What Should I Do With This Parking Boot?

[regexcellent]

Whoever it was, I held up a bigass Cadillac limo for a bit, which looked a hell of a lot like the presidential car.

[Asher]

66% or 58%?

66

[Hauldren Collider]

They can do it in high school do, it's just harder to teach yourself physics than basic grammar and math.

Teachers' job before that level is to give students structure and an imposing authority figure.

QFT

Several of the teachers I'm working with this summer are K-6 teachers, and they tell me that the way their classes work, it's basically about having enough energy to babysit 20 to 30 prepubescent kids. The curriculum is made for them; their only job is to read their scripts aloud.

[Al B. Sure!]

My mother went to Georgetown briefly for undergrad

[Lorizael]

QFT

Several of the teachers I'm working with this summer are K-6 teachers, and they tell me that the way their classes work, it's basically about having enough energy to babysit 20 to 30 prepubescent kids. The curriculum is made for them; their only job is to read their scripts aloud.

That only happens in crappy school districts.

[Aeson]

grade school teacher = imposing authority figure

[Wiglaf]

Many of them act as surrogate mothers.

[Wiglaf]

I'm being informed surrogate mothers doesn't mean what I think it means, which is alarming, there is an underground baby implantation ring I was not aware of until just now, very upsetting.

[Fve Crathva]

I spend half of my day in meetings with business types - degrees in economics, business, political science, etcetc...MBAs coming out of their asses. They are by and large not very intelligent people. I dance circles around them and make lots of product design decisions. I'm also involved with researching (and implementing) new technologies to enhance how children learn -- this involves a lot of psychology and statistical analysis.

As I said, I don't program.

You are three years away from writing your last paid line of code.

Close enough for engineering.

SP

[-Jrabbit]

Surrogate mother -- the ultimate in loco parentis.

[Hauldren Collider]

That only happens in crappy school districts.

No. There's only so many ways to teach addition, and people came up with the best way many many years ago. Elementary school curriculum, at least in math, has basically been perfected at least to the point that the teacher is unlikely to be able to do a better job than the books.

[Ben Kenobi]

There's all kinds of studies. The most recent one I saw showed a ~16% improvement in student achievement with IWBs all else being equal. That is, if a student scored 50% without, they scored 66% with.

Umm, you might want to redo the math.

You're getting a jump from 50-58 if it's a 16 percent improvement.

That's not bad, but that's still not going to overcome the inherent advantage that the Catholic schools have.

[Ben Kenobi]

What do you call someone with an anti-technology bias so strong that they proclaim a new technology useless even though they have no experience with it and the people with experience say it's useful? A Luddite?

Seeing as all my lesson plans are typed out on an a computer, I'm not exactly sure how I qualify as a luddite.

I'm just skeptical of someone who's job is to sell these things, that they are as effective as he claims.

My first job as a teacher isn't "use technology", it's "teaching". If simpifying things makes me more effective, then that's what I should do.

My whiteboard is interactive too - the kids get up and write on it all the time.

[Lorizael]

No. There's only so many ways to teach addition, and people came up with the best way many many years ago. Elementary school curriculum, at least in math, has basically been perfected at least to the point that the teacher is unlikely to be able to do a better job than the books.

It's amusing that you would say this, given that almost every state in the country is in the process of implementing an entirely new way to teach math (part of the Common Core curriculum). Additionally, the practice of reading aloud from a script is not universal. It really depends on the school district. My girlfriend (an elementary school teacher) and her math support teacher would be very surprised to learn that there is one correct way to teach addition, given that they vary their teaching method depending on the student.

[Asher]

Umm, you might want to redo the math.

you clearly did not understand what I said.
PS: as I have shown before, Catholic schools for high school in Alberta are far behind the public ones in rankings. The only inherent advantage Catholic schools have is real world practice with sex Ed.