The Teacher Thread - Page 10

Carmine was a tailor and you are a stylish man. It's in your blood, Ranger.

I did mine with ACT and would recommend them. You put down $650 up-front and pay the rest once you are employed. The classes are not difficult and moderately useful, though I didn't really start learning until I was on the job. The coaching for the two state exams was useful in that they went over a lot of past exams and the thought process of the examiners. Overall, I found the alt cert process a bit of a hassle, but not difficult at all and occasionally enjoyable.

Some teachers with dip eds and ed degrees are a bit snobby towards alt certs - though I have more 'real' degrees, adult education and life experience than most of them, so I can just brush it off.

The thing which surprised me the most in the hiring process was how much the 'other stuff' on a resume counted with many headmasters - whether you have children, are married, military service, church affiliation, club memberships and sporting groups and general indicators of 'character'.

Does anyone here teach Montessori? Ate some point I'd like to do the accreditation or at least look into this further.

My wife, who doesn't teach in classrooms but works with schools on curriculum and families on assessment has had pretty awful experiences with, and things to say about Montessori schools for anything other than normally able kids.

What are her major criticisms?

+1 to this. They aren't that big down here in FL but the ones I've dealt with 3rd hand have been no better, in any way, than regular old public schools and worse in some areas.

I know people who went to a Montessori school. They are rather peculiar individuals, to say the least.

She says that for "gifted" kids there is generally no push to do more, so they don't get everything out of school that the might. For learning disabled kids one of two things happens. On the good side, since anxiety issues are often connected to learning disabilities, the fact that they are let to go at their own speed, in their own "folder" means that they are not subject to a lot of teasing from the other kids. On the bad side, they tend to fall further behind than in other cases, and are allowed to make the same errors over and over, and they don't often find the most efficient method to deal with their differences. For normal kids, she thinks it is fine, but she doesn't deal with normal kids that often. FWIW, I think it is a criticism of the method as practiced, not necessarily as conceived.

Beyond AP and IB programs, I don't feel that there's a lot available (formally) for them in public schools, either. It has nothing to do with the information or resources they have access to, God knows there's enough of that. I think the answer ultimately lies in the competency that teachers, parents and administrators have with differentiated learning- we don't need to keep them in different classes if it's not what they want.

I don't know anything about Canadian schools and teachers, and I don't think that she does either, but her feeling is that American teachers in public schools, at least those in California, know absolutely nothing about education at all, and that administrators aren't much better, for the most part. The teachers tend to know something about teaching, about following a lesson plan, but since they are clueless as to educational theory, informal assessment, brain function etc, and know little in depth information about the subjects they themselves teach, anybody off of the narrow path is likely to get a pretty horrible education.

this was certainly my experience in an hg program. i think our field trips were better than those of the regular school. also it was harder for students in our program to get expelled.

I gave a talk on something similar to this today (if anyone's interested, I can post the link to the prezi I whipped together and some links). There's a big push, here anyway, to modernize. Admin are pushing collaboration time, 'Assessment For Learning', differentiated learning, web 2.0 literacy, open-source learning, critical pedagogy, etc. The only resistance to positive changes on a grand scale are legislators and cuts.

That sounds good. I think, obviously, that there are levels of understanding of any of these subjects. She spent 5 years in grad school learning them, so she has a different understanding than a teacher would, or would even need. Still, what kills her is that there isn't even the first understanding of this stuff in CA schools, so there is no ability to communicate, and since it isn't part of the teachers' knowledge base, they tend to write of differences as complainers and not take them seriously. It just ends up as a huge clusterfuck, and it isn't limited to the "bad" school districts. What is probably necessary is for you guys, teachers, to have more information, better training and better access to people who are experts in related fields. You are right. That takes legislators getting their acts together, and it takes better administrators. It also takes a higher caliber of teacher, better raw material and better priorities. Nobody wants to hear that, because we like to paint teachers like saints. Same with doctors. Problem is, that isn't the case around these parts. Luckily, there are some very good organizations pushing real changes, or at least ideas for real changes, but teachers, unions and administrators all hate those ideas, because it shines the light on the fact that they all suck balls.

How quick was your placement after finishing classes?