I want to be sure that my put-down of a large chunk of the teaching profession does not include teachers like you - and the other ones who come here - if I had been in your classes, my view of the world would be different.
I want to be sure that my put-down of a large chunk of the teaching profession does not include teachers like you - and the other ones who come here - if I had been in your classes, my view of the world would be different.
Not to worry. I know people had different school experiences. I am confident about my past and the way I treated my students. Confirmation for me is that 4 girls from my 4th grade class in 1970 have texted to have lunch together soon. And one of my most problematic boys from that class showed up at a campaign stop to support me when I ran for Congress in 1984. So, while I really sympathize with those who had awful experiences with teachers I know I was not guilty of treating children disrespectfully and tried very hard to respond to their different needs. It helped that I had 13 younger siblings growing up-- all very different!! But thank you for checking in on this. It is always hard to be generalized!!!
There are some really great teachers. Sadly, they are far too out numbered by the lousy to downright harmful ones. Sometimes, the one (or for the lucky kid two) great teacher(s) save something in a kid or spark something. When people go into how teachers' pay is so bad and if they got paid better we'd have better teachers, I feel like that is too simplistic. Just paying lousy, unimaginative or even cruel teachers more is not going to make them great teachers. It might attract more of the better ilk but it's not going to cull the herd.
I had several great elementary school teachers. One of them, I looked up nearly three decades after the last time I'd seen her, when I was in elementary school. We met at grand central station. Almost immediately, it was like old friends picking up from where we'd left off. Alas, she died two years later of breast cancer that she'd had at that point for a decade, at 54.
I want to be sure that my put-down of a large chunk of the teaching profession does not include teachers like you - and the other ones who come here - if I had been in your classes, my view of the world would be different.
Not to worry. I know people had different school experiences. I am confident about my past and the way I treated my students. Confirmation for me is that 4 girls from my 4th grade class in 1970 have texted to have lunch together soon. And one of my most problematic boys from that class showed up at a campaign stop to support me when I ran for Congress in 1984. So, while I really sympathize with those who had awful experiences with teachers I know I was not guilty of treating children disrespectfully and tried very hard to respond to their different needs. It helped that I had 13 younger siblings growing up-- all very different!! But thank you for checking in on this. It is always hard to be generalized!!!
There are some really great teachers. Sadly, they are far too out numbered by the lousy to downright harmful ones. Sometimes, the one (or for the lucky kid two) great teacher(s) save something in a kid or spark something. When people go into how teachers' pay is so bad and if they got paid better we'd have better teachers, I feel like that is too simplistic. Just paying lousy, unimaginative or even cruel teachers more is not going to make them great teachers. It might attract more of the better ilk but it's not going to cull the herd.
I had several great elementary school teachers. One of them, I looked up nearly three decades after the last time I'd seen her, when I was in elementary school. We met at grand central station. Almost immediately, it was like old friends picking up from where we'd left off. Alas, she died two years later of breast cancer that she'd had at that point for a decade, at 54.