic
Teaching falls into the same category as stage magic, stand-up comedy and
writing - it looks easy and effortless when done by an expert because that's
part of the expertise. Capturing attention, exciting young minds and engaging
them is something that, when done effectively, is transparent because that's
how it works best. The whole host of knock-on problems that are spawned by
this apparent ease are well-documented in TFA.

------
rjzzleep
i see a lot of comments saying that we're watching from the sidelines
criticizing, and therefore have no clue what's going on.

How is that even remotely true? We are the victims of the system. We
experience firsthand what they do or believe they do.

This is like saying you think you know what the TSA is doing. Right? Wrong. Of
course we do, we're the ones being screened.

what we don't know is the logic and culture behind the decisions we see, but
that doesn't take any right away to criticize it.

having been an overachiever in school, and early university, it's been a
constant struggle. "oh but school is not actually made for people like you"
you say. yeah, i know. how is that not a problem?

edit: don't get me wrong, i've had a few really good teachers. but they've
been rather few. and no, i'm not just counting the teachers i liked as good.

~~~
lewispollard
Does someone who's used a computer all their life know the ins and outs of
being a programmer? Would you listen to their recommendations on how to
improve your code? The answer is likely yes, feedback from customers is
important - but you're not gonna get any useful advice re: the architecture or
the design patterns used.

------
danso
Awhile ago, I had a teacher for a roommmate, and one who was young and very
passionate, and I hope, good at it, because we were best friends and I'd hate
to think I'd be a poor judge :). But I rarely heard her talk about the pure
joy of teaching, at least compared to the difficulties of dealing with the
management (the principal) and other logistics issues...such as having to pay
for her own classroom supplies, including books that she wanted if they
weren't on the state-wide curriculum, and pencil and paper for her poorer
students.

Her complaints about office politics were what really surprised me. Even
though I know every bureaucracy is universally crushing (well, maybe I grok
better now after watching The Wire), it just seems that being a great,
passionate teacher, supersedes any kind of office bullshit...such as the way
principal communicates with you. But then again, if you can't get along with
the person who runs the place, and you're put in a shitty classroom and have
to share a teacher's officespace with 3 other novices...how could that _not_
affect your teaching performance and job satisfaction?

One memory I still have from high school was one afternoon when I had to stay
after school to give a presentation to the teachers on their regular Thursday-
school-wide meeting. The meeting was in the cafeteria...and you know how lunch
tables reflect a sort of social-hierarchy among kids? It was no different for
the teachers...and even more surprising, the social lines seemed to fall along
with how I, as a student, expected them to (attractive young teachers sat with
the other young teachers; cool popular teachers could sit anywhere they want;
the weird chemistry teacher sat in the corner). I mean, it's one thing to have
perceptions as a kid, but I _knew_ I was a petty kid...so it was a surprise to
see that things were not much different in the adult world.

~~~
arbitrage
Grok means to understand in fullness ... from the Heinlein novel, the
etymology of the word comes from to drink or to consume.

You cannot grok something just by watching it.

~~~
danso
Yeah, but we're talking about _The Wire_ here :). But also I was an education
reporter, worked as an aide, and have been part of other bureaucracies
myself...

------
nawitus
>Most of all, we need to stop thinking that we know anything about teaching
merely by virtue of having once been students.

I know something about teaching by reading peer-reviewed studies which give
evidence for better teaching methods, but are almost never adopted because the
teaching systems and/or teachers are extremely conservative apparently all
around the world.

In fact, I'd trust studies over teachers any day.

------
larrik
I feel like you could write this about basically any profession, besides the
usual "teachers are underpaid" rant.

------
humanrebar

        > All of you former students: you did not design
        > curricula, plan lessons, attend faculty meetings,
        > assess papers, design rubrics, create exams, prepare 
        > report cards, and monitor attendance. You did
        > not tutor students, review rough drafts, and create
        > study questions. You did not assign homework. You
        > did not write daily lesson objectives on the
        > white board. You did not write poems of the week
        > on the white board. You did not write homework on
        > the white board. You did not learn to write
        > legibly on the white board while simultaneously
        > making sure that none of your students threw a
        > chair out a window.
    

I'm not a teacher, so I could be wrong, but it seems to me that much of this
list falls into two categories:

1\. Routine things that could be orders of magnitude more efficient (or even
fully automated) given enough resources. In most cases, the resources needed
would be fairly modest compared to the aggregate amount of effort teachers
everywhere spend on them. Writing and grading elementary-level math tests, for
example, shouldn't take any time at all given the right software.

2\. Routine things that couldn't be automated well but could easily be done by
some sort of entry-level assistant. Babysitting and discipline tasks don't
require college degrees.

It strikes me that the economics of education are structured in a way that
there is marginal impetus to improve efficiencies in the day-to-day work of
teachers.

~~~
hackluck
You are not a teacher. And from your comments, you have not looked too much in
the research about how to teach students.

Yes, certain things COULD be automated... at considerable expense to student
achievement. One big thing they have found - remove the personal feedback and
connection to students --> lose the motivation of students. If a teacher (the
same teacher) isn't interacting with a student consistently at nearly every
step of the learning process, the feedback doesn't stick and the student loses
motivation.

It would be interesting to looking to the basic research behind the feedback-
achievement connection and stereotype threat to start.

Hope that helps you address some of the problems with the automate/delegate
solutions so often thrown at teachers.

~~~
humanrebar
> Yes, certain things COULD be automated... at considerable expense to student
> achievement.

I seriously doubt that letting teachers automatically grade arithmetic tests
will hurt student achievement. The fact is that many teachers do that sort of
thing at home in what should be considered overtime hours. I would like to
hear how automatic grading causes student achievement to suffer.

Likewise, I'm skeptical that it should be solely educators' responsibility to
make sure chairs are not being thrown out windows. Letting teachers focus on
educating and not babysitting seems like a good thing.

------
carlmcqueen
I did two years of a special ed major in college before switching over to
computer science and I can say that the ed program I was in covered in depth
how to teach and handle a class room, it focused on how to teach math to
people who don't understand any concepts, and the department had additional
offered classes if you wanted to do teach for america or inner city schooling.

Speaking with friends who have become professors they are often jealous of
this because they were never given any kind of 'teaching' classes. Their under
grad wasn't in education and their teaching experience was trial by fire
teaching assistant jobs of handling undergrad college courses.

All that said, I grow tired of the arguments and articles of 'don't speak
unless you've walked a thousand miles' which I felt as I read this article.
Not all knowledge and understanding must derive from doing something to have a
valid opinion. We need to treat teachers better and find better pay structures
but I've found no harsher critics of teachers and our schools than the
teachers I went to college with as they filter into the systems and find tired
and broken systems in which they get no voice until they have 'tenure'.

~~~
hackluck
> All that said, I grow tired of the arguments and articles > of 'don't speak
> unless you've walked a thousand miles' > which I felt as I read this
> article. Not all knowledge and > understanding must derive from doing
> something to have a > valid opinion. We need to treat teachers better and
> find > better pay structures but I've found no harsher critics of > teachers
> and our schools than the teachers I went to > college with as they filter
> into the systems and find > tired and broken systems in which they get no
> voice until > they have 'tenure'.

I don't know that this article is so much about "not speaking bad about
teachers", but about having compassion for teachers and talking about
education with a little more humility for the institution that helped produce
you. I would say this article is more of the "teachers don't write articles
about how to __________ better, so don't let _______________ers tell teachers
how to teach better" variety.

And I totally agree that most young teachers are completely overwhelmed by the
ridiculous systems in which they are forced to teach. My only hope is that
some of these young, inspiring teachers remain in the profession long enough
to change the broken system (which might take a LONG time!). The unions are
broken; for the most part, teachers are not.

------
hueving
I'm not sure what the implication at the end is about public policy? Even if
we supposedly do not understand teaching, that does not mean we can't form
opinions about the current system and develop policies for it. That's
precisely how politics work in every other field.

How many people who want to ban fracking actually understand fracking or
precisely what the real risks are? How many people want to ban nuclear energy
and don't understand any of the actual risks of modern nuclear power plants?

Politics suck for anyone that isn't a politician. Each industry must learn how
to deal with that aspect. Writing an appeal to emotion on the Washington Post
is not going to sway anyone. It just resonates with people already on their
side and sounds like whining to people that aren't.

------
nilkn
Since the author says she started out making 5 times as much as a lawyer than
as a teacher, I can only assume she landed one of the associate jobs at a
major law firm straight out of law school making $160k+.

She makes it sound like anybody can hit up law school and come out making
almost $200k. The vast majority of law graduates do not land jobs like that.
The vast majority also have nearly crippling debt. The vast majority of the
firms paying $160k+ are also in hyper expensive metro areas, whereas teachers
can live comfortable lives in very rural towns (if they want to).

~~~
numo16
While what she is stating might not be the case for all law school grads, it
isn't as far fetched to come out of school easily making 2-3 times what a
starting teacher is making, depepnding on the degree you choose. As a software
engineer in michigan, you can come out of uni with a BS in computer science
and easily find a job paying $55k+ and make 2-3 times as much as a starting
teacher ($35k if you're lucky and find a good school that has funding) in the
same state after a year or two of experience.

------
fuse117
This story strikes home with me. Like the author, I too picked up an MAT,
taught for a couple years, and then left the field to pursue other
opportunities. In the 3-4 years since I left, I have worked a lot less, made a
lot more, and feel much more respected in what I do.

------
biesnecker
"You think you know what teachers do. Right? Wrong."

So I'm wrong that I think that I know what teachers do?

Do teachers teach you how to write intelligible headlines?

------
smoyer
My wife teaches classes at a local high school as well as the university here
she's successful because she works hard at it, has a natural aptitude to teach
and she cares about her subjects and shows it. I think I had 3-4 outstanding
teachers during my 13 years in public school and they all had these same
characteristics. I had plenty of bad teaches too.

------
PakG1
My cousin is a high school teacher and posted this article on Facebook with
the comment that it's like saying just because you had parents, you think you
know everything there is to know about parenting.

------
the_watcher
This is just a painful argument to authority.

------
tokenadult
Education policy is the issue that drew me to participate on Hacker News,[1]
so I'll jump in here too. I get the impression that mathattack, whose comments
I enjoy reading, may have posted this article for disagreement. The Answer
Sheet blog from which this guest post comes is basically a propaganda organ,
and some of the guest posts from the same blog that were submitted to Hacker
News in the past were exposed as hack jobs after discussion here.[2]

The obligatory disclosure here is to note that I am a classroom teacher by
occupation. Over the years, I have been a teacher of Chinese to native
speakers of English, a teacher of English to native speakers of Chinese (and
other languages), and most recently a teacher of advanced elementary
mathematics ("prealgebra" mathematics for third-, fourth-, and fifth-graders)
for a nonprofit organization in my town. My HN user profile describes a bit
more of my background.

Yep, classroom teaching is hard, no doubt about it. It has emotional rewards
that some people value highly enough that it is a sought-after occupation, not
a labor-shortage occupation, and that has the most to do with teacher
compensation. Classroom teaching by teachers in private practice (like me) can
also be poorly compensated (relative to the difficulty of doing the job well)
because most clients have already paid for "free" lessons at the local public
schools through their taxes, and will only pay out of pocket for a private
lesson if it is truly superior in some way. "In modern times [as contrasted
with ancient times] the diligence of public teachers is more or less corrupted
by the circumstances which render them more or less independent of their
success and reputation in their particular professions. Their salaries, too,
put the private teacher, who would pretend to come into competition with them,
in the same state with a merchant who attempts to trade without a bounty in
competition with those who trade with a considerable one. . . . The privileges
of graduation, besides, are in many countries . . . obtained only by attending
the lectures of the public teachers. . . . The endowment of schools and
colleges have, in this manner, not only corrupted the diligence of public
teachers, but have rendered it almost impossible to have any good private
ones." \-- Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, Book V, Part 3, Article II
(1776)

A couple of the comments posted here before I arrived in the thread mention
the particular skills that a teacher needs to have to teach a class
effectively. There is much interesting research on this coming from the
charter school movement, with some of the best how-to research coming from the
Teach Like a Champion[3] project. I love learning about new ways to be a more
effective teacher. Besides actual teacher skills, another grave problem in
United States school is extremely poor teaching materials[4] and I devote
hundreds of hours to curriculum planning and seeking out the best available
textbooks[5] for the subjects I teach.

A good teacher is worth a lot.[6] We would not go far wrong by saying that a
good teacher is literally worth his or her weight in gold. But the tricky
issue in school administration is distinguishing effective from ineffective
teachers. To ensure that school leaders have incentives to find and reward the
best teachers, we need to make sure that learners (or the adult guardians of
minor learners) have the power to shop, the power to refuse the services of an
ineffective teacher and to seek out the services of an effective teacher.
Teachers will gain both more pay and more respect if learners gain power to
shop.

[1]
[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123](http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4728123)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327847](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3327847)

[3] [http://teachlikeachampion.com/](http://teachlikeachampion.com/)

[4]
[http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/02/17/afraid_o...](http://open.salon.com/blog/annie_keeghan/2012/02/17/afraid_of_your_childs_math_textbook_you_should_be)

[5]
[http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/viewitem.php?item=p...](http://www.artofproblemsolving.com/Store/viewitem.php?item=prealgebra)

[6] [http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-
teachers-h...](http://hanushek.stanford.edu/publications/valuing-teachers-how-
much-good-teacher-worth)

