In North Carolina a few weeks ago, our Governor, Roy Cooper, pledged a raise to teachers in our state. The same is probably true in the other 49 states as well as in Washington, D.C. I am a teacher and a few extra greenbacks are always appreciated. In my family piggybank. Good work ought to be rewarded, shouldn’t it
When the next school year begins and the thousands and thousands of students across North Carolina and the rest of the nation enter classroom with paper and pencils and laptops and open minds, will there be a change? Does the increase in pay promote better educational opportunities and outcomes for our students? How can paying a teacher more cause our students to learn more when the product they are often given day upon day is a cesspool of nothingness coated in a breading of “it’s about feelings” approach?
Not a damn thing will change in the 2023-2024 school year!
If a family is fortunate to have a teacher that understands that the curricula our students are exposed to is weak and has the gumption and intestinal fortitude to properly teach BEYOND the state’s mundane requirements, then you are one of the lucky ones. Quality education first begins with what is taught in the classroom. I am not talking about the social reform as if drag queen reading hours or LBGTQIA inclusions programs that in our schools. I am not even talking about the afterschool Satanic Clubs that are creeping up in our schools. I am talking about the 3R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic. Additionally, I am talking about science, history, and foreign language.
Do you ever notice many kids bringing homes books anymore? We live in a digital age now, but what is wrong with a book? I remember in elementary school having a spelling book, a grammar book, a literature book, a social studies book, a science book and my favorite book – a math book. Most of our K-5 babies do not have the luxury of having these gems in their repertoire. The purpose of these books was to provide a resource that teachers, students and parents can use to drill and practice what was learned in the classroom. Good ole drill and practice takes the experience learned in the classroom from short-term memory to long-term memory. Students are not getting that.
Pundits against what my stance say that students are exposed to a lot of material. Well? In some ways that is true but in most ways it is malarkey. It is best that students have educational opportunities that are deep and wide versus just wide. The Common Core agenda to me focuses on the wide but good education for our students should be wide and deep.
If you notice in most K-5 classrooms over the past 20 years, there is very little, if any, formal history and applied science taught. Why? Teachers and superintendents and principals today of the status quo will argue that students are getting history and science in the form of reading articles on famous leaders and science principles in Language Arts class. Although that is true, why can’t our student learners have all four core subjects five days a week? When I was in K-5 schools in Wake County in the 70’s, all of my teachers carved out time for each subject. We had books for each subject and were tested in each subject by the same teacher. Thank you Ms. Warren, Ms. Crouch, Ms. Peele, Ms. Hunt and Ms. Lambert for doing an awesome job as teachers at Vandora Springs Elementary School in Garner, North Carolina. I bet if I went to Vandora Springs Elementary School today that that approach would be long gone unless there was a maverick teacher there wiling to shake things up. I am maverick teacher and I thank God to those mavericks out there today.
Our students deserve better and it does not require more money to be allocated towards education. Good teachers should be paid more and lower quality teachers given additional training or the boot out the door. Unfortunately, many subpar teachers have to be retained due to the shortage in the profession.
How can we determine who is a good teacher? Easy!
Every subject should be tested. Teachers should be measured on how well they grow students from Day 1 to Day 180. Students come to teachers at different points on the spectrum and opponents to testing say that “bad kids” would cause a teachers to not be rewarded financially. I disagree. First, there are no bad kids from an educational sense, yes from a behavioral. The behavioral part is a separate issue. Any students entering our classrooms should not leave the school year the same way that they started. If a teacher had a child in his or her 4th grade class that began the year reading at the 2nd grade left but ended reading on the 4th grade level, then that teacher did a phenomenal job. That teacher helped GROW that child 2 levels in a year. However, if Country Club AIG Academy had a teacher that had a child in his or her 4th grade class that entered the 4th grade reading on the 4th grade level but ended at the 4th grade level, then that teacher did nothing for that child. It would have been better had that child stayed home for 180 days.
Our friends at SAS can measure growth. It is called Standard 6. Standard 6 is an index that measures how much growth each student received from their teacher on record. I remember years ago there was a lot of pushback against Standard 6. How come?
How best can our tax dollars be spent to improve education? First, reward quality in the classroom only after there has been a complete overhaul in the product that our K-12 students receive daily. It has taken America 30+ years to dig herself into this whole but she can did herself out. There will again be pushback. I was told by a “higher up” in my county a few years before Covid that I should not teach solving radical equations in my Math I class because it is not in the curriculum. I told her kindly that if it was good enough for me when I had the equivalent of this course at Broughton High School, then it is good enough for my students today.
Moreover, I could back it up with 95% proficiency on the Math I End of Course test. Thank you Ms. Dearborn, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gunter, and Ms. Lloyd – my math teachers at Broughton and Ms. Jackson, Ms. Bowden and Ms. Martin, my math teachers at Ligon Middle School.
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In North Carolina a few weeks ago, our Governor, Roy Cooper, pledged a raise to teachers in our state. The same is probably true in the other 49 states as well as in Washington, D.C. I am a teacher and a few extra greenbacks are always appreciated. In my family piggybank. Good work ought to be rewarded, shouldn’t it
When the next school year begins and the thousands and thousands of students across North Carolina and the rest of the nation enter classroom with paper and pencils and laptops and open minds, will there be a change? Does the increase in pay promote better educational opportunities and outcomes for our students? How can paying a teacher more cause our students to learn more when the product they are often given day upon day is a cesspool of nothingness coated in a breading of “it’s about feelings” approach?
Not a damn thing will change in the 2023-2024 school year!
If a family is fortunate to have a teacher that understands that the curricula our students are exposed to is weak and has the gumption and intestinal fortitude to properly teach BEYOND the state’s mundane requirements, then you are one of the lucky ones. Quality education first begins with what is taught in the classroom. I am not talking about the social reform as if drag queen reading hours or LBGTQIA inclusions programs that in our schools. I am not even talking about the afterschool Satanic Clubs that are creeping up in our schools. I am talking about the 3R’s – reading, writing and arithmetic. Additionally, I am talking about science, history, and foreign language.
Do you ever notice many kids bringing homes books anymore? We live in a digital age now, but what is wrong with a book? I remember in elementary school having a spelling book, a grammar book, a literature book, a social studies book, a science book and my favorite book – a math book. Most of our K-5 babies do not have the luxury of having these gems in their repertoire. The purpose of these books was to provide a resource that teachers, students and parents can use to drill and practice what was learned in the classroom. Good ole drill and practice takes the experience learned in the classroom from short-term memory to long-term memory. Students are not getting that.
Pundits against what my stance say that students are exposed to a lot of material. Well? In some ways that is true but in most ways it is malarkey. It is best that students have educational opportunities that are deep and wide versus just wide. The Common Core agenda to me focuses on the wide but good education for our students should be wide and deep.
If you notice in most K-5 classrooms over the past 20 years, there is very little, if any, formal history and applied science taught. Why? Teachers and superintendents and principals today of the status quo will argue that students are getting history and science in the form of reading articles on famous leaders and science principles in Language Arts class. Although that is true, why can’t our student learners have all four core subjects five days a week? When I was in K-5 schools in Wake County in the 70’s, all of my teachers carved out time for each subject. We had books for each subject and were tested in each subject by the same teacher. Thank you Ms. Warren, Ms. Crouch, Ms. Peele, Ms. Hunt and Ms. Lambert for doing an awesome job as teachers at Vandora Springs Elementary School in Garner, North Carolina. I bet if I went to Vandora Springs Elementary School today that that approach would be long gone unless there was a maverick teacher there wiling to shake things up. I am maverick teacher and I thank God to those mavericks out there today.
Our students deserve better and it does not require more money to be allocated towards education. Good teachers should be paid more and lower quality teachers given additional training or the boot out the door. Unfortunately, many subpar teachers have to be retained due to the shortage in the profession.
How can we determine who is a good teacher? Easy!
Every subject should be tested. Teachers should be measured on how well they grow students from Day 1 to Day 180. Students come to teachers at different points on the spectrum and opponents to testing say that “bad kids” would cause a teachers to not be rewarded financially. I disagree. First, there are no bad kids from an educational sense, yes from a behavioral. The behavioral part is a separate issue. Any students entering our classrooms should not leave the school year the same way that they started. If a teacher had a child in his or her 4th grade class that began the year reading at the 2nd grade left but ended reading on the 4th grade level, then that teacher did a phenomenal job. That teacher helped GROW that child 2 levels in a year. However, if Country Club AIG Academy had a teacher that had a child in his or her 4th grade class that entered the 4th grade reading on the 4th grade level but ended at the 4th grade level, then that teacher did nothing for that child. It would have been better had that child stayed home for 180 days.
Our friends at SAS can measure growth. It is called Standard 6. Standard 6 is an index that measures how much growth each student received from their teacher on record. I remember years ago there was a lot of pushback against Standard 6. How come?
How best can our tax dollars be spent to improve education? First, reward quality in the classroom only after there has been a complete overhaul in the product that our K-12 students receive daily. It has taken America 30+ years to dig herself into this whole but she can did herself out. There will again be pushback. I was told by a “higher up” in my county a few years before Covid that I should not teach solving radical equations in my Math I class because it is not in the curriculum. I told her kindly that if it was good enough for me when I had the equivalent of this course at Broughton High School, then it is good enough for my students today.
Moreover, I could back it up with 95% proficiency on the Math I End of Course test. Thank you Ms. Dearborn, Mr. Brown, Mr. Gunter, and Ms. Lloyd – my math teachers at Broughton and Ms. Jackson, Ms. Bowden and Ms. Martin, my math teachers at Ligon Middle School.