Aha! Here we go again!
My last position before my current one was in a high-need school. This school collected students from all over the province who had killed someone, tried to kill someone, or were involved with drugs and prostitution. The purpose of this elementary(!) school was to help the students socialize and re-integrate society so they don't live their entire life as murderers, muggers, drug addicts and so on. My work days began at 4 and ended at 8-9 most of the time. I used the weekends to visit my students' families and help them by teaching simple things like how to manage their budgets so they can afford to have a phone line at home and sometimes more than a single meal a day. So yes, I'm very well aware that families are failing the children in need.
Of course no classroom is alike. If you were really aware of research done in the field (by practitioners or in collaboration with them), you'd realize that the vast majority of researchers in education decry the involvement of the political in the field because it stifles our work, tries to obtain absolute truths that could be applied everywhere and moves policies from a qualitative perspective to a quantitative one. Oddly enough, you seem to have no problem with the systematic grading of students and use of standardized tests. Tests designed by the same researchers of the testing and evaluation industry and policy makers who never stepped into a classroom as teachers.
Also, "I also find this repeated assertion throughout your post that I am a bad educator rather amusing. Mainly because whenever I align my grades with the students' performance on state tests, they tend to correlate rather strongly. More strongly than many of my peers who are engaged in many of the "advances" that you speak of in the field, in fact."
The fact that your grades correlate so well and theirs not is no indicator that you are a good teacher or them bad ones. It signifies that you are good at teaching to the test and attach a high value to quantitative measurements. Also, if I were you I'd sit down with the teachers whose grades do not correlate well with standardized tests: maybe they understood how to teach without teaching to the test? I said you are a bad teacher because regardless of how you really are in real life, you appear here to be a professional bully, not an educator. It is the students' fault they don't understand because they don't do their homework. Then it is the families fault the students don't do their homework and don't understand. Why isn't it your fault for not involving at least more than 50% of your class? You seriously need to step back and look at your practice and how to help the 50% of your classroom who doesn't care. If you truly believe students would be successful if only they would do their "10 minutes homework", what does that make of the value of the time spent in your class? You mean to tell me that you sincerely think 10 minutes outside your class will help them understand a concept you, the teacher, could not teach them in 50 minutes with all your skills?
Furthermore, " I teach mathematics, a subject which revolves around obtaining a set of skills (in math's case, a set of formulas and methods) and then applying them through critical thinking....neither of which they can attain without any actual practice. See, you don't learn how to do something if you never actually practice it, and homework is an opportunity for them to practice it without the teacher stepping them through the problem. Crazy, isn't it?"
I find your assumption that being able to produce results using a formula is an indicator of understanding is flawed. While it shows the student understood how to operate the formula, it by no means indicates the student understood how to internalize or generalize this knowledge so he would be able to use it on his own when needed later in life. As a maths teacher, I assume you are already aware of this difference because of your bit about critical thinking, although from the way your grading system correlates with a system that does not value critical thinking I have to say I find this ironic.
Also, let's do a quick overview of what happens with your homework. The good students obviously have no problem with it. Has the homework helped them if they had already understood the concepts? The bad students, and from what I can tell from your previous post they comprise at least 50% of your student population, will either not bother with it or will not be able to do it. The reason they are bad students is they don't understand in the first place in the classroom - thinking they will understand on their own something they have no interest in is utopian. I guess your homework can help the students in the middle. Maybe you should target these students with optional homework with added incentives?
My last position before my current one was in a high-need school. This school collected students from all over the province who had killed someone, tried to kill someone, or were involved with drugs and prostitution. The purpose of this elementary(!) school was to help the students socialize and re-integrate society so they don't live their entire life as murderers, muggers, drug addicts and so on. My work days began at 4 and ended at 8-9 most of the time. I used the weekends to visit my students' families and help them by teaching simple things like how to manage their budgets so they can afford to have a phone line at home and sometimes more than a single meal a day. So yes, I'm very well aware that families are failing the children in need.
Of course no classroom is alike. If you were really aware of research done in the field (by practitioners or in collaboration with them), you'd realize that the vast majority of researchers in education decry the involvement of the political in the field because it stifles our work, tries to obtain absolute truths that could be applied everywhere and moves policies from a qualitative perspective to a quantitative one. Oddly enough, you seem to have no problem with the systematic grading of students and use of standardized tests. Tests designed by the same researchers of the testing and evaluation industry and policy makers who never stepped into a classroom as teachers.
Also, "I also find this repeated assertion throughout your post that I am a bad educator rather amusing. Mainly because whenever I align my grades with the students' performance on state tests, they tend to correlate rather strongly. More strongly than many of my peers who are engaged in many of the "advances" that you speak of in the field, in fact."
The fact that your grades correlate so well and theirs not is no indicator that you are a good teacher or them bad ones. It signifies that you are good at teaching to the test and attach a high value to quantitative measurements. Also, if I were you I'd sit down with the teachers whose grades do not correlate well with standardized tests: maybe they understood how to teach without teaching to the test? I said you are a bad teacher because regardless of how you really are in real life, you appear here to be a professional bully, not an educator. It is the students' fault they don't understand because they don't do their homework. Then it is the families fault the students don't do their homework and don't understand. Why isn't it your fault for not involving at least more than 50% of your class? You seriously need to step back and look at your practice and how to help the 50% of your classroom who doesn't care. If you truly believe students would be successful if only they would do their "10 minutes homework", what does that make of the value of the time spent in your class? You mean to tell me that you sincerely think 10 minutes outside your class will help them understand a concept you, the teacher, could not teach them in 50 minutes with all your skills?
Furthermore, " I teach mathematics, a subject which revolves around obtaining a set of skills (in math's case, a set of formulas and methods) and then applying them through critical thinking....neither of which they can attain without any actual practice. See, you don't learn how to do something if you never actually practice it, and homework is an opportunity for them to practice it without the teacher stepping them through the problem. Crazy, isn't it?"
I find your assumption that being able to produce results using a formula is an indicator of understanding is flawed. While it shows the student understood how to operate the formula, it by no means indicates the student understood how to internalize or generalize this knowledge so he would be able to use it on his own when needed later in life. As a maths teacher, I assume you are already aware of this difference because of your bit about critical thinking, although from the way your grading system correlates with a system that does not value critical thinking I have to say I find this ironic.
Also, let's do a quick overview of what happens with your homework. The good students obviously have no problem with it. Has the homework helped them if they had already understood the concepts? The bad students, and from what I can tell from your previous post they comprise at least 50% of your student population, will either not bother with it or will not be able to do it. The reason they are bad students is they don't understand in the first place in the classroom - thinking they will understand on their own something they have no interest in is utopian. I guess your homework can help the students in the middle. Maybe you should target these students with optional homework with added incentives?
