Getting top graduates of colleges into teaching
toto
This article was forwarded to me by my son. I am posting the entire
article, but would like to particularly point out the fact that
these top graduates who Herman likes to tout as being able to
*teach* with no training, while they found it rewarding, most
certainly do not find it easy and this is in the Catholic Schools
Note that the parents and students rebelled against being pushed to
hard, too fast, not the teachers. Note that some of these people
suddently found out that teaching is *not* the easy job they assumed
that it would be even under the conditions in the Catholic schools.
How many of them would survive in a public high school environment?
My guess is that many of them would burn out in the face of the non-
support of parents, students, the public and *administrators.*
These top grads have good administrative support, but they haven't
found this easy, nonetheless.
:>of the Chicago Tribune. To visit the site, point your browser
:>to http://chicagotribune.com/.
:>----------- Chicago Tribune Article Forwarding----------------
:>
:>---Forwarded article----------------
:>Top grads could have it all, get lesson in life instead
:>
:>By Meg McSherry Breslin
:>
:>The 1999 valedictorian of her class at the University of Notre Dame,
:>Jennifer Ehren had her pick of plum jobs. Among other options, the
:>chemical engineering major could have made a $50,000 starting salary
:>for a major pharmaceutical firm.
:>
:>Instead, the Barrington High School graduate took a minimum-wage job
:>teaching science and math at a Catholic high school far from home, on
:>Mississippi's Gulf Coast.
:>
:>Like scores of other Notre Dame graduates who might never have
:>otherwise considered teaching, Ehren was drawn to the university's
:>increasingly popular Alliance for Catholic Education program.
:>
:>The ACE program is a kind of Peace Corps for the nation's Catholic
:>schools, a system in crisis because of teacher shortages and financial
:>woes. An effort with modest initial goals when it was launched six years
:>ago, ACE has succeeded beyond expectations by appealing to students
:>intrigued by doing "volunteer" work before taking a permanent job.
:>
:>Today, 8 percent of Notre Dame's senior class applies to ACE; only
:> one in three is accepted. The program has attracted many top students
:> who now are mulling over education as a lifelong career.
:>
:> What Ehren and many other participants didn't realize at first was
:> that a program designed to help the schools would have such a deep
:> and lasting impact on their own lives.
:>
:>"I never thought I'd be challenged so much," Ehren said of her first
:>year of teaching. The experience, she said, has changed her. "Service
:> will be a part of my life no matter what," she said.
:>
:>Even the program's founder, Rev. Thomas Scully, vice president and
:>senior associate provost at Notre Dame, has been surprised by the
:>widespread response to his idea.
:>
:>Initially, he figured a small but passionate group of students could
:>be lured into a tuition-free master's degree program in education
:>involving a two-year teaching commitment in needy Catholic schools.
:>The living stipend would be $1,000 per month.
:>
:>The program now boasts 300 alums and 150 current participants.
:>Applicants have included some of the school's best and brightest
:>students.
:>
:>Eighty-three percent of last year's ACE graduating class stayed in
:>education, either by remaining as teachers or by pursuing further
:>education to become school administrators or professors.
:>
:>"I figured if we could get 10 or 20 percent [to remain
:>teachers], I'd be thrilled," Scully said. "I didn't expect these
:>young people to stay."
:>
:>The success of Notre Dame's program has also inspired interest from
:>Catholic universities across the U.S., eight of which are creating
:>similar programs based on the Notre Dame model.
:>
:>Many teachers on the front lines of ACE say working in underserved
:>Catholic schools can be a wrenching and emotional experience, no
:>matter how bright or enthusiastic they are about the program's goals.
:>
:>Ehren found that out the hard way. From the moment she arrived, she
:>felt the entire school was whispering about how smart she was, that
:>she would never be able to relate to her students.
:>
:>But Ehren plunged in. In all three of her classes—chemistry,
:>physics and advanced math—she hit students like a bomb from the
:>first day, pounding them with questions, demanding them to think
:>through their answers.
:>
:>The students, and their parents, quickly rebelled. Students said she
:>pushed too hard, that her expectations were way above their level.
:>Ehren kept pushing.
:>
:>"I tried to keep showing them that the only thing I have up on them
:> is determination and a passion for learning," she said. "They think
:> I'm this big brain, but I just want them to try."
:>
:>Ehren, 23, grew up fast in the face of all that resistance. She
:>learned she wasn't willing to back down, and she worked to convince
:>the students and parents that she had their best interests in mind.
:>But she felt incredibly alone.
:>
:>"In October of last year, I felt like such a failure," she said. "I
:>just had too much on my plate. I was trying to do everything
:>perfectly, and it was really hard to balance everything."
:>
:>Even though Ehren expects to stop teaching high school, she's still
:>interested in pursuing a doctorate and possibly teaching at the
:>college level.
:>
:>Her principal, Sister Jacqueline Howard, feels lucky to have her,
:>even for a short time. Over the past several years, she's had 13 ACE
:>teachers. "First of all, these ACErs change us," she said. "Those of
:>us who've been in education a long time can get very satisfied with
:>the status quo. They come in asking, 'How come you do it this way?'
:>And they have truly tried to take our kids and their education and
:>really challenge these kids to reach a different level."
:>
:>While Notre Dame concentrates on recruiting its own undergraduates
:>and students at a smattering of other Catholic schools, professionals
:>have also applied.
:>
:>Among them was Dave Wartowski, who was making more than $50,000 as a
:>health care consultant at Ernst & Young, a professional services firm in Chicago.
:>
:>Despite his comfortable life on Chicago's North Side, Wartowski said a
:> couple years of service work had allure.
:>
:>After a summer of training, Wartowski began teaching at St. Cecilia's High
:>School inthe heart of the South Central community of Los Angeles this fall.
:>Among his students are children whose mothers are drug addicts and
:>alcoholics and students with learning problems who struggle to get
:>through the most basic lessons.
:>
:>"I thought it would be a nice way to help the world," Wartowski said
:>of teaching. "Never did it occur to me how hard it was going to be."
:>
:>That's a reality that surprises him because his own mother was a
:>teacher, and he never considered her work especially challenging. As a
:>child, he was a top student—and thus figured a teaching career
:>wasn't right for him.
:>
:>"I guess I thought teaching might be too easy for me," he said.
:>"Now I realize how wrong I was."
:>
:>Wartowski is now talking about a career change. He now believes no
:>profession is nobler nor more important than teaching.
:>
:>Like Wartowski, Katie Baal was surrounded by relatives who were
:>teachers while she grew up on Chicago's Southwest Side. She never
:>figured she would follow in their footsteps.
:>
:>She applied to ACE in her senior year at Notre Dame because it was a
:>chance to do service work before applying to medical school. But after
:>two years teaching at a Catholic high school in Baton Rouge, La., she
:>was hooked.
:>
:>Now Baal teaches math and science at her alma mater, St. Ignatius
:>College Prep on Chicago's Near West Side.
:>
:>While the pay at St. Ignatius is higher than at many Catholic high
:>schools, Baal still struggles with a salary in the mid-$30,000 range.
:> It's hard on her, she says, to meet people with similar backgrounds
:>who make almost double the money at public schools.
:>
:>For a while, she took a second job at Crate and Barrel and later
:>moved in with her parents to make ends meet. But she's still
:>committed to Catholic schools.
:>
:>"ACE has made a lot of people believers in Catholic education," she
:>said. "There really is something unique about this. It's a way of
:>giving back what I was given, and it really develops that spiritual
:>side again."
:>
:>For some ACE participants like Sean McGraw, the transformation has
:>been especially dramatic.
:>
:>Scully, the program's founder, had taught McGraw at Notre Dame, and
:>the two kept in touch after McGraw went to the London School of
:>Economics for his master's degree in European politics in 1992.
:>
:>He returned to Notre Dame after his year in London and was
:>considering work on a doctorate in political science. But first he
:>was persuaded to help Scully get ACE off the ground. For several
:>months, he toured the country with Scully, stopping in small Southern
:>towns to talk to superintendents about their desperate need for
:>energetic new teachers.
:>
:>Prior to that time, McGraw had never thought about the priesthood,
:>or even teaching at the elementary level. He dated regularly, had an
:>active social life and expected to marry and start a family.
:>
:>But after serving as director of ACE in its beginning years, his
:>perspective started to change.
:>
:>"I was working with Father Scully and a few others, both priests and
:>laypeople, and the more I hung around, especially the priests, the
:>more I liked what I saw," McGraw said. "They were faith-filled
:>people, very educated, hard working and full of life. They were
:>living out their faith in ways I thought were really exciting."
:>
:>Now a deacon working toward his ordination in April, McGraw is
:>teaching social studies to freshmen at Notre Dame High School in
:>Niles. The person who succeeded him as ACE's director has also
:>decided to become a priest.
Dorothy
There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..
source unknown
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
toto wrote:
> :>The following article was selected from the Internet Edition
>
(much snipped)
>
> :>
> :>Even though Ehren expects to stop teaching high school, she's still
> :>interested in pursuing a doctorate and possibly teaching at the
> :>college level.
> :>
> :>Her principal, Sister Jacqueline Howard, feels lucky to have her,
> :>even for a short time. Over the past several years, she's had 13 ACE
> :>teachers. "First of all, these ACErs change us," she said. "Those of
> :>us who've been in education a long time can get very satisfied with
> :>the status quo. They come in asking, 'How come you do it this way?'
> :>And they have truly tried to take our kids and their education and
> :>really challenge these kids to reach a different level."
> :>
Too many gifted young college graduates leave teaching, just as this young lady
will, after a few years. This is not good. It makes it seem that their time in
education is somehow less than a career than it is a challenge to be met. Then once
they have the experience, they can tell people "I was a teacher! "
Thirteen ACE teachers over the pst few years. How many are still there?
Don't get me wrong... I like the alternate route in NJ. I mentored two new
teachers, both of whom are still in teaching many years later. But, what other
profession will allow people to take minimal training, put them directly on the job,
then watch them leave the profession after a few years? It sets a bad example all
around. It's bad for the graduates, it's bad for the schools, it's bad for the
profession of education.
Marty
****************************************
Marty Weiss mart...@earthlink.net
"You will respect mah a-thor-itay!"
....Cartman
*****************************************
Mark Peters
Could you please explain how you came to your conclusion "It's bad for
the graduates, it's bad for the schools, it's bad for the profession of
the reasons for each part of your conclusion.
Thank you,
Mark
In article <3A2186F9...@earthlink.net>, Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
<mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> toto wrote:
>
> > :>The following article was selected from the Internet Edition
> >
>
> (much snipped)
>
> >
> > :>
> > :>Even though Ehren expects to stop teaching high school, she's still
> > :>interested in pursuing a doctorate and possibly teaching at the
> > :>college level.
> > :>
> > :>Her principal, Sister Jacqueline Howard, feels lucky to have her,
> > :>even for a short time. Over the past several years, she's had 13 ACE
> > :>teachers. "First of all, these ACErs change us," she said. "Those of
> > :>us who've been in education a long time can get very satisfied with
> > :>the status quo. They come in asking, 'How come you do it this way?'
> > :>And they have truly tried to take our kids and their education and
> > :>really challenge these kids to reach a different level."
> > :>
>
Dave Bonar
> Don't get me wrong... I like the alternate route in NJ. I mentored
> two new teachers, both of whom are still in teaching many years later.
> But, what other profession will allow people to take minimal training, put
> them directly on the job, then watch them leave the profession after a few
> years?
What counts as minimal training? I'm an alternative route person
(although not in NJ), and my master's included as much coursework as a
traditional education major would have (given that I already had the
science background). Or are you suggesting that education should
require a longer post-bac degree similar to medicine and law? If so I
have to disagree; teaching is too much of a trade or craft that needs on
the job training or apprenticeship.
Dave
Donna Metler
Dave Bonar wrote:
This depends on the program. I did my certification post-bac via a
masters/certification program, and had two full-years of coursework, practicums
in four areas, and a full-year (paid) internship, where I team-taught with an
experienced teacher. I entered the classroom without problems-with more training
and experience than a person with an education undergrad degree would have
gotten. My certificate, based on a degree, transferred easily to TN when my
husband's job moved.
OTOH, a friend of mine did an alternative certification program in a high need
area where she took one summer of classes, which were directed at learning the
right answers to the teaching competency exam. She recieved no practicum
experience, but entered the classroom the following fall, with no support other
than alleged mentoring. It took her three years and four school districts before
she became comfortable teaching. She also has a several-year committment to the
state and to her district because of the program, and is paying for the costs of
her "coursework" via a set percentage of her salary.
These programs were in the same state, BTW.
--
Donna Devore Metler
dmme...@bellsouth.net
www.math.ttu.edu/~dmettler
www.funfelt.com/donna
Asst. Director, Educational Programming, Peabody Place Museum
Faculty, Academy of the Performing Arts, early childhood and applied music
Children's educational advocate
katy...@my-deja.com
experience with teaching (under these conditions) and continues
teaching.
However, I disagree with this type of minimal training. Programs such
as the one mentioned in the Chicago Tribune article and others (that I
will deliberately leave un-mentioned in hopes of avoiding the torment of
fiesty deja-users) do not account for the knowledge that is inherent
with experience and that is necessary before you start facilitating your
own classroom.
I have a friend that is in a program that recruits non-education college
graduates into teaching in the "less desirable" areas of the country.
She recieved approximately 6 weeks of training this summer and then was
placed in a challenging school and classroom. She has 23 third graders,
with the majority at an emergent reading level or below. She receives
minimal support from the faculty and administration. I just saw her
over the holiday weekend, and it was obvious that she was exhausted and
frustrated by this experience. In fact, she said, "I don't see how they
get away with training people for less than two months and expect them
to be able to teach." My friend is the most dedicated person I know-
she puts her best effort into her work- and has been dealt more than her
fair share of challenges.
My friend is right, however. How can these alternative programs make up
for this missing experiences and insight that we find in teacher
education programs? I will recognize that fact that many of our
university programs need to be reexamined and restructured, but after
spending two-plus years in a teacher ed program, I still feel
underprepared in leading my own classroom.
I give props to anyone who finds success in teaching after one or two
years of teaching with training through an alternative program.
However, I firmly believe that these programs undermine the authenticity
and professionalism of the teaching field, especially when a bulk of
these programs offer scholarship incentives after two years of teaching.
What does this mean? These well-intentioned college grads try teaching
for a couple of years and then move on to grad school with the
scholarships they recieve from their alternative program. The bottom
line is that this is an abuse of our education system and a disservice
to children in the long run.
Peace-out
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
Alberto Moreira
discipline. Anything less, we're not doing our students a favor.
Alberto.
=================================
Bill Toscano
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/334/metro/State_alters_teaching_standard+.
shtml
Bill T.
Mark Peters
Thank you for the explanation.
Mark
In article <3A25A8C0...@earthlink.net>, Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
<mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> Mark Peters wrote:
>
> > Marty,
> > Could you please explain how you came to your conclusion "It's bad for
> > the graduates, it's bad for the schools, it's bad for the profession of
> > education." Since there are three parts in your conclusion, please give
> > the reasons for each part of your conclusion.
> >
> > Thank you,
> > Mark
>
> It's bad for the graduate of the program because many come in all
idealistic
> about changing lives. After a few years of o.j.t. with little preparation for
> the real world of teaching beforehand, their idealism is strained, and
if it's ok
> to pack up and leave without really trying to learn they will never know
if they
> could be good at teaching. Few teachers jump right in and become great
teachers
> after a few years. Oh, maybe some do, but most of us honed our craft
over a long
> period of time. Imagine... statistics say that the average teacher coming in
> from another profession leaves after 4 or 5 years. If someone can say
that about
> other professions let me know.
> It's bad for the schools because there is a constant turnover of
personnel,
> which doesn't allow for that *cohesiveness* which any school neede to become
> good. Too many new teachers means a constant period of *starting over*
with new
> faces, new ideas, which in and of itself isn't necessarily bad but
doesn't allow
> for that constancy of philosophy which students need.
> It's bad for the profession because teaching is seen as something
which people
> can jump into on a *moment's notice* and then jump out of if things go poorly.
> People train for years for medicine and law. Yes, doctors and lawyers leave
> those professions all the time, but I don't think many do so after only 4 or 5
> years on the job. Teaching requires a sharpening of skills on a daily basis,
> and if the profession is seen as merely a place for stopping over on the
way to
> finding out what you really want to do with your life, then we are
looked upon as
> less than a profession than an avocation.
> Many of you may disagree, but after all these years I have seen people come
> and go for many reasons. And, I have heard all the reasons why teaching
is not a
> true profession. The fact that it is easy to enter and easy to leave
was always
> one of those arguments which I had no answers for. Sorry, those in alternate
> routes and those in university who study hard and will vehemently
disagree with
> this assessment and observations, but I can't believe the people I have heard
> this from around here (and there have been many who voiced this to me and my
> teacher friends) are some anomoly. I expect many here will disagree with
> these statements, but please be assured I have always tried to present
teaching
> as something that should be looked up to and not looked upon as
something someone
> does on the way to soemthing better.
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
What I meant by minimal training is that in the alternate program here in NJ
the new teacher goes for one year of night courses in education and theory of
classroom preparation but they are already immersed in their own classes with
NO prior training at all, other than being under the guidance of a mentor who
has his own classes to take care of. During the last 8 years I was there there
were 5 alternate route teachers of whom I mentored two. No one ever found
their education courses to be of any use. In fact, every one of the new
teachers discovered that they were being taught in these seminars by professors
who had never been in an urban district. All the theory, all the methods, etc,
were geared to suburban teachers. Part of the training was to keep a journal
of their school experiences. They all found it amusing that the suburban
teachers wrote about how they could experiment with new ideas and new methods
using loads of equipment and computers, while the city teachers wrote about how
they spent each day surviving the daily fights, the cursing, the racial slurs,
the lunch duty where they had to keep kids from leaving and keep the gangs from
crossing the street to beat the hell of out students, etc. In fact, the
professors used to single out our new teachers as examples of how to become
experienced quickly in the art of teaching, and how to learn to use one's wits
and instincts to get good at it quickly or perish. The alternate teachers
told us stories of how they regaled their night classes with tales of the
city. None of them learned anything from these classes: on the contrary it
was the other suburban teachers and the professors who learned from our new
teachers. Of the five teachers who went through this all five survived, but
all left the urban district after one or two years!
The o.j.t. was the key to their success. You say teaching is an art or
craft. So it is. In saying this you have answered your own objections to my
statement that there was minimal training. To be proficient in this *craft* or
*art* requires massive amounts of on the job training. But, could not a
teacher learn his craft through this ojt while skipping theory entirely? Many
can and have done it this way: getting through the night university classes
while gutting it out in the classrooms and learning through experience. It is
a lonely, haphazard way of doing things because the new teacher, no matter how
extensive the university training, no matter how extensive one is prepared
academically, closes that door, and finds him or herself utterly alone in front
of a class of 25 or even 30 ninth graders! What other profession does it this
way? What other profession says to a new person fresh out of college or
another career, *Here's the key to the door. Here's your plan book. Here's a
curriculum guide. Here's your class roster. Go to it!. By the way. If you
have any questions my door is always open. (If you can find me)*
Here is the key to what makes teaching those first few years so
stressful: this training comes within the confines of one's OWN classes.
There are no *attending* teachers, no *chief residents*, no *first chair*
colleagues to guide you through those first years of ojt. New teachers are
thrown to the lions, so to speak. Alone in the classroom except maybe for a
mentor, who has his or her own classes to attend to. What kind of training is
this? How many times are you observed? Three? four? Five? Out of how many
months? Ten months, 185 or more days, and how do most survive? By their own
wits, their own instincts, their own *sense of self* developed or completely
ruined over this period of time.
You either gain this sense of self esteem as a teacher in a short period of
time, or else go down in flames! No wonder so many leave after four or five
years. If it's not money worries, and it's not being worn down by the public's
constant harping over test scores and other media *flashpoints*, it's a lack of
feeling that anyone really cares what you do other than keep control and keep
them quiet for 50 minutes.
Some of us could take it to a higher calling, if you will; a higher art
form: getting good at it, entering and winning science fairs, competing in
academic contests, making the news in a positive way, helping any number of
kids do well. Some simply treat it as a job: 8 to 4 and survive that way.
Others don't fare so well and become the well-known burn out cases going over
to the *dark side* or quitting after a short career.
Now, you ask if there should be an extensive post-bac. degree or training
period? I say ONLY if it's worth something professionally through extensive on
the job training courses and less in a university classroom setting. Yes, by
on the job I do mean like a residency or internship like doctors or lawyers or
carpenters or architects experience.
Master teachers and new teachers in the same classes. The master teacher's
job would be as an *attending* or *chief* teacher going between classes to
observe, mentor, show, and demonstrate if necessary. This would be their main
job for the time they have the new teachers under their wing. How to write
lesson plans, how to plan and perform labs and demos, how to coach academic
teams and put together a school newspaper or a debate team or drama team. The
university professor must accept the master teacher as an equal: grades and
degrees would be conferred through equal collaboration. The new teacher might
go to university for theory, but much less time would be spent there than would
be spent in the actual school. A MS would be conferred at the end and the
person would be better prepared and would have a much better chance to gain
experience without the stress and strain of that *alone* feeling that happens
presently.
Marty
Dave Bonar wrote:
> Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> > Don't get me wrong... I like the alternate route in NJ. I mentored
> > two new teachers, both of whom are still in teaching many years later.
> > But, what other profession will allow people to take minimal training, put
> > them directly on the job, then watch them leave the profession after a few
> > years?
>
> What counts as minimal training? I'm an alternative route person
> (although not in NJ), and my master's included as much coursework as a
> traditional education major would have (given that I already had the
> science background). Or are you suggesting that education should
> require a longer post-bac degree similar to medicine and law? If so I
> have to disagree; teaching is too much of a trade or craft that needs on
> the job training or apprenticeship.
>
> Dave
--
Cate Sarraille
Bill Toscano <tos...@uconect.net> wrote in message
news:904581$gqh$1...@news.loa.com...
Cate Sarraille
than those prepared through regular programs? Why do regular programs
prepare teachers better for the real world of teaching than alternative
programs? Are you aware of studies which show that teachers prepared by
alternative programs burn out at a faster rate than those prepared by
regular programs?
Cate
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote in message
news:3A25A8C0...@earthlink.net...
coun...@hotmail.com
<mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
.... No one ever found
>their education courses to be of any use.
Hear Hear. While in school for my BA, I was originally on a Secondary
Ed/English track. Ii took almost all of the ED courses, and without
exception, they were complete and utter garbage and a waste of time.
They were so painfully simple that a blind monkey could have passed
them with B's, and unfortunately, I'm not exagerrating. Luckily, I was
clued in by a wise professor (outside of the ED beuracracy) that Alt
Cert. was a way to go. So, I got my BA in ENG LIT (with enough History
credits to get fully certified in that subject as well) and saved the
almost 1600$ in internship fees I would have to pay for the priviledge
of working full time. (Isn't forced labor without compensation
Slavery ?) I learned more in a few months of substitute teaching and
classoom observations whenever I was off, than I did in all of those
classses and internship. And now, I'm supposed to go back and take 6
more classes in Grad Ed courses to get fully certified; classes like
History of Education, and Philosophy of Education, not a single
methods course. What a bunch of BS.
CountJade
coun...@hotmail.com
<sarra...@home.com> wrote:
>Why are teachers, prepared through alternative programs, more idealistic
>than those prepared through regular programs? Why do regular programs
>prepare teachers better for the real world of teaching than alternative
>programs? Are you aware of studies which show that teachers prepared by
>alternative programs burn out at a faster rate than those prepared by
>regular programs?
> Cate
Sure...are you aware that these studies are prepared by the Ed
Establishment, and that independent studies have shown the opposite?
CountJade
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
Cate Sarraille wrote:
> Why are teachers, prepared through alternative programs, more idealistic
> than those prepared through regular programs?
Many alternate route teachers are coming from successful careers elsewhere.
Their success and their age being older in general, indicates a greater sense
of self esteem coming in. The reasons to enter teaching usually are because
they have a lot to give and they think they really can make a dent in the
perception that today's students are poorly prepared, especially in science and
math. They feel strongly that they can *reach* their students with the same
enthusiasm that they gave to their professions.
> Why do regular programs
> prepare teachers better for the real world of teaching than alternative
> programs?
They don't. My point was that any teaching route must start providing more ojt
and practical experience and less university classroom theory. Methods courses
would be good, but a lot of the university philosophy and theoretical training
is not providing teachers with the expeiences and training they need.
> Are you aware of studies which show that teachers prepared by
> alternative programs burn out at a faster rate than those prepared by
> regular programs?
> Cate
Some sources of stats and reports on teacher turnover rates, teacher attitudes,
and etention of new teachers:
http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar00/reten02030100a.asp
http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/101800/uga_1018000037.shtml
http://www.nysut.org/dept/media/pressreleases/000327ra2000.html
http://www.columbiagroup.org/teacher.htm
These don't show that alternate program teachers burn out faster, but that
the burnout rate in general is high. It is my experience that the burnout rate
among older teachers from the alternate program of older people (over 30-35) in
urban districts is high, but the burnout rate among younger alternate route
people (people just starting out in teaching from a short career in their
fields, in their 20's) is even higher. These are the people who put in a short
time in another profession, felt they didn't like it, and went into teaching.
After 4 or 5 years they are disillusioned with teaching also and move on
again. I have no studies handy because I looked into this when I mentored my
first new alternate teacher and did some reading. But that was about 6 or 7
years ago, so I don't remember where I learned this from.
Donna Metler
three involved practicums in specific subject areas, where I worked with the
classroom teacher, usually with responsibility for a small group of students or a
specific topic-the fourth and fifth were a paid (albeit at subsistance level-my
Research Assistanceship at the University paid more) internship with a team
teacher-we had a group of 30 6-8 year olds, all of whom were either high level
ESL-kids with good spoken English, but weak academic english and the basic skills
needed in reading, or kids who had been observed to have language skills on the
level of the ESL kids-but for whom English was the first language. This was in an
Barrio school in West Texas-many of our kids were children of migrant workers. We
focused on vocabulary, concept development, and explicit phonics-and most of our
kids were ready to go to a regular classroom the next year
I really think that this experience made all the difference the next year, when I
was assigned 25 classes of up to 40 inner city kids as a first year music teacher!
Compared with the alternative cert people, who really struggle, I have never
regretted going the Masters route. While many of the classes themselves were only
marginally useful, the practicum experiences and all the various curriculums,
lesson plans, and unit plans I had to do for them have been very valuable.
--
Donna Metler
of observation and a full semester of student teaching-an alternative program
teacher starts teaching with no previous experience or practice. While many-in
fact, I'd say most-new teachers are ideallistic, it's much easier to be
realistic if you've actually worked with kids and observed daily classroom life.
The alternative program teachers who have been successful, in my experience,
tend to have either substituted extensively or been teachers aides before
becoming teachers-these are some of the best out there.
Cate Sarraille wrote:
--
Dave Bonar
> On Thu, 30 Nov 2000 04:22:57 GMT, Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
> <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>
> .... No one ever found
> >their education courses to be of any use.
> now, I'm supposed to go back and take 6
> more classes in Grad Ed courses to get fully certified; classes like
> History of Education, and Philosophy of Education, not a single
> methods course. What a bunch of BS.
I guess my feeling is unusual. I took the alternative cert./Master's
route to get certified. I found my methods and management classes to be
almost without value; too basic and too unfocused on real issues. On
the other hand I found my History and Philosophy of Education classes
wonderfully interesting. Not at all usefull for teaching but
stimulating and fun in the same way as other history and philosophy
classes can be. I would much rather take another philosophy of
education seminar then sit through another class on how to use a
computer in education!
Dave
Donna Metler
Education Law-taught by a lawyer. Lots of interesting case studies, what
would you do scenerios, and, as I've found out in the real world, the
education industry is full of CYA situations-which makes having some
knowledge of the law useful. If it weren't that I don't want either to be a
district lawyer or a union lawyer, it would be tempting to work on a degree
in education law--maybe after I've had my 20 years and can "retire" at
half-pay...
Dave Bonar wrote:
> <coun...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 30 Nov 2000 04:22:57 GMT, Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
> > <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >
> > .... No one ever found
> > >their education courses to be of any use.
>
> > now, I'm supposed to go back and take 6
> > more classes in Grad Ed courses to get fully certified; classes like
> > History of Education, and Philosophy of Education, not a single
> > methods course. What a bunch of BS.
>
> I guess my feeling is unusual. I took the alternative cert./Master's
> route to get certified. I found my methods and management classes to be
> almost without value; too basic and too unfocused on real issues. On
> the other hand I found my History and Philosophy of Education classes
> wonderfully interesting. Not at all usefull for teaching but
> stimulating and fun in the same way as other history and philosophy
> classes can be. I would much rather take another philosophy of
> education seminar then sit through another class on how to use a
> computer in education!
>
> Dave
>
--
Donna Metler
contract-it's actually an attempt to retain teachers longer. However, unless a
teacher has another job or is independently wealthy, no one takes the option. I
have known several teachers who have retired and come back to the district.
As far as thinking about retirement-
I have cerebral palsy, and, like most adults with CP who grew up in the
1960's-1980's, the focus was on mobility, because that was the skill needed most
for mainstreaming. Unfortunately, this puts a lot more pressure on my joints-they
are currently aging at a rate about 1.5 x my chronological age-so my current bone
age is almost 20 years over my chronological age. By the time I am eligible to
retire (at about 50, unless they up the requirements), even at the minimum level,
I will be looking at a physiological age between 70 and 80-which means that I am
unlikely to be able to keep up with elementary school kids!
In addition, I went through last year in a school with an emotionally abusive,
extremely critical, and sexually harrassing principal (who is currently the focus
of an EEOC complaint and other legal action). After I started having blood
pressure swings and my medication levels became uncontrollable, I took a medical
leave for the second term of the school year. It took 6 months to get everything
equalized with working part time, therapy, medication to help with the resulting
depression, and medical intervention to get the blood pressure, migranes and
psychomotor seizures under control. Because of intervention by the music
coordinator, my previous principal (who had lost my position due to funding) and
the luck of the previous music teacher deciding to head to a private school, I was
able to get in my current situation, which is about as ideal as an inner-city
school can be. While I realize that abusive supervisors can occur in any field,
the district repeatly ignored complaints by female teachers, and even now are
backing the principal instead of the 33+ staff members listed on the complaint.
If I am ever in such a situation again, I will leave my district. Since this is
basically a one-district city, if I do so it will probably mean leaving teaching.
Basically, I love what I do and at this point, I'm a seasoned inner-city teacher.
It's unlikely that the actual teaching will burn me out-but if mentally or
physically I get so I can no longer teach effectively, or if my hands are tied by
the administration as they were last year, I will leave teaching before allowing
myself to become a party to that sort of educational malpractice.
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc wrote:
> Donna Metler wrote:
>
> > My most fun (and actually one of the most useful) classes was the course in
> > Education Law-taught by a lawyer. Lots of interesting case studies, what
> > would you do scenerios, and, as I've found out in the real world, the
> > education industry is full of CYA situations-which makes having some
> > knowledge of the law useful. If it weren't that I don't want either to be a
> > district lawyer or a union lawyer, it would be tempting to work on a degree
> > in education law--maybe after I've had my 20 years and can "retire" at
> > half-pay...
>
> Donna,
> Education Law was one of the best taught ed courses in undergrad. If we
> paid attention the professor gave many insights into what was, back then,
> controversy over tenure, de-seg., and other issues of the 60's. *Thorough
> and Efficient* was just in its infancy, so we didn't do too much with that.
> Now, in NJ, the course dwells on the Abbott case which has turned NJ schools
> upside down. This is the famous Supreme Court case which has designated the
> special needs *urban* districts and which is still in active litigation after
> 20 years.
> I would ask two questions.
> First, the easy question: Where are you located that teachers can retire
> after 20 years with half pay? Here the minimum retirement age is 55, and you
> would need 30 years to get half pay.
> Second is the harder one: You wrote you would be tempted to retire and
> take up education law after you taught for 20 years. If you found you are
> good at teaching, why would you retire after 20 years? If you are really good
> at helping kids why even consider retirement at all at this stage of your
> career? I'm not being insulting, just trying to gauge the feelings of the
> younger teachers who must take over when all us old-timers leave the reins in
> your hands.
> My whole point in this thread is that there appears to be a drastic
> turnover rate among younger people from the ranks of classroom teaching. If
> all the good ones leave for more lucrative jobs (economically speaking) after
> relatively short periods of time who will be left to teach?
>
> Marty
>
> ****************************************
> Marty Weiss mart...@earthlink.net
>
> "You will respect mah a-thor-itay!"
> ....Cartman
> *****************************************
--
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
Donna Metler wrote:
Marty
****************************************
Mark Probert
<mart...@earthlink.net> writes:
>Cate Sarraille wrote:
>
>> Why are teachers, prepared through alternative programs, more idealistic
>> than those prepared through regular programs?
>
>Many alternate route teachers are coming from successful careers elsewhere.
>Their success and their age being older in general, indicates a greater sense
>of self esteem coming in. The reasons to enter teaching usually are because
>they have a lot to give and they think they really can make a dent in the
>perception that today's students are poorly prepared, especially in science
>and
>math. They feel strongly that they can *reach* their students with the same
>enthusiasm that they gave to their professions.
>
>> Why do regular programs
>> prepare teachers better for the real world of teaching than alternative
>> programs?
>
>They don't. My point was that any teaching route must start providing more
>ojt
>and practical experience and less university classroom theory. Methods
>courses
>would be good, but a lot of the university philosophy and theoretical
>training
>is not providing teachers with the expeiences and training they need.
>
>> Are you aware of studies which show that teachers prepared by
>> alternative programs burn out at a faster rate than those prepared by
>> regular programs?
>> Cate
>
>Some sources of stats and reports on teacher turnover rates, teacher
>attitudes,
>and etention of new teachers:
>http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar00/reten02030100a.asp
>http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/101800/uga_1018000037.shtml
>http://www.nysut.org/dept/media/pressreleases/000327ra2000.html
>http://www.columbiagroup.org/teacher.htm
> These don't show that alternate program teachers burn out faster, but that
>the burnout rate in general is high. It is my experience that the burnout
>rate
>among older teachers from the alternate program of older people (over 30-35)
>in
>urban districts is high, but the burnout rate among younger alternate route
>people (people just starting out in teaching from a short career in their
>fields, in their 20's) is even higher. These are the people who put in a
>short
>time in another profession, felt they didn't like it, and went into teaching.
>After 4 or 5 years they are disillusioned with teaching also and move on
>again. I have no studies handy because I looked into this when I mentored
>my
>first new alternate teacher and did some reading. But that was about 6 or 7
>years ago, so I don't remember where I learned this from.
This past summer the NYC BoE hired around 600 teachers from the business world.
They went through intensive training in teaching for one month.
One third left by the end of October.
I cannot wait to see what the end of November brings. ;)
-----------------
In a similar vein...
The NYC teachers have had their first 'bargaining' session with the City.
Recall that NYC did not fill all of its teacher openings, that it loses
substantial numbers ever years to the much higher paying suburbs, and that it
is anticipated that 5-10K teachers will retire in the next two years.
In this context, King Rudy the First offered the teachers the opportunity to
lag the payroll for three weeks (i.e. give up three weeks pay) work longer
days, give up tenure, and several other wonderful opportunities to screw
themselves financially.
I think someone hit him in the head with a Yankee baseball bat. His reality
check bounced.
Even if this is just negotiations posturing, such a level of arrogance has got
to scare away qualified, intelligent people.
Mark Probert
Cate Sarraille
Cate
<coun...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:3a25f821.1690145@news-server...
coun...@hotmail.com
<dmme...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>This program is almost exactly what I had at Texas Tech-During the five semesters,
>three involved practicums in specific subject areas, where I worked with the
>classroom teacher, usually with responsibility for a small group of students or a
>specific topic-the fourth and fifth were a paid (albeit at subsistance level-my
>Research Assistanceship at the University paid more) internship with a team
>teacher-
Bully for Texas! THAT'S the way to do it, fewer useless ed courses,
much more time IN the classroom....and could it be? A Non-slavery
internship? Be still my heart.
CountJade
Brian Moore
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
>Dave,
> What I meant by minimal training is that in the alternate program here in NJ
>the new teacher goes for one year of night courses in education and theory of
>classroom preparation but they are already immersed in their own classes with
>NO prior training at all, other than being under the guidance of a mentor who
>has his own classes to take care of.
> The o.j.t. was the key to their success. You say teaching is an art or
>craft. So it is. In saying this you have answered your own objections to my
>statement that there was minimal training. To be proficient in this *craft* or
>*art* requires massive amounts of on the job training.
>There are no *attending* teachers, no *chief residents*, no *first chair*
>colleagues to guide you through those first years of ojt. New teachers are
>thrown to the lions, so to speak. Alone in the classroom except maybe for a
>mentor, who has his or her own classes to attend to. What kind of training is
>this? How many times are you observed? Three? four? Five? Out of how many
>months? Ten months, 185 or more days, and how do most survive? By their own
>wits, their own instincts, their own *sense of self* developed or completely
>ruined over this period of time.
>You either gain this sense of self esteem as a teacher in a short period of
>time, or else go down in flames!
This is an issue that I wish could be pushed more by groups like
the NEA, etc. I can't agree more that we need more time to help
teachers learn how to do their work, in the classroom, and especially
AFTER they are finished their student teaching and find themselves
in their first job.
A good analogy I've heard made is with laywers in a law firm. They
come in and for a while they might be doing mostly
research, but seeing what's going on and getting oriented to the job.
Then they start doing courtroom work, at first just observing,
then representing clients, but still with another member
of the firm along. Only after a long period of time are they
expected to be able to do everything on their own.
Of course, to give that much support to new teachers would
require tremendously more resources than we have now. But I
think if we could push to do more of this it would help in
many, many ways.
--
Brian G. Moore, School of Science, Penn State Erie--The Behrend College
bg...@psu.edu , (814)-898-6334
Magi D. Shepley
really know what to do. I was in a school with no materials, and no budget. I
didn't know about using real materials for teaching, and since I was teaching
language arts, I thought I should use the basal readers that I found in the storage
closet. WRONG. The kids weren't able to use them at all... they'd been using them
for years and hadn't learned to read. If I'd had a more experienced mentor...
somebody to loan me materials even, or make suggestions, that would've been
wonderful. My mentor was a good person, but she was pretty new herself, and not
very well liked among the staff, so that made it very hard.
This year I am an experienced teacher in a new district, and my mentor is great.
She's been a real buffer for me because the department chair doesn't really want me
there. Not me, specifically, but what I represent... the kids who are leaving
centers and coming into their program.
Magi
Brian Moore wrote:
> In article <3A25C82C...@earthlink.net>,
> Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc <mart...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> >Dave,
> > What I meant by minimal training is that in the alternate program here in NJ
> >the new teacher goes for one year of night courses in education and theory of
> >classroom preparation but they are already immersed in their own classes with
> >NO prior training at all, other than being under the guidance of a mentor who
> >has his own classes to take care of.
> ....
> > The o.j.t. was the key to their success. You say teaching is an art or
> >craft. So it is. In saying this you have answered your own objections to my
> >statement that there was minimal training. To be proficient in this *craft* or
> >*art* requires massive amounts of on the job training.
> ...
> >There are no *attending* teachers, no *chief residents*, no *first chair*
> >colleagues to guide you through those first years of ojt. New teachers are
> >thrown to the lions, so to speak. Alone in the classroom except maybe for a
> >mentor, who has his or her own classes to attend to. What kind of training is
> >this? How many times are you observed? Three? four? Five? Out of how many
> >months? Ten months, 185 or more days, and how do most survive? By their own
> >wits, their own instincts, their own *sense of self* developed or completely
> >ruined over this period of time.
> >You either gain this sense of self esteem as a teacher in a short period of
> >time, or else go down in flames!
janonx
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc wrote in message <3A26201D...@earthlink.net>...
|
|
|Cate Sarraille wrote:
|
|> Why are teachers, prepared through alternative programs, more idealistic
|> than those prepared through regular programs?
|
|Their success and their age being older in general, indicates a greater sense
|of self esteem coming in.
Ageism
j
The reasons to enter teaching usually are because
|they have a lot to give
So do younger educators. Especially those who have subbed.
j
and they think they really can make a dent in the
|perception that today's students are poorly prepared, especially in science and
|math. They feel strongly that they can *reach* their students with the same
|enthusiasm that they gave to their professions.
|
|> Why do regular programs
|> prepare teachers better for the real world of teaching than alternative
|> programs?
|
|They don't. My point was that any teaching route must start providing more ojt
|and practical experience and less university classroom theory. Methods courses
|would be good, but a lot of the university philosophy and theoretical training
|is not providing teachers with the expeiences and training they need.
|
|> Are you aware of studies which show that teachers prepared by
|> alternative programs burn out at a faster rate than those prepared by
|> regular programs?
|> Cate
|
|Some sources of stats and reports on teacher turnover rates, teacher attitudes,
|and etention of new teachers:
|http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/mar00/reten02030100a.asp
|http://www.onlineathens.com/stories/101800/uga_1018000037.shtml
|http://www.nysut.org/dept/media/pressreleases/000327ra2000.html
|http://www.columbiagroup.org/teacher.htm
|
| These don't show that alternate program teachers burn out faster, but that
|the burnout rate in general is high. It is my experience that the burnout rate
|among older teachers from the alternate program of older people (over 30-35) in
|urban districts is high, but the burnout rate among younger alternate route
|people (people just starting out in teaching from a short career in their
|fields, in their 20's) is even higher. These are the people who put in a short
|time in another profession, felt they didn't like it, and went into teaching.
|After 4 or 5 years they are disillusioned with teaching also and move on
|again. I have no studies handy because I looked into this when I mentored my
|first new alternate teacher and did some reading. But that was about 6 or 7
|years ago, so I don't remember where I learned this from.
|
|
|Marty
|
|****************************************
|Marty Weiss mart...@earthlink.net
|
|"You will respect mah a-thor-itay!"
| ....Cartman
|*****************************************
|
|
----- Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News -----
http://www.newsfeeds.com - The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World!
----- Over 80,000 Newsgroups - 16 Different Servers! -----
janonx
Donna Metler wrote in message <3A26D49D...@bellsouth.net>...
|If a teacher has gone through a traditional program, they have done many hours
|of observation and a full semester of student teaching-an alternative program
|teacher starts teaching with no previous experience or practice. While many-in
|fact, I'd say most-new teachers are ideallistic, it's much easier to be
|realistic if you've actually worked with kids and observed daily classroom life.
|
|The alternative program teachers who have been successful, in my experience,
|tend to have either substituted extensively or been teachers aides before
|becoming teachers-these are some of the best out there.
Interesting Point, Donna.
j
|--
|Donna Devore Metler
|dmme...@bellsouth.net
|www.math.ttu.edu/~dmettler
|www.funfelt.com/donna
|Asst. Director, Educational Programming, Peabody Place Museum
|Faculty, Academy of the Performing Arts, early childhood and applied music
|Children's educational advocate
|
|
----- Posted via Newsfeeds.Com, Uncensored Usenet News -----
Michael Connor
> Teaching a discipline should require a university degree in that
> discipline. Anything less, we're not doing our students a favor.
How would this work? Would our 7-year-olds have twelve different teachers a
week, each with their packet of diplomas allowing them to comment on mathematics,
but not on writing? At what level would you insist on degreed teaching?
-- Michael
Alberto Moreira
I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
real learning must take place. Even at 7 years of age, for
example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
two very different kinds of teachers.
Alberto.
John Leslie
> Michael Connor wrote:
>> Alberto Moreira wrote:
>>
>>> Teaching a discipline should require a university degree in that
>>> discipline. Anything less, we're not doing our students a favor.
>>
>> How would this work? Would our 7-year-olds have twelve different
>> teachers a week, each with their packet of diplomas allowing them
>> to comment on mathematics, but not on writing?
I hate trying to answer for Alberto, but I'll take my chances...
Clearly, "teachers" can and will comment on anything. Perhaps they'll
occasionally be wrong, but students learn to deal with that.
Alberto is talking about "teaching a discipline", meaning the
time spent explaining that discipline to the class. He wants to get
away from the idea that you don't need to understand something very
well in order to teach it.
Especially, I believe, Alberto wants to get away from the idea
that you don't need to know _mathematics_ very well in order to
teach it. I won't guess how many "disciplines" Alberto thinks should
be taught in first and second grades, but I really doubt it's as
many as twelve.
>> At what level would you insist on degreed teaching?
>
> I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
> real learning must take place. Even at 7 years of age, for
> example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
> two very different kinds of teachers.
There's a list of two disciplines. Does Alberto wish to add to
that list?
I have a different kind of questions. Does Alberto (or anyone
else who wishes to comment) want to expand on:
1) How many hours per week should be spent teaching a discipline
in first and second grades?
2) Whether distance learning technologies (e.g. videoconferencing)
would suffice for any portion of teaching the discipline?
--
John Leslie <jo...@jlc.net>
Herman Rubin
>> Teaching a discipline should require a university degree in that
>> discipline. Anything less, we're not doing our students a favor.
> How would this work? Would our 7-year-olds have twelve different teachers a
>week, each with their packet of diplomas allowing them to comment on mathematics,
>but not on writing? At what level would you insist on degreed teaching?
>-- Michael
A diploma should be given only on the passage of a lengthy
comprehensive examination, with no multiple choice questions,
with labs and research projects as appropriate. The only
thing which should count is if they can put it all together.
I would not require degreed teachers, but just teachers who
understand their subject. This understanding would have to
be adequate that they could quickly handle anything that
even 10% of the children can learn, not that they need to
know the details. Those who took the old Euclid geometry
course knew more real mathematics than most of today's high
school teachers.
--
This address is for information only. I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Dept. of Statistics, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette IN47907-1399
hru...@stat.purdue.edu Phone: (765)494-6054 FAX: (765)494-0558
Michael Connor
> Alberto is talking about "teaching a discipline", meaning the
> time spent explaining that discipline to the class.
We might imagine the usefulness of "explaining to the class", which
has nothing to do with teaching, and everything to do with how adults
who work with adults IMAGINE teaching young people to be.
> I won't guess how many "disciplines" Alberto thinks should
> be taught in first and second grades, but I really doubt it's as
> many as twelve.
Well, that's the rub, ain't it? Everyone's got their preferences,
but the notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with
little folks. They're not just small adults -- they think and reason
and percieve a very different world from you or I. Which is why the
hopes and dreams of those who don't work k12, however genuine, seem
fairly ludicrous to those who do work with young people. E.g.
videoconferencing.
Mathematics, reading, writing, speaking, literature, scientific
inquiry, the list goes on (music, athletics, etc.) In the fields I know
best, the social sciences, would a history-equipped teacher be allowed
to teach sociology?
I don't object to calls for better-educated teachers. But without
demands for radically increased spending on schools, the calls quickly
become denunciations of the current group of teachers, holding them up
to an ideal beyond their grasp.
-- Michael
Michael Connor
> I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
> real learning must take place.
How quickly the hyperbole. Here's the assertion, re-written: "No real learning takes
place without degreed teachers." What evidence can you provide to support this?
> Even at 7 years of age, for
> example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
> two very different kinds of teachers.
Ideology again: quite a few of us learned math and language with elementary teachers,
woefully un-degreed, who understood how young people think, and learn, how to provide
an environment of inquiry, along with affection and other non-degreed essentials.
As long as the call for higher barriers to entry go without calls for tripling
spending on education, they are empty.
-- Michael
Donna Metler
Michael Connor wrote:
> Alberto Moreira wrote:
>
> > I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
> > real learning must take place.
OK, fine-Elementary certified teachers ARE degreed-the difference is, they are degreed in
methods of teaching elementary aged students-not in upper-level skills which are not used
in their classrooms.
>
>
> How quickly the hyperbole. Here's the assertion, re-written: "No real learning takes
> place without degreed teachers." What evidence can you provide to support this?
>
> > Even at 7 years of age, for
> > example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
> > two very different kinds of teachers.
Two different kinds of teaching-not of teachers. Many teachers can be successful at
teaching both. In fact, unless the teachers work exceptionally close together (as the
team teachers do at my school), there are definite disadvantages to departmentalization
in primary, because so much of the child's achievement in other areas is directly related
to reading-yes, even in Math and Science. If the same teacher teaches both she/he knows
what the other skill levels are, and can present the material in a method appropriate for
the students. If not, the students have to mold to the teacher. While this is appropriate
in the upper grades, primary level students come in with such a wide range of backgrounds
and experiences, even in a homogeneous classroom, that the teacher MUST know her/his
students.
>
>
> Ideology again: quite a few of us learned math and language with elementary teachers,
> woefully un-degreed, who understood how young people think, and learn, how to provide
> an environment of inquiry, along with affection and other non-degreed essentials.
>
> As long as the call for higher barriers to entry go without calls for tripling
> spending on education, they are empty.
>
> -- Michael
Bravo, Michael.
One question, Alberto-You have very intelligent children. You are a degreed engineer,
which I will accept as equivalent to a mathematics and science degree. Your wife is
degreed in music. Your daughters are products of a public school system, which means that
they probably had no subject matter degreed teachers except in specialist areas, until
high school.
Did your daughters learn to read? Your statements above would lead to the conclusion that
your daughters should be woefully unskilled verbally, yet I seriously doubt that is the
case.
For that matter, how many of the priests and nuns who were responsible for your education
had subject matter degrees?
Donna Metler
Mathematical Reasoning
Logical Reasoning
Life Science
Physical Sciences
History
US, World, State
Cultures
Historical, contemporary
Economics
English language
Reading
Composition
Media Skills
Technology
Physical Education
Health
Arts-Music, Dance, Drama, Visual Arts
History in relation to art and culture
Basic performance skills
Audience, social, and participatory skills
Character Education
Michael Connor wrote:
--
Donna Metler
John Leslie wrote
.....
2) Whether distance learning technologies (e.g. videoconferencing)
would suffice for any portion of teaching the discipline?
You really haven't spent much time working with primary level children,
have you?
>
> --
> John Leslie <jo...@jlc.net>
Alberto Moreira
>
> Alberto Moreira wrote:
>
> > I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
> > real learning must take place.
>
> place without degreed teachers." What evidence can you provide to support this?
Forty or so years of experience as a student, teacher and
father.
> > Even at 7 years of age, for
> > example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
> > two very different kinds of teachers.
>
> Ideology again: quite a few of us learned math and language with elementary teachers,
> woefully un-degreed, who understood how young people think, and learn, how to provide
> an environment of inquiry, along with affection and other non-degreed essentials.
Very few out there learned anything that even gets close to
math, and those who did, didn't do it in a vacuum. Inquiry,
affection and other things you call "essentials" - whatever they
are, essential they're certainly not - help nothing. If you
doubt, look at the pitiful performance of our schools in
teaching math to our kids.
> As long as the call for higher barriers to entry go without calls for tripling
> spending on education, they are empty.
There's only one barrier to enter: one's own willpower.
Alberto.
Michael Connor
> > How quickly the hyperbole. Here's the assertion, re-written: "No real learning takes
> > place without degreed teachers." What evidence can you provide to support this?
>
> Forty or so years of experience as a student, teacher and
> father.
Translation: I have no data, no research. I merely assert it. Anyone who disagrees with
me is a fool.
Your experience, of course, has value. But with six billion or so experiences to
consider, we often expect evidence to be more than anecdote and bluster. We who teach are
used to more compelling arguments, more precise reasoning, to justify reforms. Our
students, when asked the question "how do you know what you say you know," learn quickly
the inadequacy of the response, however forcefully delivered, "Because I say so."
> Inquiry,
> affection and other things you call "essentials" - whatever they
> are, essential they're certainly not - help nothing.
Education without inquiry or affection -- forward ho, Mr. Gradgrind!
"he seemed a kind of cannon loaded to the muzzle with
facts, and prepared to blow them clean out of the regions of
childhood at one discharge. He seemed a galvanizing apparatus,
too, charged with a grim mechanical substitute for the tender young
imaginations that were to be stormed away..."
> If you
> doubt, look at the pitiful performance of our schools in
> teaching math to our kids.
Our schools excel. The top two-thirds of American districts clearly are the finest public
schools in the world. Only by averaging in the poorest, neglected, cast-off schools does
our performance lag. The challenge for a society pledged to equality is devoting the
resources to the crapped-on districts which the others take for granted.
Going back to your earlier assertion, we might well ask: Which countries do you believe
outperform the U.S.? Demonstrate a correlation between international ranking and percent
of elementary teachers with advanced degrees. That's what a social scientist would mean
by "evidence," though of course your assertion counts for all it is worth.
> > As long as the call for higher barriers to entry go without calls for tripling
> > spending on education, they are empty.
>
> There's only one barrier to enter: one's own willpower.
Rand to the rescue, eh?
The U.S. has populated the ranks of teaching with low barriers to entry -- a technical
term with which you are perhaps unfamiliar. A non-example of "low barrier to entry" might
be the WNBA: here the bar to get into the jobs is set very high, with corresponding very
high remuneration.
Calls to "raise the bar" for teachers, without demands to jack up the rewards, are empty.
And as I predicted, quickly become teacher-bashing: note the smug "If only people wanted
to be better, they would be" closing line.
Clearly the best thing for those who advocate such an approach would be to quickly get
hold of an elementary certificate (a "low bar" indeed, only a calendar year in my state)
and get thee to an elementary classroom. Perhaps, through video conferencing and
"explaining to the class", the wonders of set theory will become quickly apparent to the
seven year olds.
The only barrier is your willpower, Alberto. On your way, you might pick up a few of your
collegues -- at least the ones with willpower -- and set them to work in, say, a
seventh-grade classroom.
I'd give them three days, average, with a high of ten and low of 25 minutes.
-- Michael
Alberto Moreira
> Two different kinds of teaching-not of teachers. Many teachers can be successful at
> teaching both. In fact, unless the teachers work exceptionally close together (as the
> team teachers do at my school), there are definite disadvantages to departmentalization
> in primary, because so much of the child's achievement in other areas is directly related
> to reading-yes, even in Math and Science.
But not even close. First, a child that gets to elementary
school without knowing how to read is already on a half-remedial
track. Second, the skill required to learn math has little if
anything to do with reading or even verbalization, it's an
abstract skill that's orthogonal to others. But then, if the
teacher only knows how to teach phonics or whole language, of
course the math won't come out.
And you know what, they're not young children forever, yet what
their teachers do to them when they're that young makes or
breaks a lot of what comes later.
> If the same teacher teaches both she/he knows
> what the other skill levels are, and can present the material in a method appropriate for
> the students. If not, the students have to mold to the teacher. While this is appropriate
> in the upper grades, primary level students come in with such a wide range of backgrounds
> and experiences, even in a homogeneous classroom, that the teacher MUST know her/his
> students.
Repeat with me: presenting the material is irrelevant.
Repeat with me: teachers must know their students no matter
what.
Repeat with me: the mathematical skill that must be developed -
at any age - is orthogonal to just about everything else in
human experience.
Young or old, the issue is the same: math is math, math ain't
reading or music or anything else. Actually, music ain't reading
either, maybe next you're going to propose that classroom
reading teachers can teach music even though they don't know one
end of a glockenspiel from another ? Math's no different, mind
you.
> One question, Alberto-You have very intelligent children. You are a degreed engineer,
> which I will accept as equivalent to a mathematics and science degree. Your wife is
> degreed in music. Your daughters are products of a public school system, which means that
> they probably had no subject matter degreed teachers except in specialist areas, until
> high school.
Yes.
> Did your daughters learn to read?
Yes.
> Your statements above would lead to the conclusion that
> your daughters should be woefully unskilled verbally, yet I seriously doubt that is the
> case.
The reason why they aren't unskilled verbally is that we made
sure they got exposed to a lot of it, from a lot of sources,
many of them quite specialized, from very tender age. You see,
education isn't about five year olds or six year olds, education
is CONTINUOUS, it must be tackled at every age and at every
level, at the best possible intensity and target. This is, in
fact, a point where maybe I must bend to what homeschoolers or
Herman have been saying, in that their literacy wasn't really
achieved at school but at home and outside through exposure and
experience. Besides, I had a solid education and I know a fair
amount of literature, language, poetry, and related subjects,
therefore I could always, at every age - not just when they were
in preschool - manage their literacy.
> For that matter, how many of the priests and nuns who were responsible for your education
> had subject matter degrees?
All of them. Every teacher I had when I was a kid, ever since I
remember, was an expert in his area. Starting with my father,
bless him, the greatest teacher I ever had.
Alberto.
Herman Rubin
>> Alberto is talking about "teaching a discipline", meaning the
>> time spent explaining that discipline to the class.
> We might imagine the usefulness of "explaining to the class", which
>has nothing to do with teaching, and everything to do with how adults
>who work with adults IMAGINE teaching young people to be.
I have been teaching longer than Alberto, and while there
is explanation and clarification to be done (I find few
books even remotely clear, or containing the concepts),
the real problems are for the individual to learn.
Moreover, questions asked by the students are likely to
contribute more than straight lecturing. I am unwilling
to have more than 50 minute classes (75 minute or more are
quite popular with many of my colleagues), as that is too
long at one time. I have expressed this about "block
scheduling"; I feel it is a poor way to learn any material
other than routine.
>> I won't guess how many "disciplines" Alberto thinks should
>> be taught in first and second grades, but I really doubt it's as
>> many as twelve.
> Well, that's the rub, ain't it? Everyone's got their preferences,
>but the notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with
>little folks.
It doesn't? Young children should not learn reading and
mathematics as such? And after they can read, they should
not learn geography and history as such? Why are they in
school?
They're not just small adults -- they think and reason
>and percieve a very different world from you or I.
Only because there are those who are unwilling to allow
them to think and reason as we do. Their values may be
different, but the child's brain is quite capable of
reasoning, and understanding the problems in doing it.
Which is why the
>hopes and dreams of those who don't work k12, however genuine, seem
>fairly ludicrous to those who do work with young people. E.g.
>videoconferencing.
Translation: The educationists believe that children
cannot really learn, and therefore try to keep them from
doing this. To reinforce it, they concentrate on such
things as "self-esteem" and busy work.
Consequence: By the time they get to college, the ability
to learn and reason logically, to understand instead of
manipulate, is gone, and the teachers produced cannot
learn what scholars have little difficulty teaching the
children. One does not promote this by doing the current
"kid stuff" and memorization and routine. There are a
few who do can overcome this, but they are going to be
turned off from teaching by the emphasis on non-academics.
> Mathematics, reading, writing, speaking, literature, scientific
>inquiry, the list goes on (music, athletics, etc.) In the fields I know
>best, the social sciences, would a history-equipped teacher be allowed
>to teach sociology?
Few of the current high school teachers of mathematics
have any understanding of mathematics. The type of
understanding which can be taught in elementary school
by those who can work directly with concepts seems to
be opposed by those who have been through the present
approach in k12.
> I don't object to calls for better-educated teachers. But without
>demands for radically increased spending on schools, the calls quickly
>become denunciations of the current group of teachers, holding them up
>to an ideal beyond their grasp.
Increasing the expenditures in schools, and increasing
the salaries of the current teachers and administrators,
will do no good. If the ideal is beyond the grasp of
the current teachers, can they possibly provide what
those who believe in the ideal believe should be taught?
Should those who can teach it consider taking a junior
position among those who cannot reach it?
Herman Rubin
Donna Metler <dmme...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>John Leslie wrote
.....
>2) Whether distance learning technologies (e.g. videoconferencing)
>would suffice for any portion of teaching the discipline?
>You really haven't spent much time working with primary level children,
>have you?
If one allows children to try to do more, they will do more.
If one restricts a child to what all in the room can do, and
makes it clear to the child that nothing more is to be expected
than what the "group" can do, and allows (and even encourages)
peer pressure to hold the child back, not many will still have
the desire to reach for more, and many will even lose their
ability to do so. We cannot produce scholars by keeping them
with their "age peers" and not learning.
Herman Rubin
>> Two different kinds of teaching-not of teachers. Many teachers can be successful at
>> teaching both. In fact, unless the teachers work exceptionally close together (as the
>> team teachers do at my school), there are definite disadvantages to departmentalization
>> in primary, because so much of the child's achievement in other areas is directly related
>> to reading-yes, even in Math and Science.
>But not even close. First, a child that gets to elementary
>school without knowing how to read is already on a half-remedial
>track.
However, this is the DELIBERATE attitude of the schools.
Those who know how to read are not generally allowed to
progress faster, although the situation is a little better
than what it used to be.
Second, the skill required to learn math has little if
>anything to do with reading or even verbalization, it's an
>abstract skill that's orthogonal to others. But then, if the
>teacher only knows how to teach phonics or whole language, of
>course the math won't come out.
The first grade math teacher needs to know the use of
variables, a goodly amount of logic and mathematical
notation in general, and the structure of the integers,
including both the ordinal and the cardinal concepts.
This is the minimum needed.
>And you know what, they're not young children forever, yet what
>their teachers do to them when they're that young makes or
>breaks a lot of what comes later.
When teachers tell children they should be like their
classmates, and play with them instead of really learning,
what can one expect in the future? The brains of young
children are open to development; what I see of college
students indicates that they have been closed.
>> If the same teacher teaches both she/he knows
>> what the other skill levels are, and can present the material in a method appropriate for
>> the students. If not, the students have to mold to the teacher. While this is appropriate
>> in the upper grades, primary level students come in with such a wide range of backgrounds
>> and experiences, even in a homogeneous classroom, that the teacher MUST know her/his
>> students.
>Repeat with me: presenting the material is irrelevant.
>Repeat with me: teachers must know their students no matter
>what.
>Repeat with me: the mathematical skill that must be developed -
>at any age - is orthogonal to just about everything else in
>human experience.
Let me add: teachers need to provide their students with the
best opportunities possible, even if this means getting them
out of the class.
>Young or old, the issue is the same: math is math, math ain't
>reading or music or anything else. Actually, music ain't reading
>either, maybe next you're going to propose that classroom
>reading teachers can teach music even though they don't know one
>end of a glockenspiel from another ? Math's no different, mind
>you.
................
Michael Connor
> I have been teaching longer than Alberto, and while there
> is explanation and clarification to be done (I find few
> books even remotely clear, or containing the concepts),
> the real problems are for the individual to learn.
> Moreover, questions asked by the students are likely to
> contribute more than straight lecturing. I am unwilling
> to have more than 50 minute classes (75 minute or more are
> quite popular with many of my colleagues), as that is too
> long at one time. I have expressed this about "block
> scheduling"; I feel it is a poor way to learn any material
> other than routine.
But the process of learning at the collegiate level has so little to do with
learning in the elementary and middle schools. This is what those who do not
do this work cannot understand. They confuse how they "feel" (not a feeling,
actually, but a opinion; this is a distinction made with growth in what
intelligence theorists call the Personal Intelligences, sometimes separated
into intelligence about self, and intelligence about others) with an actual
argument.
> >> I won't guess how many "disciplines" Alberto thinks should
> >> be taught in first and second grades, but I really doubt it's as
> >> many as twelve.
>
> > Well, that's the rub, ain't it? Everyone's got their preferences,
> >but the notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with
> >little folks.
>
> It doesn't? Young children should not learn reading and
> mathematics as such?
Not at all what I said. Why distort what I am saying? Read it again: "the
notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with little folks." The
concept of a discrete field of inquiry, governed by rules which demarcate it
from other fields, does not fit a seven-year-old who is trying to make sense of
the world.
> They're not just small adults -- they think and reason
> >and percieve a very different world from you or I.
>
> Only because there are those who are unwilling to allow
> them to think and reason as we do. Their values may be
> different, but the child's brain is quite capable of
> reasoning, and understanding the problems in doing it.
Here the science of human development simply goes unaddressed -- decades of
research about how young people learn obliterated by those who do not do this
work, yet are experts on it.
The child reasons, of course. But in ways different from adults -- which is
what I said. If anyone believes that children "think and reason as we do" then
they have no business working with young people, or advising those who do.
For example:
with Piaget and Inkelder's conservation tasks involving two balls or
lumps of clay, there seems to be a systematic three-step sequence: 1)
conservation of the amount of clay (Is more clay in one of the balls,
even though they are different shapes, or do they both have the same
amount of clay?), 2) conservation of the weight of clay (Does one of
the balls weigh more?), and 3) conservation of the volume of clay
(Does one of the balls displace more water?).
[http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
or, more telling,
in pretend play the understanding of concrete social roles, such as
that of a doctor interacting with a patient, emerges at a certain
point in a developmental sequence...
[http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
In the report I quote, published by the National Academy of Sciences, thinking
about social roles becomes more complex with development, in fairly typical
stages and sequences.
It is not that adults "allow" or disallow children to think and reason like
adults; rather, children think and reason like children, in particular ways,
regardless of how adults might prefer them to think and reason. Understanding
how children think and reason is a precursor to successful teaching -- that
prior knowlege must be activated, that multiple intelligences must be engaged,
that concepts must be illustrated with examples and non-examples, etc.
These basics of human development are known by first semester teaching
candidates everywhere. Those who care about young people learning, but frankly
have no idea what they're talking about, might muster up the "willpower" to
learn. You could start here, for example:
How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning with
additional
material from the Committee on Learning Research and
Educational
Practice, National Research Council
http://www.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html/
> Which is why the
> >hopes and dreams of those who don't work k12, however genuine, seem
> >fairly ludicrous to those who do work with young people. E.g.
> >videoconferencing.
>
> Translation: The educationists believe that children
> cannot really learn, and therefore try to keep them from
> doing this. To reinforce it, they concentrate on such
> things as "self-esteem" and busy work.
Petulance does not become you, Herman. Have at least a modicum of respect, for
yourself if no one else -- you can't simply wish away what other people know.
You can't "translate" an idea you disagree with into an idea which is obviously
false.
> Increasing the expenditures in schools, and increasing
> the salaries of the current teachers and administrators,
> will do no good. If the ideal is beyond the grasp of
> the current teachers, can they possibly provide what
> those who believe in the ideal believe should be taught?
What I'm saying is that if you want to raise the bar, you have to raise the
reward. Anything less is teacher-bashing, a fine sport for the gentry but
hardly effective.
> Should those who can teach it consider taking a junior
> position among those who cannot reach it?
Well, the proof's in the pudding. The set of "those who can teach it" is not
the set of "those who have degrees and opinions about teaching it". So far
you're conflating the two. The first set is defined through action, the second
through teacher-bashing in chat groups.
-- Michael
Donna Metler
Alberto Moreira wrote:
> Donna Metler wrote:
>
> > Two different kinds of teaching-not of teachers. Many teachers can be successful at
> > teaching both. In fact, unless the teachers work exceptionally close together (as the
> > team teachers do at my school), there are definite disadvantages to departmentalization
> > in primary, because so much of the child's achievement in other areas is directly related
> > to reading-yes, even in Math and Science.
>
> But not even close. First, a child that gets to elementary
> school without knowing how to read is already on a half-remedial
> track. Second, the skill required to learn math has little if
> anything to do with reading or even verbalization, it's an
> abstract skill that's orthogonal to others. But then, if the
> teacher only knows how to teach phonics or whole language, of
> course the math won't come out.
Since when? Reading is a developmental skill, and not all children have learned to compile the
parts into a whole by age 5. Now, can all children, with enough parental attention, learn how
to decode text? Yes. This is not reading.
In addition, mathematics for a young child has a great deal to do with verbalization-on paper
and in speech. UNTIL A CHILD CAN VERBALIZE A CONCEPT HE/SHE DOES NOT, IN ALMOST ALL SITUATIONS,
HAVE THE MASTERY OF THE CONCEPT NECESSARY TO USE IT!!!! I am willing to bet that the same holds
with your college students. The student who works on gut instinct, and cannot explain his/her
thinking processess, probably will not be able to apply the concept to an unfamilar setting.
Mathematics has a specific oral and written language. For students who do not yet have a firm
grasp of their verbal language-which is innate, learning a non-innate language is very
difficult, and tends to exist at the recall level only-not on the levels of comprehension,
application, evaluation, or synthesis.
>
>
> And you know what, they're not young children forever, yet what
> their teachers do to them when they're that young makes or
> breaks a lot of what comes later.
>
Which is why it is important to teach material on the child's level-not waste time attempting
to teach higher-level skills when the lower level ones are not mastered.
>
> > If the same teacher teaches both she/he knows
> > what the other skill levels are, and can present the material in a method appropriate for
> > the students. If not, the students have to mold to the teacher. While this is appropriate
> > in the upper grades, primary level students come in with such a wide range of backgrounds
> > and experiences, even in a homogeneous classroom, that the teacher MUST know her/his
> > students.
>
> Repeat with me: presenting the material is irrelevant.
WRONG!!!!! If the lesson is not presented in such a way to be accessible to the student, it
WILL NOT be learned. If I hand a three year old a full-sized cello, the child will not learn
how to play the cello-the material cannot be presented on that instrument in a manner
accessible to the child. A 1/8 or 1/4 cello would be accessible for a 3 year old.
>
>
> Repeat with me: teachers must know their students no matter
> what.
Agreed. But, there are many, many more generalizations due to age, especially in the first
decade of life, than differences. A seven year old child, especially when the socioeconomic
level is known, can be expected to have certain intellectual and reasoning skills, regardless
of the child's specific knowledge base. It is a poor teacher who does not use this as a
starting point, but instead reinvents the wheel for each student.
Oh, and by the way, this is a very interesting statement coming from someone who's view on
learning styles and learning differences is "Change it and do it my way, because I know more
than you do." You are hardly the poster child for individualization.
>
>
> Repeat with me: the mathematical skill that must be developed -
> at any age - is orthogonal to just about everything else in
> human experience.
>
>
> Young or old, the issue is the same: math is math, math ain't
> reading or music or anything else.
But, math is interrelated to every other subject-as is music, as is reading
> Actually, music ain't reading
> either, maybe next you're going to propose that classroom
> reading teachers can teach music even though they don't know one
> end of a glockenspiel from another ? Math's no different, mind
> you.
Actually, in many, many elementary schools there are no music specialists. With the proper
materials, and the ability to recognize when a child needs a higher level of instruction, a
classroom teacher can be quite effective at teaching basic music skills. Both the McGraw-Hill
and Silver Burdett music series are really designed for that contingency.
In addition, the level of math covered in the elementary school curriculum (K-5) goes through
ONLY arithmetic. Glockenspiels are not a life skill-unless you happen to make your living
playing or teaching one. Being able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide are. The two are not
directly comparable.
>
>
> > One question, Alberto-You have very intelligent children. You are a degreed engineer,
> > which I will accept as equivalent to a mathematics and science degree. Your wife is
> > degreed in music. Your daughters are products of a public school system, which means that
> > they probably had no subject matter degreed teachers except in specialist areas, until
> > high school.
>
> Yes.
>
> > Did your daughters learn to read?
>
> Yes.
>
> > Your statements above would lead to the conclusion that
> > your daughters should be woefully unskilled verbally, yet I seriously doubt that is the
> > case.
>
> The reason why they aren't unskilled verbally is that we made
> sure they got exposed to a lot of it, from a lot of sources,
> many of them quite specialized, from very tender age. You see,
> education isn't about five year olds or six year olds, education
> is CONTINUOUS, it must be tackled at every age and at every
> level, at the best possible intensity and target. This is, in
> fact, a point where maybe I must bend to what homeschoolers or
> Herman have been saying, in that their literacy wasn't really
> achieved at school but at home and outside through exposure and
> experience. Besides, I had a solid education and I know a fair
> amount of literature, language, poetry, and related subjects,
> therefore I could always, at every age - not just when they were
> in preschool - manage their literacy.
>
So, in other words, a non-degreed person who puts the effort into teaching can do so
successfully. Thank you for proving my point. The schools are not intended to be the sole
source of any child's education.
>
> > For that matter, how many of the priests and nuns who were responsible for your education
> > had subject matter degrees?
>
> All of them. Every teacher I had when I was a kid, ever since I
> remember, was an expert in his area. Starting with my father,
> bless him, the greatest teacher I ever had.
In every single area? I seriously doubt that your father, or your kindergarten Nun, had college
degrees in everything you learned from them.High school, maybe. Elementary school, no.
>
>
> Alberto.
Donna Metler
Alberto Moreira wrote:
> Michael Connor wrote:
> >
> > Alberto Moreira wrote:
> >
> > > I will insist on degreed teaching at every level, as long as
> > > real learning must take place.
> >
> > How quickly the hyperbole. Here's the assertion, re-written: "No real learning takes
> > place without degreed teachers." What evidence can you provide to support this?
>
> Forty or so years of experience as a student, teacher and
> father.
>
> > > Even at 7 years of age, for
> > > example, learning math and language in the proper way requires
> > > two very different kinds of teachers.
> >
> > Ideology again: quite a few of us learned math and language with elementary teachers,
> > woefully un-degreed, who understood how young people think, and learn, how to provide
> > an environment of inquiry, along with affection and other non-degreed essentials.
>
> Very few out there learned anything that even gets close to
> math, and those who did, didn't do it in a vacuum. Inquiry,
> affection and other things you call "essentials" - whatever they
> are, essential they're certainly not - help nothing. If you
> doubt, look at the pitiful performance of our schools in
> teaching math to our kids.
>
> > As long as the call for higher barriers to entry go without calls for tripling
> > spending on education, they are empty.
>
> There's only one barrier to enter: one's own willpower.
>
> Alberto.
Put up or shut up, Alberto. Math and science are shortage areas. You could get a teaching
position in almost any school district around the country. In fact, to go to another area
of your claimed expertise, I will happily write you a letter of introduction to the
elementary music coordinator of my district-we have had a vacant 1/2 time position at my
school all year, because of a lack of personnel.
Of course, you'd lose money, but if you are really so determined that your way is the only
way, by all means, don't let that stop you.
In fact, maybe you and Herman can start your own program-IIRC, Indiana has charter schools,
as do most other states, and anyone can start a private school. Hire only subject matter
expert teachers. Take the same cross section of kids that the public schools do-but regroup
them as you see fit. We'll compare your students with the more traditional students at the
end of 6th grade, using the same standardized assessments-IN ALL SUBJECT AREAS. In about
10 years, when your kindergarteners are in high school, we'll compare the data-raw scores,
no value added assessment. I would be very interested in the results.
Dave Bonar
> What I meant by minimal training is that in the alternate program here
> in NJ the new teacher goes for one year of night courses in education and
> theory of classroom preparation but they are already immersed in their own
> classes with NO prior training at all, other than being under the guidance
> of a mentor who has his own classes to take care of.
Fair enough. That program sounds superficially like the program I was
involved in but is clearly much more minimal. This is a problem with
any discussion of alternative certification; there are just too many
different things that fall under the same general heading.
> During the last 8 years I was there there were 5 alternate route teachers
> of whom I mentored two. No one ever found their education courses to be
> of any use. In fact, every one of the new teachers discovered that they
> were being taught in these seminars by professors who had never been in an
> urban district. All the theory, all the methods, etc, were geared to
> suburban teachers.
I find this comment interesting. You sound, at least to me, like you
are giving a general condemnation of alternative programs because they
do not prepare new teachers for urban schools. I realize that there is
a great need for teachers in urban schools but is this need really such
that we should only count a teacher as a success if they become a
willing success at an urban school?
> The o.j.t. was the key to their success. You say teaching is an art
> or craft. So it is. In saying this you have answered your own objections
> to my statement that there was minimal training.
I agree completely about o.j.t. in teaching. I wasn't really objecting;
just commenting that it was unclear whether you were refering to
specific minimal training or whether you were refering to all new
teachers as having minimal training.
Dave
Alberto Moreira
> Since when? Reading is a developmental skill, and not all children have learned to compile the
> parts into a whole by age 5. Now, can all children, with enough parental attention, learn how
> to decode text? Yes. This is not reading.
Reading is an INTELLECTUAL skill. It is LEARNED. It does NOT
come as a result of natural development. And reading has little
if anything with "decoding" text, the very act of seeing
"decoding" as a part of reading denotes a deep misunderstanding
of the process as it applies globally. Reading in fact is a lot
more about being able to encode than it is about being able to
decode: I don't read well because I can decode B-O-D-Y, body,
but because I can think of "body" in the abstract and
automatically encode it into the four letters B-O-D-Y - and only
then I can read B-O-D-Y and convert it to body. The process of
reading isn't at all a decoding one, it's much more basic than
that, it relies on a partial pattern matching that uses
synthesis first, then decomposition; and while at first a kid
needs to do the decomposition in order to read, as maturity
settles in and the kid gets more used to language and
representation, the analytical, decomposition phase, is either
totally dropped outright or occurs in such a low plane that is
not perceived as taking place.
Have you ever taught anyone to read music ? It isn't about
decomposition or decoding, not at all, it's about pattern
matching. It's about converting notation to sound inside one's
mind. Well, reading text is the same thing, it's about the
conversion of notation to abstraction. And that can be taught to
children very early on.
> In addition, mathematics for a young child has a great deal to do with verbalization-on paper
> and in speech. UNTIL A CHILD CAN VERBALIZE A CONCEPT HE/SHE DOES NOT, IN ALMOST ALL SITUATIONS,
> HAVE THE MASTERY OF THE CONCEPT NECESSARY TO USE IT!!!!
No.
First, learning math isn't about mastering concepts nor is it
about being able to use them: it's about being able to think
mathematically. Second, this mathematical thought often cannot
be verbalized, it's too abstract. Third, a lot of kids can do
things before they can verbalize them. Again, teaching the
concept is not very relevant, neither teaching its use. What's
important is to make the kid able to think mathematically, and
that does not depend neither on concept nor on usage, even less
on verbalization.
> I am willing to bet that the same holds
> with your college students. The student who works on gut instinct, and cannot explain his/her
> thinking processess, probably will not be able to apply the concept to an unfamilar setting.
You'll lose the bet. Mathematics, in the end, *is* about acting
on instinct, and many very knowledgeable people I have dealt
with work on an instinctive basis first, and use logic and
concept just to shore up a proof to back up one's intuition.
"Aha, Insight" is the name of the game, it just happens, thanks
Martin Gardner! The rest is downstream.
> Mathematics has a specific oral and written language. For students who do not yet have a firm
> grasp of their verbal language-which is innate, learning a non-innate language is very
> difficult, and tends to exist at the recall level only-not on the levels of comprehension,
> application, evaluation, or synthesis.
The language is just an expression of mathematics, it is, by
itself, *not* mathematics. One of the toughest things I have to
do to my students, for example, is to convince them that
language is an attribution of the user: I use the language I
need, when I need it, as I need it. It's the thought process
behind the language that's important, and the abstrusiveness of
mathematical language only reflects the toughness and alienness
of the thought processes that it hides. Mathematics, in its
essence, is a thought process: just like music is about sound,
mathematics is about abstraction, and abstraction may require us
to abstract even from its very language. If I can think
mathematically, the language will come easily; but if I can't
think mathematically, it may be impossible to learn the
language.
> Which is why it is important to teach material on the child's level-not waste time attempting
> to teach higher-level skills when the lower level ones are not mastered.
Only the child can tell you what material is at the child's
level, and it takes a fair amount of knowing the student, at an
individual level, to find out what he or she can or cannot do.
By the way "higher-level" skills is an oxymoron anyway, a
codeword that's often used to hide things we don't feel
comfortable dealing with. What's "higher-level" to you may be
commonplace to me, and plain obsolete to my kids, or vice versa.
You don't push Suzuki on a kid that can handle Kreutzer, and you
don't know whether the kid can be on a fast track if you don't
know the kid individually.
But even handling kids who cannot, you must always keep in mind
that in a very short time they will have to handle it. So, I am
of the opinion that teaching at young age cannot be done unless
the teacher is very aware of what the demand is going to be
during the next ten or so years. I don't see how a teacher can
teach a 7 year old if he or she doesn't know what the demand on
that kid is going to be at 17 or even 27 years of age!
> WRONG!!!!! If the lesson is not presented in such a way to be accessible to the student, it
> WILL NOT be learned. If I hand a three year old a full-sized cello, the child will not learn
> how to play the cello-the material cannot be presented on that instrument in a manner
> accessible to the child. A 1/8 or 1/4 cello would be accessible for a 3 year old.
But "learning the lesson" is irrelevant. Teaching facts is
irrelevant. And a 3 year old can learn a whole lot of music
without even coming close to a cello. The point here is, we
don't teach them cello, we teach them music; we don't teach them
music skills, we teach them how to think musically; we don't
teach them material, we expose them to quality and develop their
ear towards sensitivity, detail, nuance, sound planes, and all
those myriad things that musical thought and talent takes for
granted. So, you put a 1/4 cello in the hands of a kid that
cannot think musically, what happens ? I'll be surprised if what
you get isn't a gross waste of time, from both teacher and
student points of view.
> Agreed. But, there are many, many more generalizations due to age, especially in the first
> decade of life, than differences. A seven year old child, especially when the socioeconomic
> level is known, can be expected to have certain intellectual and reasoning skills, regardless
> of the child's specific knowledge base. It is a poor teacher who does not use this as a
> starting point, but instead reinvents the wheel for each student.
I can see *no* generalization whatsoever that is useful to teach
a kid. The *only* sensible thing to do is to let the kid tell us
what's appropriate. A good teacher indeed *does* reinvent the
wheel for each student, because each of them is different!
> Oh, and by the way, this is a very interesting statement coming from someone who's view on
> learning styles and learning differences is "Change it and do it my way, because I know more
> than you do." You are hardly the poster child for individualization.
Knowledge comes the way knowledge comes. Neither you nor I nor
our students can choose it. It isn't "my" way that I'm
proposing, what I propose is that one should learn the way
things require to be learned - again, individualization is
fundamental. The world's not going to change because my student
is a "visual" learner, therefore I'd better wean that student
out of it fast, or I will be severely limiting them as far as
what they will be able to handle in life.
To me learning styles are something that must be learned as
well, not an innate facilitator that throws us this or that
direction and allows us to reshape the world to fit what we
want. People can be as individual as they can, but plate
tectonics is not going to stop for their individual or
intellectual sake.
> But, math is interrelated to every other subject-as is music, as is reading
No it is not. Math is not interrelated to anything except as an
upstream to other things. Math and music share a position of
pureness of thought that is not matched by any other branch of
human activity I know. They dig from the abstract and they feed
into other things.
> Actually, in many, many elementary schools there are no music specialists. With the proper
> materials, and the ability to recognize when a child needs a higher level of instruction, a
> classroom teacher can be quite effective at teaching basic music skills. Both the McGraw-Hill
> and Silver Burdett music series are really designed for that contingency.
And elementary schools do a terrible job of teaching music to
children. If you want to see real music being taught to young
kids, go to the New England Conservatory or to Julliard or to
the Longy School of Music in Boston. Then you're going to see
the real thing in action, and it's very, very different from the
nonsense that passes for music teaching that we see in our
typical school.
> In addition, the level of math covered in the elementary school curriculum (K-5) goes through
> ONLY arithmetic. Glockenspiels are not a life skill-unless you happen to make your living
> playing or teaching one. Being able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide are. The two are not
> directly comparable.
Arithmetic isn't something you can use "only" to refer to it.
Arithmetic is a tough subject. And I contend that no, you don't
really need to know how to add, subtract, multiply or divide
today, we have machines to do that stuff. To me, spending five
or six years teaching them arithmetic is a gross waste of time,
money and energy.
> So, in other words, a non-degreed person who puts the effort into teaching can do so
> successfully. Thank you for proving my point. The schools are not intended to be the sole
> source of any child's education.
Schooling ain't education, and the actual piece of paper is
irrelevant, but again, the issue is, does the teacher *know* the
material at a strong enough level ? I do know a number of people
who can handle things pretty decently and don't have a degree.
But you know what, the chances of finding those people isn't
very large, therefore, yes, we end up needing that magic degree
at an institutional level, or we don't know if we're going to be
doing it right. In fact, I have voiced the opinion, over and
again, that my reservation against homeschooling is that no
parent can be trusted with knowing everything the kid needs to
learn, and that I like to see a minimum level of formal
academic, college level, knowledge, backing up my kids'
schooling.
> In every single area? I seriously doubt that your father, or your kindergarten Nun, had college
> degrees in everything you learned from them.High school, maybe. Elementary school, no.
Besides, as he himself put it, "having done just about every
manual trade you can think of", my father had three engineering
degrees - mechanical, construction and electricity - and he
taught me all the math and science I needed to know. I didn't go
to kindergarten. I could read fluently when I was four years
old. The music I learned was taught to me by very excellent
classical musicians. What else is there to learn in elementary
school ?
And, for the record: priests, not nuns. Jesuits. I was educated
in all-boys schools and graduated from an all-men military
college. I was educated in an old fashioned, now defunct, manly
way, by men who were used to carry load and responsibility and
knew how to imprint basic character on young boys, and also the
urge and capacity to learn that I found so important to have in
life.
Alberto.
Alberto Moreira.
Alberto Moreira
> Translation: I have no data, no research. I merely assert it. Anyone who disagrees with
> me is a fool.
Go back to my previous posts, and you will find that I do not
believe, one iota, in this kind of data-based "research".
Research comes from one's brain, mind you, and needs no data but
insight. Statistics are irrelevant when we're dealing with
individual outcomes, and each individual student is exactly
that, an individual. We must teach every one of them and not a
statistical ideal that doesn't exist except as a figment of our
imagination.
> Your experience, of course, has value. But with six billion or so experiences to
> consider, we often expect evidence to be more than anecdote and bluster.
There is NOTHING to it besides personal experience. It is
PRECISELY the anecdote that teaches us what to do, nothing else
comes even close. IN fact, there ARE six billion or so
experiences to consider, and there is NO evidence besides each
of those cases considered individually. Anything beyond that is
fantasy.
> We who teach are
> used to more compelling arguments, more precise reasoning, to justify reforms.
I teach too. I have taught my whole life. And I have a deep
level of contempt for what you call "precise" reasoning. And, by
the way, I do not believe we need any kind of reform. What we
need is the opposite: drop the "research", drop the
educationese, drop the statistics, and go deal with the students
ONE-ON-ONE, as INDIVIDUALS they are. Yes, sir, there are six
billion of them out there, and each one is an INDIVIDUAL.
> Our
> students, when asked the question "how do you know what you say you know," learn quickly
> the inadequacy of the response, however forcefully delivered, "Because I say so."
If a student comes to you and tells you he or she knows this or
that from experience, you'd better listen well to what that
individual is saying, or I'm going to doubt your rationality.
People are people, not machines, and teaching is about
individuals, not about research and statistics.
The point here is, I have thirty years of accumulated
experience. If you throw a theory at me, YOUR THEORY'D BETTER
EXPLAIN MUCH OF THOSE THINGS AND QUESTIONS I ACCUMULATED DURING
THOSE YEARS - or to me, your research, precise reasoning,
whatever, are between irrelevant and flat wrong. So, do you want
your theory to hold ? MAKE SURE IT FITS MY ANECDOTES - in fact,
make sure it fits the anecdotes of those six billion out there.
I'm sorry, there's a simple test in formal science that people
often fail to apply: if a seemingly correct chain of reasoning
leads to a result that contradicts experience, THERE MUST BE
SOME ERROR IN THAT CHAIN OF REASONING.
In other words, if your theory contradicts the anecdote, it's
your theory that needs revamping, not the anecdote. Until your
theory fits the anecdotes, it has little validity; and if your
theory contradicts the anecdote, go back to your lab and refine
your research, because it obviously has holes in it.
> Education without inquiry or affection -- forward ho, Mr. Gradgrind!
Education is for parents. Schooling is for teachers. Schooling
is about knowledge of subject matter. Education is about
knowledge of the individual child. The moment teachers usurp a
parent's hat and do education instead of schooling, that's the
point where things start to go wrong.
> Our schools excel. The top two-thirds of American districts clearly are the finest public
> schools in the world. Only by averaging in the poorest, neglected, cast-off schools does
> our performance lag. The challenge for a society pledged to equality is devoting the
> resources to the crapped-on districts which the others take for granted.
I'm sorry, that's nonsense that doesn't fly at the light of the
facts. What DOES happen is that this country is engaged in a
crescent importation of foreign talent, BECAUSE OUR SCHOOLS DO
NOT PREPARE OUR OWN KIDS EVEN TO FILL UP THE POSITIONS WE HAVE
OPEN. While there's lines of people fighting for one slot at a
burger kingdom cashier, we in high tech must scour the world for
professionals BECAUSE WE CANNOT FIND ENOUGH AMERICANS WELL
ENOUGH EDUCATED TO HANDLE IT.
And you say schools excel ? Maybe to an ostrich with the head
buried in the sand.
> Going back to your earlier assertion, we might well ask: Which countries do you believe
> outperform the U.S.? Demonstrate a correlation between international ranking and percent
> of elementary teachers with advanced degrees. That's what a social scientist would mean
> by "evidence," though of course your assertion counts for all it is worth.
That correlation is irrelevant, this isn't about statistics.
Just look around you, my high tech world is chock full of
Chinese and Indian professionals, I look at any new neighborhood
around me and that's all the kind of people I see moving in, my
grad school classes at my college are between 75% and 100% made
up by Chinese students.
THAT, to me, is evidence. Your social scientist does not live in
my world, he, or she, will not be able even to ask the right
questions, because they don't know what to ask. Your social
scientist's "evidence" is, to me, irrelevant and even, to an
extent, unprofessional. The kind of evidence I need, the
evidence that shows me what schools are doing and how they're
performing, is to be found inside the professions themselves,
and is quite out of reach to social scientists. That need is to
be assessed by engineers, scientists, doctors, geologists,
statisticians, computer specialists, musicians, artists, and
other subject matter specialists.
The rest, friend, is fantasy.
> The U.S. has populated the ranks of teaching with low barriers to entry -- a technical
> term with which you are perhaps unfamiliar. A non-example of "low barrier to entry" might
> be the WNBA: here the bar to get into the jobs is set very high, with corresponding very
> high remuneration.
The bar to teaching is so low that just about anyone with half a
degree can get in. If you want to talk about high bars, go look
at medicine, for example: it takes going to school for as long
as a Ph.D. does before one is even allow to become a resident,
let alone a doctor.
> Calls to "raise the bar" for teachers, without demands to jack up the rewards, are empty.
> And as I predicted, quickly become teacher-bashing: note the smug "If only people wanted
> to be better, they would be" closing line.
And the result is obvious, the country gets what the country
pays for. So much for your "excellent" schools.
> Clearly the best thing for those who advocate such an approach would be to quickly get
> hold of an elementary certificate (a "low bar" indeed, only a calendar year in my state)
> and get thee to an elementary classroom. Perhaps, through video conferencing and
> "explaining to the class", the wonders of set theory will become quickly apparent to the
> seven year olds.
Given that the math we teach them today is an utter waste of
time, yes I'd even be willing to try something different. And
ah, leave the video conferencing out, use the money to lower the
student-to-teach ratio.
> The only barrier is your willpower, Alberto. On your way, you might pick up a few of your
> collegues -- at least the ones with willpower -- and set them to work in, say, a
> seventh-grade classroom.
It is done routinely in quality private schools around the
world. Quality teaching, I mean. No news here.
> I'd give them three days, average, with a high of ten and low of 25 minutes.
You know, my teachers managed. But you know what, that's
anecdote for you. You'd rather have your self-fulfilling
"research", eh ?
Alberto.
Herman Rubin
>> I have been teaching longer than Alberto, and while there
>> is explanation and clarification to be done (I find few
>> books even remotely clear, or containing the concepts),
>> the real problems are for the individual to learn.
>> Moreover, questions asked by the students are likely to
>> contribute more than straight lecturing. I am unwilling
>> to have more than 50 minute classes (75 minute or more are
>> quite popular with many of my colleagues), as that is too
>> long at one time. I have expressed this about "block
>> scheduling"; I feel it is a poor way to learn any material
>> other than routine.
>But the process of learning at the collegiate level has so little to do with
>learning in the elementary and middle schools. This is what those who do not
>do this work cannot understand. They confuse how they "feel" (not a feeling,
>actually, but a opinion; this is a distinction made with growth in what
>intelligence theorists call the Personal Intelligences, sometimes separated
>into intelligence about self, and intelligence about others) with an actual
>argument.
My children learned this way in elementary school, as did
most of the children before the current educationists got
into the act. Possibly this is a cause of the inability
of today's college students to understand. Young children
CAN learn concepts; it seems much harder later. Why?
Could it be that the teachers have destroyed their mental
capacities, and want everyone else to be as incapable as
they are?
Educational psychology is driven largely by the misuse of
statistics. If you think that things are normally
distributed, go to the foot of the class. Approximately
MAY be correct, but that is not the same.
...............
>The child reasons, of course. But in ways different from adults -- which is
>what I said. If anyone believes that children "think and reason as we do" then
>they have no business working with young people, or advising those who do.
The child reasons in ways much closer to the ones Alberto
and I use than the ones which those who could not easily
understand the new math use.
>For example:
> with Piaget and Inkelder's conservation tasks involving two balls or
> lumps of clay, there seems to be a systematic three-step sequence: 1)
> conservation of the amount of clay (Is more clay in one of the balls,
> even though they are different shapes, or do they both have the same
> amount of clay?), 2) conservation of the weight of clay (Does one of
> the balls weigh more?), and 3) conservation of the volume of clay
> (Does one of the balls displace more water?).
> [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
>or, more telling,
> in pretend play the understanding of concrete social roles, such as
> that of a doctor interacting with a patient, emerges at a certain
> point in a developmental sequence...
> [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
>In the report I quote, published by the National Academy of Sciences, thinking
>about social roles becomes more complex with development, in fairly typical
>stages and sequences.
How about giving them the abstract concepts to consider, in
precise terms, the consequences of their actions?
One cannot think intelligently about even rationalized social
interactions without thinking about individual utility; this
we understand, and we also know that there is no method which
is consistent with itself to obtain social decisions from those
of the individual.
> It is not that adults "allow" or disallow children to think and reason like
>adults; rather, children think and reason like children, in particular ways,
>regardless of how adults might prefer them to think and reason.
They reason like adults who use a logical approach to thinking,
not one indoctrinated by those who put socialization above
learning what the physical laws of the universe allow.
Understanding
>how children think and reason is a precursor to successful teaching -- that
>prior knowlege must be activated, that multiple intelligences must be engaged,
>that concepts must be illustrated with examples and non-examples, etc.
And those who do not have precise concepts will be unable to
even recognize that children can form them.
..............
>> Should those who can teach it consider taking a junior
>> position among those who cannot reach it?
>Well, the proof's in the pudding. The set of "those who can teach it" is not
>the set of "those who have degrees and opinions about teaching it". So far
>you're conflating the two. The first set is defined through action, the second
>through teacher-bashing in chat groups.
The present teachers cannot teach precise concepts; they have
adequately demonstrated it. Those they put out cannot learn
them later, except for the few who have managed to reject
the "methods" used in the schools.
The person who cannot understand the axiomatic development
of the integers, and the cardinal and ordinal concepts,
even at the low level of the original "new math" materials,
is not going to help a child get there. The person who
does not understand grammatical structure of language, and
how to use it to facilitate understanding, is not going to
help a child learn to use language well. We have papers in
scientific journals about children being able to use
grammatical concepts early; why are the schools not teaching
them to do so more efficiently?
Do you really expect those who can teach the concepts
efficiently to be willing to work under those who cannot
even understand them? And there are not enough to teach
all, and it will take at least a generation to replace
those who cannot understand. It will speed things up if
those who can understand easily are removed from the
present teachers and allowed to really learn.
Herman Rubin
Donna Metler <dmme...@bellsouth.net> wrote:
>Alberto Moreira wrote:
>> Donna Metler wrote:
>> > Two different kinds of teaching-not of teachers. Many teachers can be successful at
>> > teaching both. In fact, unless the teachers work exceptionally close together (as the
>> > team teachers do at my school), there are definite disadvantages to departmentalization
>> > in primary, because so much of the child's achievement in other areas is directly related
>> > to reading-yes, even in Math and Science.
>> But not even close. First, a child that gets to elementary
>> school without knowing how to read is already on a half-remedial
>> track. Second, the skill required to learn math has little if
>> anything to do with reading or even verbalization, it's an
>> abstract skill that's orthogonal to others. But then, if the
>> teacher only knows how to teach phonics or whole language, of
>> course the math won't come out.
>Since when? Reading is a developmental skill, and not all children have learned to compile the
>parts into a whole by age 5. Now, can all children, with enough parental attention, learn how
>to decode text? Yes. This is not reading.
I doubt this. The individual differences are too great; we did
not manage to get our daughter to do this reasonably well until
close to 6. But she had no difficulty in reading after decoding
was mastered.
>In addition, mathematics for a young child has a great deal to do with verbalization-on paper
>and in speech. UNTIL A CHILD CAN VERBALIZE A CONCEPT HE/SHE DOES NOT, IN ALMOST ALL SITUATIONS,
>HAVE THE MASTERY OF THE CONCEPT NECESSARY TO USE IT!!!!
This is false. My son was doing strong mathematics at age 6; he
could not verbalize well even MUCH later. It is possible to be
able to do strong abstract mathematics and not be able to verbalize
the concepts.
In fact, throughout history mathematical concepts have been used
by those who could not verbalize them. Euclid would have had no
problem in using the verbalized Peano Postulates, but he could
not come up with a formalization of the integers. Newton and
Euler could not verbalize the concept of limit, but they had to
use it; in fact, Archimedes used it well, and would have come up
with a verbalization if he could. We have much more of this.
................
>Which is why it is important to teach material on the child's level-not waste time attempting
>to teach higher-level skills when the lower level ones are not mastered.
Concepts, not skills. The skills are secondary. Mathematicians
have little difficulty in teaching children what the teachers seem
unable to learn, because they teach it as abstract mathematics.
.................
>Oh, and by the way, this is a very interesting statement coming from someone who's view on
>learning styles and learning differences is "Change it and do it my way, because I know more
>than you do." You are hardly the poster child for individualization.
I change teaching styles on the spot. I do not know how I
understand a concept, but I have a good idea of when I do,
and having mastery of the relevant skills does not satisfy
me that I do. There is a big difference between having the
skills, being able to prove the theorems, and understanding
the concepts. Even in modern times, we have needed centuries
before important mathematical concepts are understood; when
this happens, they can be taught to those with open minds.
>> Repeat with me: the mathematical skill that must be developed -
>> at any age - is orthogonal to just about everything else in
>> human experience.
>> Young or old, the issue is the same: math is math, math ain't
>> reading or music or anything else.
>But, math is interrelated to every other subject-as is music, as is reading
No, math can be applied to every other subject.
..............
Thomas Nixon
>
> Especially, I believe, Alberto wants to get away from the idea
> that you don't need to know _mathematics_ very well in order to
> teach it. I won't guess how many "disciplines" Alberto thinks should
> be taught in first and second grades, but I really doubt it's as
> many as twelve.
1. Writing
2. Reading
3. Spelling
4. Oral Language
5. Health
6. Social Studies
7. Music
8. Art
9. P.E.
10. Science
11. English Language Development (ELD)
12. Math
I have to teach and give grades in the above 12 subjects. These are twelve
quite different subjects. Should they all have their own subject area teacher?
Tom
Alberto Moreira
> But the process of learning at the collegiate level has so little to do with
> learning in the elementary and middle schools.
Absolutely not. It's the same thing, only the scale changes. But
of course, if that's what the teacher believes, that's what
going to happen.
> This is what those who do not
> do this work cannot understand. They confuse how they "feel" (not a feeling,
> actually, but a opinion; this is a distinction made with growth in what
> intelligence theorists call the Personal Intelligences, sometimes separated
> into intelligence about self, and intelligence about others) with an actual
> argument.
That feel is all there is. There is no science here except the
individual observation of an individual, and the action at the
individual level to handle an individual.
> Not at all what I said. Why distort what I am saying? Read it again: "the
> notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with little folks."
But that contradicts every single case I've handled during my
life. I have taught at all levels, I am the parent of two
successful young women now in advanced Ph.D. tracks, I myself
have been taught in a discipline-centered environment that would
make most contemporary educationists cringe, and I never seen
anything else work. In fact, when I was a kid I made all my
pocket money from remedial teaching, and I got used enough to
straighten out the mistakes my very teachers made when trying to
handle their weakest students - I got in the habit of fixing
their mistakes.
>The
> concept of a discrete field of inquiry, governed by rules which demarcate it
> from other fields, does not fit a seven-year-old who is trying to make sense of
> the world.
The concept of "discrete field", "inquiry", "rules",
"demarcation", is not only foreign to kids, it should be foreign
to a lot of us. That's not the way knowledge is acquired,
neither is it the way we want to teach them. Learning about the
world is a pattern matching thing that mixes observation with
formal reasoning with abstraction with intuition, and these
things come in different doses as we get older. Seven year olds
aren't "trying to make sense of the world" - they're not that
wrapped into their own ghosts as yet, they rather live in the
world and let the world permeate through them: things at that
stage are easy and intuitive. It is US who make it into
nonsensical labels such as "inquiry" and others.
> Here the science of human development simply goes unaddressed -- decades of
> research about how young people learn obliterated by those who do not do this
> work, yet are experts on it.
I am sorry but I do not believe in this kind of research. Every
individual is different and learns differently. Furthermore,
research about learning discipline X cannot come but from
discipline X - for example, I strongly doubt that anyone but a
musician has a clue about how kids learn music or how to teach
music to kids, and I will hear to my wife's anecdotes at any
time - she's a public school music teacher, specialized in young
children - than to all the mass of educationese "research" on
the subject.
> The child reasons, of course. But in ways different from adults -- which is
> what I said. If anyone believes that children "think and reason as we do" then
> they have no business working with young people, or advising those who do.
But learning isn't about reasoning, it's about things well
deeper and more intuitive than reasoning. We don't need any kind
of reasoning to teach them a whole lot of stuff, mathematics and
science included.
> For example:
>
> with Piaget and Inkelder's conservation tasks involving two balls or
> lumps of clay, there seems to be a systematic three-step sequence: 1)
> conservation of the amount of clay (Is more clay in one of the balls,
> even though they are different shapes, or do they both have the same
> amount of clay?), 2) conservation of the weight of clay (Does one of
> the balls weigh more?), and 3) conservation of the volume of clay
> (Does one of the balls displace more water?).
> [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
Please tell me what's the intellectual relevance of knowing
whether there's more clay here or there. Please tell me the
intellectual relevance of such things as the conservation of
weight or volume. Please tell me where this ridiculous notion of
"conservation" of weight or volume got into any kind of serious
discourse - you know it took me to get to the age of Fifty Five,
having gone to a strict and intense science and mathematics
training, a whole life of teaching math and science, to find
someone seriously proposing "conservation" of weight or volume
as a serious science concept.
And who cares about whether this or that ball displaces more
water anyway ? The time will come when they will learn it the
right way - THE RIGHT WAY, mind you - in the context of physics
where it belongs.
So, this whole thing is so outrageously artificial already, that
it bears little if any relationship with reality. And you want
me to take it seriously ?
> or, more telling,
>
> in pretend play the understanding of concrete social roles, such as
> that of a doctor interacting with a patient, emerges at a certain
> point in a developmental sequence...
> [http://books.nap.edu/books/0309034787/html/72.html#pagetop]
>
> In the report I quote, published by the National Academy of Sciences, thinking
> about social roles becomes more complex with development, in fairly typical
> stages and sequences.
Thinking becomes more complex with learning, not necessarily
with age. If you doubt it, go back to my native Brazil and live
for a few years among people who are isolated enough to not have
contact with our modern civilization: your typical Brazilian
indian, for example, thinks and acts like a child or sometimes
like an animal, the only additional sophistication exists when
their brains have been exposed, by need and life, to additional
experiences.
But that's irrelevant in learning, because I can think of no
stage in schooling where one's banging against the walls of
someone's brain capacity, except of course with people who are
not in full health. So, who cares about this kind of research
anyway ?
> It is not that adults "allow" or disallow children to think and reason like
> adults; rather, children think and reason like children, in particular ways,
> regardless of how adults might prefer them to think and reason. Understanding
> how children think and reason is a precursor to successful teaching -- that
> prior knowlege must be activated, that multiple intelligences must be engaged,
> that concepts must be illustrated with examples and non-examples, etc.
Children and adult think in remarkably similar ways, the
difference is mostly exposure and accumulated experience. In
fact, children can often be much quicker than adults, and if
anything, the bias is reverse: they're better at it than we are,
and the limitations, if any, are to be found in us, not in them.
Each individual, however, is different, and what it takes is to
KNOW THE INDIVIDUAL.
As to multiple intelligences, that is as strong a handicap as I
can see. KNOWLEDGE COMES AS KNOWLEDGE COMES, and if your
"intelligence" can't match the way it comes, you're not going to
conquer it. But reality is, these things can be learned too; yet
most teachers will totally neglect this very important aspect of
learning.
And, again, CONCEPT IS IRRELEVANT - because concept is often
little more than definition or social convention, and those
things spring from being able to thing anyway. So teach them how
to think musically, how to think artistically, how to think
mathematically: the rest comes.
> These basics of human development are known by first semester teaching
> candidates everywhere. Those who care about young people learning, but frankly
> have no idea what they're talking about, might muster up the "willpower" to
> learn. You could start here, for example:
>
> How People Learn: Brain, Mind, Experience, and School: Expanded Edition
>
> Committee on Developments in the Science of Learning with
> additional
> material from the Committee on Learning Research and
> Educational
> Practice, National Research Council
> http://www.nap.edu/books/0309070368/html/
I'm sorry, I see little credibility in that kind of writing. My
experience as a father and a teacher points me to a very
different direction. Do you want to learn how to teach ? You
can't. What you can is to learn how to teach THAT ONE
INDIVIDUAL, and you must do it one by one, six billion times if
needs be. THERE IS NO OTHER WAY, and anyone who says otherwise
is fantasizing.
> Petulance does not become you, Herman. Have at least a modicum of respect, for
> yourself if no one else -- you can't simply wish away what other people know.
> You can't "translate" an idea you disagree with into an idea which is obviously
> false.
Herman is right, there's little if any credibility from that
side. The idea that's obviously false is that the kind of
research that is being done sheds any real light on teaching and
learning, and the idea that scientific models can be
instantiated by fiat and be allowed to go unchecked against the
reality of life.
> What I'm saying is that if you want to raise the bar, you have to raise the
> reward. Anything less is teacher-bashing, a fine sport for the gentry but
> hardly effective.
That's one of the few things I agree with you on. But raising
the bar means uprooting the power structure, and dumping our
concept of education altogether. The day I see math taught by
math majors, physics by physicists, history by historians - and
I don't care at what age - then I can start believing.
> Well, the proof's in the pudding. The set of "those who can teach it" is not
> the set of "those who have degrees and opinions about teaching it". So far
> you're conflating the two. The first set is defined through action, the second
> through teacher-bashing in chat groups.
Teacher bashing or not, the current results of the public system
aren't encouraging. To say otherwise is ostrich talk.
Alberto.
Alberto Moreira
> Put up or shut up, Alberto. Math and science are shortage areas. You could get a teaching
> position in almost any school district around the country. In fact, to go to another area
> of your claimed expertise, I will happily write you a letter of introduction to the
> elementary music coordinator of my district-we have had a vacant 1/2 time position at my
> school all year, because of a lack of personnel.
Math and science aren't shortage areas, what's a shortage area
is how the system deals with those areas.
But pay my hourly wage, and I'll consider it. Get out of my way,
and I'll consider it. Give me the power to establish my own
curriculum, and I'll consider it. Give me the authority to
reject political correcness, and I'll consider it. Give me the
ability to flunk those who can't or won't make it, and I'll
consider it. Give me the freedom to choose my own textbooks, and
I'll do it.
Except for the hourly wage, I have all of that and more at my
current teaching assignment. Why should I bother to look
elsewhere ?
As it stands, however, teaching elementary or even high school
is a game with marked cards. If I ever teach at that level, I'm
either going to a private school or I'm going to set up my own
school.
The bottomline is this: the current classroom system is not
adequate. The interference of political power into educational
matters is not adequate. The pay scales in the profession are
not adequate. The curriculum is not adequate. The hours are
excessive. The demand is lacking. Commitment is weak. Discipline
is inexistent.
Nothing to do with education, eh ? It's all about the system.
> Of course, you'd lose money, but if you are really so determined that your way is the only
> way, by all means, don't let that stop you.
I guarantee you that if I do it my way I'm not going to lose
money. But what would happen is, only the best would get
through. Because, you see, I don't see education as a right but
as a privilege: you must EARN your education, or so I do
believe.
> In fact, maybe you and Herman can start your own program-IIRC, Indiana has charter schools,
> as do most other states, and anyone can start a private school. Hire only subject matter
> expert teachers. Take the same cross section of kids that the public schools do-but regroup
> them as you see fit.
Here's the first problem. No, I would not. I would do what any
sensible music teacher does: select my students carefully.
> We'll compare your students with the more traditional students at the
> end of 6th grade, using the same standardized assessments-IN ALL SUBJECT AREAS. In about
> 10 years, when your kindergarteners are in high school, we'll compare the data-raw scores,
> no value added assessment. I would be very interested in the results.
You can take my students TODAY, for one thing. I do teach a wide
cross section of the course: three out of the four required core
courses, and four more beyond that. A student of mine can take
seven out of twelve required courses with me. And my students go
places, just go ask them, my classrooms are full, and students
doing the same courses with other teachers sneak into my
classroom to take my classes. The two young charges I had in my
life are also delivered: my kids are going places too.
So, am I a bad teacher ? You can't say that. Would I not be able
to handle elementary of middle education ? You can't say that,
in fact, I did so much remediation in the past that I could
count a sizable number of HS kids who owe their diplomas to my
teaching. But yes, if you set everything up for failure, it's
going to be hard to get anyone to succeed; and if you restrict
the individual's freedom so much that he, or she, can't do
anything to change it, yes, it's going to fail. But if you then
hide behind that and go with the flow, and refuse to teach but
adhere, you're no longer a mere victim of the system, you're one
of its cogs. And that, I believe I would never do.
Alberto.
jo...@news.jlc.net
> Michael Connor wrote:
>
>> But the process of learning at the collegiate level has so little to do
>> with learning in the elementary and middle schools.
>
> Absolutely not. It's the same thing, only the scale changes.
The "process of learning" in both cases is something the student does.
And Alberto is largely right -- what the student does in learning similar
material is similar. Of course, the material the student is expected to
learn isn't similar; thus the confusion...
>> "the notion of "discipline" does not lend itself to working with little
>> folks."
I think Michael is confusing the meanings of "discipline" The one
Alberto is using has nothing to do with maintaining order in the class.
> I myself have been taught in a discipline-centered environment that
> would make most contemporary educationists cringe, and I never seen
> anything else work.
Alberto does _not_ mean that his teachers ran a tight ship -- though
I'm sure they did. He means that the material covered was of a kind,
and held together well if you followed the order within it.
>> The concept of a discrete field of inquiry, governed by rules which
>> demarcate it from other fields,
Alberto doesn't mean that, either, though it's closer...
>> does not fit a seven-year-old who is trying to make sense of the
>> world.
> The concept of "discrete field", "inquiry", "rules", "demarcation",
> is not only foreign to kids, it should be foreign to a lot of us.
> That's not the way knowledge is acquired, neither is it the way we
> want to teach them.
Note: Alberto's "disciplines" are not "discrete fields"; one does
not approach them by "inquiry"; they cannot be circumscribed by "rules";
and there is no "demarcation" from other fields.
> Learning about the world is a pattern matching thing that mixes
> observation with formal reasoning with abstraction with intuition,
Alberto's "learning" is not easily described. Be patient, follow
him over several posts, and try out "formal reasoning", "abstraction",
and "intuition"; then you'll start to understand him.
> and these things come in different doses as we get older.
To Alberto, all these things are present from pre-school to college.
> Seven year olds aren't "trying to make sense of the world" - they're
> not that wrapped into their own ghosts as yet, they rather live in the
> world and let the world permeate through them: things at that stage
> are easy and intuitive.
"Intuitive" plays a larger role than the others at age seven.
>> The child reasons, of course. But in ways different from adults --
>> which is what I said. If anyone believes that children "think and
>> reason as we do" then they have no business working with young people,
>> or advising those who do.
>
> But learning isn't about reasoning, it's about things well deeper and
> more intuitive than reasoning.
Learning _to_ reason well is an important kind of learning. And
reasoning _is_ a part of learning. I think Alberto means that reasoning
is not the measure of learning -- that learning is akin to training the
brain to use certain approaches, not about "reasoning" in order to
choose an approach
> We don't need any kind of reasoning to teach them a whole lot of stuff,
> mathematics and science included.
Alberto is losing me here...
>> It is not that adults "allow" or disallow children to think and reason
>> like adults; rather, children think and reason like children, in
>> particular ways, regardless of how adults might prefer them to think
>> and reason.
Quite false. Children unquestionably set out to mimic how adults
thing and reason, even though they understand this poorly.
>> Understanding how children think and reason is a precursor to
>> successful teaching -- that prior knowlege must be activated, that
>> multiple intelligences must be engaged, that concepts must be
>> illustrated with examples and non-examples, etc.
Michael sounds like either a new teacher or an administrator. :^(
> Children and adult think in remarkably similar ways, the difference
> is mostly exposure and accumulated experience.
I agree with Alberto here. The difference is far smaller than adults
choose to observe it to be. The chief difference is that children will
try out and discard ideas faster than adults will.
> In fact, children can often be much quicker than adults,
Exactly!
> and if anything, the bias is reverse: they're better at it than we
> are, and the limitations, if any, are to be found in us, not in them.
I don't know how many teachers can accept that; but, IMHO, the more
you accept that your students will sometimes run circles around you,
the more effective you will be. "By your students, you'll be taught."
> Each individual, however, is different, and what it takes is to
> KNOW THE INDIVIDUAL.
I won't claim to "know" the individual; but I always make an effort
in that direction. However, I believe that the final responsibility to
"know the student" belongs to the individual student.
--
John Leslie <jo...@jlc.net>
John Leslie
>> to compile the parts into a whole by age 5. Now, can all children,
>> with enough parental attention, learn how to decode text? Yes. This
>> is not reading.
>
> Reading is an INTELLECTUAL skill. It is LEARNED. It does NOT come as
> a result of natural development.
Let us not forget that in many places at various times, reading has
been a _rare_ skill.
> And reading has little if anything with "decoding" text, the very
> act of seeing "decoding" as a part of reading denotes a deep
> misunderstanding of the process as it applies globally.
"Decoding" is a dreadful word. There is pattern recognition, at
a sub-subconscious level; and there is grouping of letters, which
may deserve to be called a subconscious process.
What gets us into the erroneous title of "decoding" is how to
approach an unknown word. The phonics crowd believes that the best
approach is relating it to sound, and presumably matching that sound
to things the student has heard. Thus they teach "phonetic decoding",
which admittedly is helpful to many students.
But this is not part of reading -- it's just what you do when
you stumble upon an unfamiliar word.
> Reading in fact is a lot more about being able to encode than it is
> about being able to decode: I don't read well because I can decode
> B-O-D-Y, body, but because I can think of "body" in the abstract and
> automatically encode it into the four letters B-O-D-Y - and only
> then I can read B-O-D-Y and convert it to body.
A genuinely interesting idea!
> The process of reading isn't at all a decoding one, it's much more
> basic than that, it relies on a partial pattern matching that uses
> synthesis first, then decomposition; and while at first a kid needs
> to do the decomposition in order to read, as maturity settles in and
> the kid gets more used to language and representation, the analytical,
> decomposition phase, is either totally dropped outright or occurs in
> such a low plane that is not perceived as taking place.
I'm not sure I follow Alberto here...
> Have you ever taught anyone to read music ? It isn't about
> decomposition or decoding, not at all, it's about pattern matching.
> It's about converting notation to sound inside one's mind.
I'd say that in reading music, you start by recognizing a particular
note, and progress to recognizing patterns of multiple notes after
the recognition of (at least some) individual notes becomes subconscious.
(I cite as evidence that singers are notoriously poorer at reading music
than instrumentalists.)
> Well, reading text is the same thing, it's about the conversion of
> notation to abstraction. And that can be taught to children very early
> on.
Many children seem to learn it effortlessly, so long as there's an
adult who seems to care.
>> In addition, mathematics for a young child has a great deal to do
>> with verbalization-on paper and in speech. UNTIL A CHILD CAN
>> VERBALIZE A CONCEPT HE/SHE DOES NOT, IN ALMOST ALL SITUATIONS,
>> HAVE THE MASTERY OF THE CONCEPT NECESSARY TO USE IT!!!!
>
> No.
Alberto is too kind.
> First, learning math isn't about mastering concepts nor is it about
> being able to use them: it's about being able to think mathematically.
> Second, this mathematical thought often cannot be verbalized, it's
> too abstract. Third, a lot of kids can do things before they can
> verbalize them.
Most teachers are used to communicating with their students verbally.
Thus the _teacher_ cannot measure the mastery until the child can
verbalize the concepts. Verbalizing the concepts is probably even a
useful skill. But it leads to confusing the concepts with the
verbalization, which can be fatal to actual understanding.
Thus, when I need to evaluate a student's understanding, I _never_
give them feedback during their verbalization. I wait for it to be
complete, then explore it a little. This is time-consuming, and annoys
the student; so I try not to do it too often...
> Again, teaching the concept is not very relevant, neither teaching
> its use.
There _are_ important concepts. And most of them will need to be
taught. But the _verbalized_ concept is, indeed, not very relevant.
> What's important is to make the kid able to think mathematically,
> and that does not depend neither on concept nor on usage, even less
> on verbalization.
I'll have to disagree with Alberto on part of this. Without a stock
of mathematical concepts, it is not possible to think mathematically.
Trained usage of mathematical concepts may or may not be helpful.
Verbalization of mathematical concepts is downright dangerous.
>> Mathematics has a specific oral and written language.
Not so. There is _no_ oral language of mathematics; and written
languages of mathematics are often peculiar to the person writing.
>> For students who do not yet have a firm grasp of their verbal
>> language-which is innate, learning a non-innate language is very
>> difficult,
Not so. Communicating in a non-innate language is what is difficult.
It is not inherently any harder; it's just that children are less
likely to find somebody interested in communicating such ideas.
>> and tends to exist at the recall level only-not on the levels of
>> comprehension, application, evaluation, or synthesis.
Not so. Children think in non-communicable languages long before
they learn the language of the land; and this includes application,
evaluation, and synthesis.
> The language is just an expression of mathematics, it is, by itself,
> *not* mathematics.
Nor mathematical thinking.
> One of the toughest things I have to do to my students, for example,
> is to convince them that language is an attribution of the user:
> I use the language I need, when I need it, as I need it. It's the
> thought process behind the language that's important, and the
> abstrusiveness of mathematical language only reflects the toughness
> and alienness of the thought processes that it hides.
I don't quite agree with this last part. The abstruseivness reflects
the _difference_ in thought process of the writer from that of the
reader. Sometimes there's a toughness of the thought process, but more
often the thought process is quite simple, if you just one encompass
it.
> Mathematics, in its essence, is a thought process: just like music
> is about sound, mathematics is about abstraction, and abstraction
> may require us to abstract even from its very language.
Especially, to abstract from the written language.
> If I can think mathematically, the language will come easily; but
> if I can't think mathematically, it may be impossible to learn the
> language.
The langage is senseless noise unless you think mathematically.
--
John Leslie <jo...@jlc.net>
Alberto Moreira
> Learning _to_ reason well is an important kind of learning. And
> reasoning _is_ a part of learning. I think Alberto means that reasoning
> is not the measure of learning -- that learning is akin to training the
> brain to use certain approaches, not about "reasoning" in order to
> choose an approach
>
> > We don't need any kind of reasoning to teach them a whole lot of stuff,
> > mathematics and science included.
>
> Alberto is losing me here...
I believe in intuition, and in pattern matching, and both
mechanisms, as I see it, transcend reasoning. Much math or
computer science learning, to me at least, consists in shoring
up one's pattern collection, from which new conclusions spring -
not from reasoning, but from pattern matching.
For example, Bob Le Chevalier and Herman were debating about the
derivation of the quadratic formula, and whether or not it will
"stick" accross twenty of thirty years of not doing math. My
view is that the derivation is mechanical, provided we hit the
fundamental ideas. But we often get to those fundamental ideas
through ways that are beyond the reach of reasoning. And these
ideas sometimes come from our familiarity with similar ideas and
similar proofs.
The first idea behind the derivation of the quadratic formula is
to convert ax^2+bx+c into something like (mx+n)^2=p, where m, n
and p are constants; if we can do that, we can easily solve for
x. The next idea is to add and/or multiply the right factor to
both sides of ax^2+bx+c=0 and manipulate it into the right
shape. So, a little bit of lateral thinking leads us to the idea
of multiplying the equation by 4a, then adding b^2 to both
sides. Thus, we mechanically get that 4a^2x^2+4abx+4ac=0, then
we munge it into 4a^2x^2+4abx+b^2-b^2+4ac=0, and now it's all
downstream manipulation: (2ax+b)^2=b^2-4ac, and hence m=2a, n=b
and p=b^2-4ac, and we get the quadratic equation solving for x.
You see, once someone learns math this way, it does indeed stick
for life, although our manipulation ability can get very rusty
at times. To me at least it is rather obvious, by looking at
someone's test paper, whether he or she is rusty or doesn't know
the stuff!
Manipulation follows reasoning, but manipulation here, and
reasoning, is of secondary importance. The "leitmotiv" ideas
spring from intuition and heuristics, not from reasoning. This
happens over and again when I give a problem to my students that
requires a proof, many of them can do it very well thank you -
provided I bridge over the intuitive and heuristic issues. That
is, if I give them that hint, that tip, then it's all
downstream: because it's about reasoning, and to someone with
the right amount of technique, reasoning comes easy. The hard
part isn't to manipulate logic down to where we want to get, the
hard path is to find the lead ideas that enable us to apply
logic to it.
Alberto.
Alberto Moreira
>
> Alberto Moreira <alb...@moreira.mv.com> wrote:
> > The process of reading isn't at all a decoding one, it's much more
> > basic than that, it relies on a partial pattern matching that uses
> > synthesis first, then decomposition; and while at first a kid needs
> > to do the decomposition in order to read, as maturity settles in and
> > the kid gets more used to language and representation, the analytical,
> > decomposition phase, is either totally dropped outright or occurs in
> > such a low plane that is not perceived as taking place.
>
> I'm not sure I follow Alberto here...
Take the word "decomposition". A competent reader doesn't decode
it. One sees the "d", "e", "c", the "m", and maybe the "i" "o"
"n" at the end, and pattern matches: "decomposition" comes out
because it's the fist pattern match, it's like we have these
things Huffman-encoded in our pattern-matching organ. We keep on
reading; if the word matches the context, we go on. If not, we
get an interface check, "wait a moment, what was that again ? "
and then we use phonics to decode it. It actually gets worse:
when we read a foreign language, sometimes we totally skip words
or even sets of words, because we don't know what they mean, and
pick their meaning from the global pattern of the phrase, or we
just understand the phrase and chuck the meaning of that word,
who cares ? Occasionally we get surprised by the fact that no,
that word was after all necessary to a full understanding of the
sentence, but we often get away with that kind of thing.
Let me tell you of an interesting one. There's a concept in
computer logic in which we call a function "combinational".
However, to a Latin speaker like me, that word is absurd, and
the correct word would spell "combinatorial", even though in
computer science one could argue that the two words mean
different things. To make things worse, a few authors use
"combinatorial" even when they mean "combinational". So here I
am, doing Ph.D. level courses, and talking to my professor, and
I say "combinatorial" to something that should be
"combinational". He corrects me, "it's COMBINATIONAL, Alberto"
and I say, "no, it isn't". Well, he makes me spell it, and
indeed it is "combinational" and not "combinatorial", and this
was, honest, the very first time in my life that I read that
word correctly; all the books I had read in the past I read
"combinatorial" even when it was written "combinational",
BECAUSE I NEVER EVER STOPPED TO DECODE THE WORD CHARACTER BY
CHARACTER OR SYLLABLE BY SYLLABLE. Worse, the difference in
meaning wasn't that great that the embedded context ever made me
stop and reread the word slowly.
And that's the way I see a lot of fast readers read, people
don't stop to decode unless it's necessary.
Alberto.
Joni J Rathbun
This is considered one of the traits of an efficient
reader of course. When teachers discuss metacognition, they're
talking about things like this. Most of us never need to be
taught to do these things. We do them automatically and
unconsciously. Some children, however, actually need to be
taught these particular skills.
Michael Connor
> Take the word "decomposition". A competent reader doesn't decode
> it. One sees the "d", "e", "c", the "m", and maybe the "i" "o"
> "n" at the end, and pattern matches: "decomposition" comes out
> because it's the fist pattern match, it's like we have these
> things Huffman-encoded in our pattern-matching organ. We keep on
> reading; if the word matches the context, we go on. If not, we
> get an interface check, "wait a moment, what was that again ? "
> and then we use phonics to decode it.
Or we use knowlege of roots and prefixes to hazard a guess, which we check
with context: "compose" = puts together; "composition" is a piece of writing
or music; "de-" can mean to do the opposite (defrost, decentralize) or to do
completely (despoil) so we have to check context; "decompose" is its own
word, possibly known to the reader; "-tion" is a suffix added to verbs to
make nouns. A constellation of meanings available if the reader can break
apart a word into meaningful bits.
Of course, you're right about strategies you've mentioned. Your example
below about foriegn languages, of course, shows the inadequacy of simply a
phonics approach, where the goal is pronunciation. Kids' comprehension of
oral language typically runs ahead of their written vocabulary six months or
so; getting to pronounce a word often means the reader will know the word,
because they can say it right. But knowing roots and suffixes helps a kid
with words they don't know, but can "get". A phonics-only strategy doesn't
do much for other languages, though other strategies can help expert readers
actually deal with some of it b/c they don't care how it's pronounced -- just
looking for parts they know.
The trick for the teacher of reading is to help students match strategies for
situations. This is where being an "expert reader" makes things difficult.
As Alberto shows, the pattern matching and strategizing aren't deliberate for
competent readers. We've done it for thousands of hours
> Let me tell you of an interesting one. There's a concept in
> computer logic in which we call a function "combinational".
> However, to a Latin speaker like me, that word is absurd, and
> the correct word would spell "combinatorial", even though in
> computer science one could argue that the two words mean
> different things. To make things worse, a few authors use
> "combinatorial" even when they mean "combinational". So here I
> am, doing Ph.D. level courses, and talking to my professor, and
> I say "combinatorial" to something that should be
> "combinational". He corrects me, "it's COMBINATIONAL, Alberto"
> and I say, "no, it isn't". Well, he makes me spell it, and
> indeed it is "combinational" and not "combinatorial", and this
> was, honest, the very first time in my life that I read that
> word correctly; all the books I had read in the past I read
> "combinatorial" even when it was written "combinational",
> BECAUSE I NEVER EVER STOPPED TO DECODE THE WORD CHARACTER BY
> CHARACTER OR SYLLABLE BY SYLLABLE. Worse, the difference in
> meaning wasn't that great that the embedded context ever made me
> stop and reread the word slowly.
That's a great story.
-- Michael
Alberto Moreira
> Or we use knowlege of roots and prefixes to hazard a guess, which we check
> with context: "compose" = puts together; "composition" is a piece of writing
> or music; "de-" can mean to do the opposite (defrost, decentralize) or to do
> completely (despoil) so we have to check context; "decompose" is its own
> word, possibly known to the reader; "-tion" is a suffix added to verbs to
> make nouns. A constellation of meanings available if the reader can break
> apart a word into meaningful bits.
Except that the previous context pretty much wipes much of those
alternatives out! Reading isn't context free, much the
contrary.
Alberto.
Monsieur et Madame Vieuxbouc
Alberto wrote. However I have to comment on some of his points below.
Alberto Moreira wrote:
> Math and science aren't shortage areas, what's a shortage area
> is how the system deals with those areas.
This is *tap dancing* around the issue. What is lacking is the teachers who are proficient
enough to fill this shortage under the present guidelines of certification. What is acceptable
to society regarding who should be certified and how to obtain this certification is what
society itself perceives as being acceptable in any given era. Society acts within the
establishment of the legislature (politicians whose needs run to one thing: getting reelected
with all the perks that go with the job) and the courts (interpreting the laws according to
whatever political leanings they have). Formerly, there was no shortage because of a
certification process which allowed people to enter as math and science teachers without having
studied extensively in those areas. Because of the outcry over our so-called low scores in
statewide and international testing the process was changed over time to allow only those with a
major in the math and science areas to become certified, thereby limiting the pool of
applicants.
>
>
> But pay my hourly wage, and I'll consider it. Get out of my way,
> and I'll consider it. Give me the power to establish my own
> curriculum, and I'll consider it. Give me the authority to
> reject political correcness, and I'll consider it. Give me the
> ability to flunk those who can't or won't make it, and I'll
> consider it. Give me the freedom to choose my own textbooks, and
> I'll do it.
This is ok, except for the fact that society through legislatures and courts establishes
the rules and right now the rules state otherwise. The problem lies in the current fact that
most state constitutions call for a *thorough and efficient* education for ALL who want it.
They don't specify what this means, therefore we see the battle being taken up in the courts.
The freedom you want is illusory: if a school can't provide this thorough and efficient
education it will not be accepted by the courts. Private and charter schools can only supply
the demands of a small number of students. Someone on this list (who shall remain nameless
except I'm sure he will chime up quickly enough) keeps writing about the million home schoolers
and growing. All well and good, but for the fact that there are countless millions and milions
of students in this country who either have parents who believe in the public good of the public
schools, or else have parents who are unable or unwilling to home school. Regarding the private
schools, they provide for only a small percentage of the total number also, and those which do a
commendable job find it hard to provide for the masses of individuals who have special needs and
special abilities.
It is quite easy to forget those millions of others who require education. You wrote of
individual needs. Well, much to the dismay who disparage the public schools, we who believe in
the public good of education find that under the most dire of circumstances, the schools are
doing a fantastic job of doing the most good for the most numbers.
>
>
> Except for the hourly wage, I have all of that and more at my
> current teaching assignment. Why should I bother to look
> elsewhere ?
Where is it you teach which affords you all this power? And do they allow ALL students to enter
and keep ALL students regardless of their abilities, needs, lack of discipline, and lack of
motivation?
>
>
> The bottomline is this: the current classroom system is not
> adequate. The interference of political power into educational
> matters is not adequate. The pay scales in the profession are
> not adequate. The curriculum is not adequate. The hours are
> excessive. The demand is lacking. Commitment is weak. Discipline
> is inexistent.
>
> Nothing to do with education, eh ? It's all about the system.
Of course it's the system. But who established the system.? NOT the teachers, NOT the
unions, NOT those of us who write on this discussion group. Society established the system.
And society is ruled by the legislatures and the courts according to the winds of society
itself. Republicans constantly harp on the fact that they trust the people while Democrats
don't trust the people. Who are these people? These are mainly people who basically read
only headlines, follow the news media to get their information, watch soaps and Jerry Springer
daily, and know only what is fed to them in 30 second blurbs. This is who elects legislators
who see failing test scores and overlook the population of who is taking these tests- millions
of students who don't get fed or clothed properly, are abused or abandoned, or whose parents are
not around at all. Schools are blamed for everything that goes wrong in society.
It's easy to say: give us the power to establish curriculum, discipline guidelines, and so
on. Suppose private schools started taking over. How long would it be before they, too start
feeling the heat of society for the same reasons?
>
>
> > Of course, you'd lose money, but if you are really so determined that your way is the only
> > way, by all means, don't let that stop you.
>
> I guarantee you that if I do it my way I'm not going to lose
> money. But what would happen is, only the best would get
> through. Because, you see, I don't see education as a right but
> as a privilege: you must EARN your education, or so I do
> believe.
That's where you would get your head bashed in by the same people you would eliminate from
your schools. As soon as you expel or suspend students for breaking your rules, you would find
yourself under the same scrutiny as the public schools are now.
Society has established education as a RIGHT not a privilege. read the constitution of most
states. It's usually called the *thorough and efficient* clause.
>
>
> > In fact, maybe you and Herman can start your own program-IIRC, Indiana has charter schools,
> > as do most other states, and anyone can start a private school. Hire only subject matter
> > expert teachers. Take the same cross section of kids that the public schools do-but regroup
> > them as you see fit.
>
> Here's the first problem. No, I would not. I would do what any
> sensible music teacher does: select my students carefully.
If you establish a private school, yes you could select your students carefully. Eliminate
all those who do not *fit in*. As long as you have a small private school you can do this.
That's where you differ from the bulk of society. Society has established education as a
RIGHT. The students who you reject have to go back to the public schools; the system you
criticize and would reject. But, that's ok. You have your own little world and can afford to
neglect and ignore the rest of the problems we have to deal with. All the while you criticize
and place blame.
Take music as an example. A private music teacher can select only the Mozarts, avoiding the
Sallieris. A music teacher in a public school would have Jerry Garcia, Mick Jagger, Ludwig van
Beethoven, and Marty Weiss in the same room (the latter who can't carry a tune!). I may like
music, may want to study music, but the poor teacher who spends time with me teaching me piano
and theory would have to spend less time with Mozart.
>
>
> > We'll compare your students with the more traditional students at the
> > end of 6th grade, using the same standardized assessments-IN ALL SUBJECT AREAS. In about
> > 10 years, when your kindergarteners are in high school, we'll compare the data-raw scores,
> > no value added assessment. I would be very interested in the results.
>
> You can take my students TODAY, for one thing. I do teach a wide
> cross section of the course: three out of the four required core
> courses, and four more beyond that. A student of mine can take
> seven out of twelve required courses with me. And my students go
> places, just go ask them, my classrooms are full, and students
> doing the same courses with other teachers sneak into my
> classroom to take my classes. The two young charges I had in my
> life are also delivered: my kids are going places too.
>
> So, am I a bad teacher ? You can't say that. Would I not be able
> to handle elementary of middle education ? You can't say that,
> in fact, I did so much remediation in the past that I could
> count a sizable number of HS kids who owe their diplomas to my
> teaching.
It's a lot different remediating kids who want to learn than it is to have a class of 30
where 15 don't want to be there and where 5 or 6 are hardened criminals fresh out of juvenile
lockup and who are there only because the courts say they have to be there. Yet thousands of
public school teachers handle and teach (and REACH) millions of such students daily.
There's the difference between us. You would reject these kids, you just said so above. We
try daily to reach out to them. We don't always succeed, but at least we make the effort!
Marty
****************************************
Marty Weiss mart...@earthlink.net
"You will respect mah a-thor-itay!"
....Cartman
*****************************************
Michael Connor
it. The craft of teaching involves recognizing which strategies your readers
need in order to improve their reading as quickly as possible.
Michael