Comments | aerlewis: (без темы)

aerlewis

(Untitled)

Jun 23, 2008 12:57

Pulled from WSJ online

Amazing Teacher Facts
June 14, 2008; Page A10

This month 3,700 recent college grads will begin Teach for America's five-week boot camp, before heading off for two-year stints at the nation's worst public schools. These young men and women were chosen from almost 25,000 applicants, hailing from our most selective colleges. ( Read more... )

news, school

Comments 11

(The comment has been removed)

aerlewis June 23 2008, 21:11:09 UTC

Excellent! :) I love the idea, it TOTALLY makes sense and if it's turning out students with better scores, more power to them!

gizabeth June 23 2008, 23:00:07 UTC

I think Teach for America actually grabs those who have the desire to teach (adding to the better student performance - if scores count as better performance). Kind of like the same people who go for AmeriCorps and the Peace Corps, people who want to give back.

aerlewis June 24 2008, 01:01:22 UTC

Interesting...so are you saying that the teachers who've gone through the whole "vast education bureaucracy" don't want to teach? I'm not arguing, I'm just wondering if that's where you're coming from...? Personally I think there are a lot of teachers out there who saw summers off, tenure, and good health care benefits and said, "sign me up!" without thinking about what was really going to be asked of them.

Thread 8

Questions... eagle97 June 25 2008, 19:19:49 UTC

Thought-provoking...but the question is, "Is TFA a long-term solution to the broader problems afflicting our education system ( ... )

Re: Questions... mlewis June 26 2008, 00:05:24 UTC

My first reaction to this comment was, "Aaaaah! Wall of text!" Then, after a while, I got over that.

Of course, there's no such thing as a silver bullet. But maybe we can learn from this program. First, I'd ask what evidence there is about how well current teachers do the things you talk about (abuse, disability, angry parents, etc).

Although you didn't say it here--though you sorta imply it--when the teachers unions say that we can't try new things because they might not work, I start to shout, "But you're already failing!" Not everywhere, of course, but in many cases.

And then they do everything they can to sabotage things like charter schools in NY, where they will soon (if not already) be required to pay "prevailing wages" for any and all construction. This means that recent buildings that have been put up for $5-10 million will now cost $30-40 million, meaning that they won't happen. Man, I hate unions.

Re: Questions... eagle97 July 3 2008, 13:33:50 UTC

Ok, have been working on a proposal lately and haven't had time for much blogging. So my response, albeit delayed, is this ( ... )

Re: Questions... aerlewis June 26 2008, 12:11:09 UTC

I'm wondering if the training and support that TFA volunteers go through/get cover things like that? Are you really saying those skills take YEARS to be taught? Never mind the fact that in my experience (friends with kids) there are an awful lot of teachers who really don't give a crap about special needs students ( ... )