walledstance

This is a good hill to die on. I’m a middle school teacher and explain this concept often to my class. I explain that what I say now is what we know, yet these ideas can and do change, so keep this in mind as you continue your education.

Thank you for your perspective. Sometimes I think, in our data filled world, we overestimate numbers even when disparaging something. Refocusing on the people is an important reminder that numbers matter a little less than we think.

I’m interested in this answer as well, since I have a little who isn’t school aged either. I’m trying to compile perspectives to make this same decision.

Wonderful description. Thank you for capturing a snap shot that conveys the power of troubleshooting.

“It's an artificial environment that disappears as soon as you graduate, and which you'll never find again anywhere else in society.”

Whoa there, society functions like a school environment.

You have cliches, bullies, enforcers, popular kids, the weirdos, etc.

What are our political parties other than massive cliches?

Bullies you can meet on the road, in stores, and nearly any other place you go.

Enforcers are police, detention centers, and fines.

Popular kids you need look no further than influencers, movie stares, etc.

The weirdos are anyone that doesn’t fit into our cliches.

Also, Foucault would have a few words with you as society is also an artificial environment.

The drama of daily life that plays out just happens in a larger more chaotic scale, but when we left highschool, highschool never left us.

Whew! Yes. Education is allergic to disruption because education shouldn’t be treated like a business.

Educational goals are to educate people not make money. Education requires countless failures. Business models are composed to be failure averse or reduce risk.

Education has and will likely continue to be a money and time sink because it is an area that requires constant failure from its participants to grow in knowledge.

Thank you for setting this.

Anecdotal, yet lived experience collected from 150+ people across my district and state while at different training and seminar events. I am a teacher with 10 years in elementary, middle school and college classrooms. I have teacher friends from across the district and state I live in who resonate these ideas displayed below. 1. Behavior is a major obstacle for any classroom 2. More Tech and AI tools than I could want 3. Education is controlled by the wider community and home environments

1. Behavior:

From my experiences and in speaking to others, teaching any subject varies not because of the material, but the behavior. When behavior is a problem no teaching, no matter who or what is doing it will get done. Behaviors can range from sleeping in class because dad made you work at his out of home construction company till 2 or 3 am to get a project complete, or it could be your mom is tired of you going to school and instead wants you to “go hit up them streets because that’s where the real motion (money) at.” These two might sound like isolated cases, but they aren’t. There are many kids who live out of cars, sell themselves to get buy and other atrocious life circumstances. Learning usually can’t happen when you’re preoccupied with keeping yourself alive or afloat. Combining AI into the educational landscape can’t and won’t fix this disinterest in learning. You will have to fix home life first. The problems arise because behaviors, in the classroom, work on a spectrum. They are better some days and others not at all. This is because behavior follows home life. It is usually modeled from home and then is acted out away from home. When Nathan (name changed) see his brother and brothers friends carrying around guns, drugs, insert something other activity not safe for most students, he will naturally mirror the act. When these behaviors present in class, a good teacher can maneuver a class back into an educational focus. But being a good teacher requires many exhausting abilities such as knowing the current generations lingo, figuring out who is a natural leader in class, who are the other kids afraid of or respect, knowing their material and presenting it to the students in a way that fits their life circumstances. Being good at teaching is a multi-headed venture across multiple disciplines. This makes managing behaviors in class a challenging and exhaustive time sink, which tends to be the main issue with teaching being interrupted or difficult in a class. One child from a difficult place can make learning a challenge for a class full of goody-two-shoes. Teachers are unnecessarily pulled away because we have no other recourse but to handle and teach children who need more support than what can be offered in a class. Behavior is one of the main issues that many people overlook.

2. More Tech and AI tools than I could want:

When I sign into my Microsoft portal I am presented with more 3rd party teaching tools than I could ever want. I use none of them because they are yet another tool to learn and be trained on, they help mostly in presenting educational material, but have nothing to do with the flow and behavior management of class, they have their own technical problems that I don’t have time to deal with because behind my back Timothy has begun passing his shoe around the room for others to sniff, and the applications are gamified learning that trivializes or simplifies the educational materials. There are many more reasons I and most of the teachers I know and have met don’t use these systems. Work with teachers to learn how much teaching environments vary and how we can implement tech tools into that classroom in a way that prioritizes education. But know many teacher’s priorities will not be for VC attention, but because we want to educate student into society. Listening to us gives you the opportunity to hear and see what educating people is actually like rather than the inert surveys and data points collected on students that are disconnected from their lives experiences. Listening to the people with boots on the classroom means possibly making a system that actually does something for classes than just become another novelty the principal and the district can feel good about.

3. Education is controlled by the wider community and home environments:

Diane Ravitch, a leading thinker in the education realm, writes about all the changes she has been a part of and seen occur. In the end, her response to these failed reforms in school is that much of what happens in communities controls what occurs in schools. If you have a society that is splintered into social groups then that will typically be reflected in the classroom. First we must adjust society standards which will then alleviate the malignant issues in our schools. But as many teachers have said to principles and school officials, “Hey, what do I know, I’m just a teacher.”

Thank you. This is a refreshing take on much of human interaction.

As a teacher in middle school I see this demonstrated throughout my classes. I have even started collecting data points on how many times a week a topic or topic adjacent to another topic crops up as discussions in my class. There are almost always heated discussions, but in the end we typically come to an understanding about facts or how we can’t truly know fully situations. There are of course some holds outs, but for the majority we find understanding or compromise.

I’ll agree with this. Study language and lingual theory. Much of language is metaphor we apply to different lens. Language is mainly a process of trial and error. We continue saying something, refining that saying through different word usage until we come up with a term that fits our lens correctly. Words don’t have rules. Humanity makes those rules and then applies them.

The commenter below, mentioning “truth-seeking” would need to define what they mean by truth. Is this capital T truth that applies to everyone or lowercase truth that applies to the specific and differing lenses we use?

Absolutely this. As a middle school teacher of many years I feel like I have some knowledge on this subject. Almost all children want to spend time with an adult. In my classroom the activity we do together doesn’t matter to my students, besides the attention I give them during the activity. For kids, adults are treasure troves of attention, and they want that attention. Give it to them in positive ways and you will see the relationship grow. Don’t worry about whether or not you produce something in the end, it was the relationship that mattered to the child from the get go. Really only adults, through social conditioning, are worried about producing something. Kids just want to feel important and feel part of a healthy, positive relationship.

“Managing people is really really hard”

I like your reply, but for different reasons. I am a middle school teacher, and my day to day is managing people. It is tiring, decidedly so, and yet at the end of the day, management is rewarding for me for because it is relationship building through gaining individual understanding and building classroom consensus.

I love my job and am good at my job. But if I’m to step outside of my classroom your latter quote becomes far too truthful for me:

“we seem to have a managerial class who seem to be getting away with doing it very poorly”

Your quote applies directly to my supposed superiors; assistant principals, principals, and higher ups in the school board. Most of the managerial class outside of a classroom is trash at their jobs. Their management style seems mostly morale busting and ego inflation at day’s end.

I agree with you, just from a different occupational domain.

Well said and composed analysis. I think you have a clear grasp on authorial intent. Thank you.

Yes, to what you stated. I teach middle school title one, as well. My students express the same perceptions about dark and light skin as indexes for mental and physical abilities in their jokes and language, as you described.

I’m going to give your words some thought as I move forward in my curriculum. Thank you for these insights.

Teaching. I moved from a big tech company to teaching. Teaching is the hardest job I’ve ever done, and requires entire new skills. Teacher pay, depending on where you are, can be real low compared to FAANG money, but damn do I sleep well at night knowing that I help people. There is nothing like watching someone struggle and then suddenly understanding the subject.

But seriously, it is a hard job. You learn quickly that just because you understand something doesn’t mean you can explain it to someone.

Thank you for stating this. I share your envy.

In my own life I find myself sharing articles with many contacts in my phone. Sometimes 10-15 people at a time. I don’t know if this acts as a means to create a facsimile of the community the author alludes. If my sharing articles is a thrust towards crafting community, it is a paltry comparison to the type you and I envy.

I’m going to have to think on this. Thank you