Texas high schooler's rant against teacher goes viral, kid now labeled "hero"

[IrishLax]

Have a friend who is a public school teacher in DC. Her stories are insane. She deals with both a lot of inner city native teachers who give zero shits and are there just to collect a (relative to their skills and work) nice paycheck at a union job where they can basically not be fired. On the flip side of the coin, some of the students are borderline insane from the stories and like NDinLA said disrespect is probably the best adjective. To be honest, I don't know how you can look at devolution of youths throughout the past 50 years when it comes to "respect" and say it was a good idea to take the proverbial nuns with rulers out of school. A little fear at a young age I think goes a long way.

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Have a friend who is a public school teacher in DC. Her stories are insane. She deals with both a lot of inner city native teachers who give zero shits and are there just to collect a (relative to their skills and work) nice paycheck at a union job where they can basically not be fired. On the flip side of the coin, some of the students are borderline insane from the stories and like NDinLA said disrespect is probably the best adjective. To be honest, I don't know how you can look at devolution of youths throughout the past 50 years when it comes to "respect" and say it was a good idea to take the proverbial nuns with rulers out of school. A little fear at a young age I think goes a long way.

Case in point for arming teachers, isn't it?

 

[Bogtrotter07]

Why does anyone think fear works? Torture doesn't. Meanness, spite and dominance doesn't. Sadism doesn't.

And as far as the teaching situations in classrooms today, it is a very complex situation, caused by many historical causes, from the founding fathers ignoring slavery, to Brown vs. Board of Ed being nearly seventy years ago with with no formalized plan of assimilation attempted or undertaken.

The classrooms I frequented in high school had few of these problems; why? Hope. The young men I attended high school with were all in the top 30 per cent of the national population of the Catholic high school entrance exam. These guys knew that they would be doctors, lawyers, politicians, etc. Those groups with accountants comprised about 50% of my class. I also went to high school with a leading Broadway producer, and the Mayor of Columbus, Ohio, two retired Generals, and the first responder at the scene of Columbine High School, and his brother, Chief of Surgery at the hospital that accepted most of the wounded.

Now show me to what most of these kids we speak of today have to look forward.

 

[Chi_IRISH]

Like others on here I am also a teacher. If you have a minute check out this link it should be shown in schools across America! Enjoy!
Rita Pierson: Every kid needs a champion | Video on TED.com

 

[RDU Irish]

Teacher changing her grading scale cost me salutatorian in HS. Pure BS but I should have learned that life isn't fair, get a helmet.

Rural Iowa school and most of my teachers I thought were pretty good and I can't think of any off the top of my head that I think mailed it in. They all tried hard and generally worked to the best of their abilities.

I keep that in mind today when I deal with my children's teachers. I try to give feedback to the administrators on strengths and weaknesses of each teacher. One teacher I think would be better in middle school, she just isn't passionate about first grade. Another seriously favors the girls in the class and gets pissy with the boys. Well, she is the cheerleading coach and has three girls, no boys herself. A good administrator could get her to first acknowledge this weakness and then provide some training or materials to break this common issue down.

Most teachers want to excel, it just seems they put development on their own shoulders which leads to strengthening their strengths and ignoring their weaknesses. Good administrators who can help guide development are invaluable but it seems unfortunately unusual for any targeted constructive criticism to ever occur.