Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: MP-Ryan on June 01, 2012, 10:01:27 am
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http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/Ross%20Sheppard%20teacher%20kicked%20out%20of%20class%20for%20giving%20students%20zeros/6709514/story.html
I am ashamed to admit I live in this province.
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That's ridiculous. I would have thought that the risk of getting an embarrassing '0' would be far more of a motivator than kid-gloves techniques. The schools are teaching kids attitudes that simply do not exist in the real world.
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Pfffft! This is the problem with kids today!
*old man rant over*
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Reminds me of the deferred success bull**** we get in the UK, the same rewording of a negative so it dont look so bad
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I know I've seen studies that basically show with very little uncertainty that this kind of hand-holding is actively harmful to children's development, among other things; though I can't find them at the moment. Need to spend some time looking it up again.
The problem with this mentality and methodology is that you end up with a bunch of narcissistic kids/teens/young adults who believe that they are perfect and have no desire for self-improvement, despite the fact that the real world will demand it of them eventually.
As a side note, the Canadian Soccer Association will shortly be making all soccer for youth under IIRC somewhere between 10 and 13 completely non-competitive. No organized games, no keeping scores. Don't hold me to this as a hard fact, my memory is vague and I only heard it from a contact of mine in a small town soccer corporation; but the point remains that this kind of mentality is slowly taking over.
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Sounds like they need a...
(http://i50.tinypic.com/qspco1.jpg)
Zero Tolerance Policy
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Sounds like they need a...
(http://i50.tinypic.com/qspco1.jpg)
Zero Tolerance Policy
Win
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Such feedback [given via an "Incomplete"] is much more motivating than a zero, Schmidt said. “Simply taking them off the hook with a zero that says they don’t have to do it anymore is actually not helping kids get to the learning.”
wat. Since when was a risk of failing a class no longer a motivation? Oh, right. Since it was decided that teachers are not allowed to fail high school students.
I also find it so very ridiculous that when kids get bad marks, some parents get furious and take it out on the teachers. How come they don't ever think to look at what their kid is doing, and what their parenting is doing, that might have led to the poor academic performance?
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Thing is, "Incomplete" does not mean "didn't do any work". It implies that they did a bit, but didn't finish it. If these kids had handed in half-complete homework, then it would be incomplete but still could be marked on what they had done, the phrase they are looking for is "didn't try." or "didn't bother". Marks like that might motivate them more if kids thought they would appear on the report cards, however "Incomplete" is a soft-sell.
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Mixed opinions on stuff like this. Educational institutions and teachers where I was repeatedly abused grading systems...
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bah, high school is high school. As long as you "do" the work it's really kinda hard to **** it up, honestly. I say "do" because 99% of the work you do in high school is either A) not graded for accuracy, B) subjective, or C) trivial. If people aren't willing to even pretend to make an effort to learn then by all means teachers should give them back what they put in.
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bah, high school is high school. As long as you "do" the work it's really kinda hard to **** it up, honestly. I say "do" because 99% of the work you do in high school is either A) not graded for accuracy, B) subjective, or C) trivial. If people aren't willing to even pretend to make an effort to learn then by all means teachers should give them back what they put in.
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Hmm...
Well regardless of what I think of the no-zero policy at that school district, the article states that it made that change more than a year ago. The teacher who was suspended clearly and simply chose not to follow that policy. Suspension may be a bit harsh, especially in the middle of the class term (as one student was quoted as saying), but some form of punishment is likely necessary. Otherwise any teacher could ignore any policy.
Like the ATA is quoted as saying in that article.. "The ATA believes teachers should primarily be responsible for assessing and evaluating students, ATA spokesman Jonathan Teghtmeyer said. However, teachers are ultimately accountable to their employer, he said."
As a further thought, there was probably a better way for a teacher with a 30+ year career at the school to fight the policy than to outright ignore it.
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My best guess is that they wanted this guy gone and the whole Zero-Zero-Tolerance policy is just an excuse. Something similar happened to one of my high school band directors, except instead of getting fired she was moved to a middle school choir director. The official explanation was that she said 'bastard' while making a joke in Wind Ensemble, and it suffices to say that everyone knew the decision was bull****. Also I'd like to point out that teachers violating school policy isn't really all that uncommon, nor is it usually a big deal.
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I also find it so very ridiculous that when kids get bad marks, some parents get furious and take it out on the teachers. How come they don't ever think to look at what their kid is doing, and what their parenting is doing, that might have led to the poor academic performance?
Because that would require them to admit that they or their child had made a mistake.
No way they or their perfect child would ever do that. How dare you assume that they are in any way fallible![/biting sarcasm]
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A excerpt from a book I came across which relates to this
Linchpin: Are you indispensable?
Does School Work? If I drill and practice and grade and reward you for years on doing math with fractions, what are the chances that you'll learn fractions? School does a great job of teaching students to do what we set out to teach them. It works. The problem is that what we're teaching is the wrong stuff.
Here's what we're teaching kids to do (with various levels of success):
Fit in
Follow instructions
Use #2 pencils
Take good notes
Show up every day Cram for tests and don't miss deadlines
Have good handwriting
Punctuate
Buy the things the other kids are buying
Don't ask questions
Don't challenge authority
Do the minimum amount required so you'll have time to work on another subject
Get into college
Have a good resume
Don't fail
Don't say anything that might embarrass you
Be passably good at sports, or perhaps extremely good at being a quarterback
Participate in a large number of extracurricular activities
Be a generalist
Try not to have the other kids talk about you
Once you learn a topic, move on
Now, the key questions: Which of these attributes are the keys to being indispensable? Are we building the sort of people our society needs? The problem doesn't lie with the great teachers. Great teachers strive to create linchpins. The problem lies with the system that punishes artists and rewards bureaucrats instead. Here's what Woodrow Wilson said about public education: "We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much larger class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks." After retaining brutal Pinkerton men, trainloads of strikebreakers, and even the National Guard to violently put down strikes, Andrew Carnegie decided that the answer to worker unrest was a limited amount of education. "Just see, wherever we peer into the first tiny springs of the national life, how this true panacea for all the ills of the body politic bubbles forth--education, education, education." The model is simple. Capitalists need compliant workers, workers who will be productive and willing to work for less than the value that their productivity creates. The gap between what they are paid and what the capitalist receives is profit. The best way to increase profit was to increase both the productivity and the compliance of factory workers. And as Carnegie saw, the best way to do that was to build a huge educational-industrial complex designed to teach workers just enough to get them to cooperate. It's not an accident that school is like a job, not an accident that there are supervisors and rules and tests and quality control. You do well, you get another job (the next grade), and continue to do well and you get a real job. Do poorly, don't fit in, rebel--and you are kicked out of the system.
"I Am Good at School"
This is a fundamentally different statement from, "I did well in school and therefore I will do a great job working for you." The essential thing measured by school is whether or not you are good at school. Being good at school is a fine skill if you intend to do school forever. For the rest of us, being good at school is a little like being good at Frisbee. It's nice, but it's not relevant unless your career involves homework assignments, looking through textbooks for answers that are already known to your supervisors, complying with instructions and then, in high-pressure settings, regurgitating those facts with limited processing on your part. Or, in the latter case, if your job involves throwing 165 grams of round plastic as far as you can. The contributions of school are often superfluous. On the other hand, the best schools are great selectors of people with attitude and talent. Getting in and getting out is a testament to who you were before you got there. Many successful people got that way despite their advanced schooling, not because of it.
What They Should Teach in School
Only two things: 1. Solve interesting problems 2. Lead
Honestly, failing a student to me is the best idea there is. Nobody wants to be that guy... the guy who failed a course and has to take it again until he passes it
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That's not what the article you just quoted is really about though, which actually hits on a very serious issue, and what I had the most problems with in high school.
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What made the school choose the no zero-tolerance policy in the first place?
Do they have any statistical data that shows this policy works better than the more traditional policy?
More importantly, does the material covered by the schools completely qualify them for college? Entry level jobs?
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That's not what the article you just quoted is really about though, which actually hits on a very serious issue, and what I had the most problems with in high school.
Book, not article
And I know it wasn't, it was just an interesting read which related to what's wrong with High School teaching methods (to which I find this No Zero policy to fall in line with those issues)
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Do they have any statistical data that shows this policy works better than the more traditional policy?
Uh, son? We're educational professionals here. We don't need your science and numbers telling us how to do our jobs. Thank you very much.
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That's not what the article you just quoted is really about though, which actually hits on a very serious issue, and what I had the most problems with in high school.
Book, not article
And I know it wasn't, it was just an interesting read which related to what's wrong with High School teaching methods (to which I find this No Zero policy to fall in line with those issues)
Fair enough. Policies like this are redundant anyway. IMO, if the grades of your students are so bad that you don't want to give out zeros, there's something seriously wrong with your teaching/grading methods.
A similar policy was instituted at my school. The teachers were outraged. We literally heard from some teachers how bad they thought school policy was during class. Of course the school had to abandon all notion of telling people what to do without any sort of response.
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grades aren't necessarily reflective of the teaching. especially when it's just a result of students not doing the work.
but DAMN i wish i could have not done homework and not had it count against me when i was in school. i would have had damn near perfect grades.
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grades aren't necessarily reflective of the teaching.
Don't perpetuate the cycle.
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excuse me?
if a student just sits in class and does no work and learns nothing because they don't care, that's the teacher's fault?
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if a student just sits in class and does no work and learns nothing because they don't care, that's the teacher's fault?
Considering it's the teacher's job, at least in part, to make them care, hell yes it is.
But also frankly the idea that you can't attribute success or failure of the teacher by studying grades is a bad one and desperately needs to be jettisoned, because it has strangled the ability to improve the profession.
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A student determined not to do work and a teacher determined to make a difference will, most of the time, end with the student not doing any work to no fault of the teacher.
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my high school was about as perfect an example of this as possible. there were two clearly different attitudes in the school. those who cared and those who didn't. our AP test scores were insanely high, but we also had pass rates for the unbelievably easy end-of-course tests in english and math at around 20-40%. the same teachers taught both types.
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A student determined not to do work and a teacher determined to make a difference will, most of the time, end with the student not doing any work to no fault of the teacher.
Automatically assuming this is the case with all bad grades means that any attempt to apply meaningful science or metrics to teaching is useless. Indeed, automatically assuming it is the case for most or even a significant portion of bad grades does the same thing.
Teaching is a mystical art, subject to no laws or rules, unknowable!
That's not what you're suggesting, of course, but it seems to be Klaustrophobia's. It's also the line parroted by the local teacher's union, who then tell me that if we give them more money it will improve. Because that makes sense.
This assumption is bad science, bad for students, bad for the profession of teaching, and just generally bad.
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Not once did I say you should automatically assume this is the case when you see a failing student. Not once did I even imply that.
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NGTM has started arguing the other side for them. time to quit.
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if a student just sits in class and does no work and learns nothing because they don't care, that's the teacher's fault?
I'm going to say yes. And bear in mind that I am a teacher and I do have students who sit in class and do no work.
If my students are failing to engage then it's obvious that I'm somehow failing to get them to engage. I'm the one who determines how to teach the lesson, I'm the one who determines what is the best way to get the knowledge they need to have out of the book and into their heads. If the method I've chosen doesn't seem to be working it is my job to find a way that makes them want to get involved.
Now that's not to say that some students don't deliberately make it harder, or that I shouldn't feel that those who do try are more deserving of my limited time, but it is my job to find ways to get as many students as possible to take part in the class. I shouldn't be writing off those who can't self-motivate.
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Not once did I say you should automatically assume this is the case when you see a failing student. Not once did I even imply that.
That's not what you're suggesting, of course,
I do seem to have covered that. (I have considerably more respect for you than you seem to credit.)
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My apologies, I read the first few sentences and then just posted. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that even with great teachers you'll always run into students that are just as lazy, and then some because it's easier to be lazy than a good teacher. Don't fire teachers because their students fail - that will always happen - fire them because they're bad teachers. Of course, failing students is usually the voice telling the principle that someone needs a performance review.
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Let's not forget the many students also have R/L issues that may be hard for the teachers to diagnose, and, even if the problem does become suspected or known, may not be possible to fix, either partially, or completely.
One good example of what some of these issues could be, for example, the home and/or other environment(s) surrounding this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=80668.0). Try giving two plugged nickels about studying with all of that going on. (I know people that have been through it, and it shows... excellent students with excellent grades, then when the beforementioned is going on, grades plummet, when it (at least temporarily) stops or diminishes, grades rise somewhat again as life becomes a little bit more bearable.)
Other problems could include parents going through divorce / always arguing and creating stressful environment, personal relations with friends / boy/girlfriends going through rough times, etc, etc... there are many many dynamics, and teachers should be aware and try to help, as should parents, as should the students themselves. However, too often, the problem gets mis-diagnosed (student must simply not care, because they are sullen and rebellious) and/or ignored (teacher has too many students to make more than a paltry effort at reaching out to students that are failing). Parents can make the same mistakes as teachers, and of course, some teachers / parents can be part of the problem.
And, let's not forget, yes, there are those people who are just spoiled, rotten apples... the fix for that would be to try and convince/inspire them to make something more out of themselves. Might or might not be possible, but must at least be tried.
It would really help if parents/teachers/principles had access (I'm not sure, do they) to a complete record of any student's quarterly (maybe even monthly) performance in all grades, classes, and which teachers were teaching. Then patterns might emerge (specific teacher? specific subject? specific timeframe across the board? what were the trends before the change?)
[/endramble]
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excuse me?
if a student just sits in class and does no work and learns nothing because they don't care, that's the teacher's fault?
What about a student who does no work, but learns everything?
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I used to love doing that in my CNA class and occasionally at my job school for the USMC (although, since that was computer-related, the quizzes had useless acronyms (PCMCIA People Can't Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms anyone?) and factoids thrown in, so you kind of had to study, even if you knew the material upside down and inside out... you still had to be able to spout the glories of the P4 processor such as when it came out, and it's wonderful 'new' features... I was part of one of the last classes before they redid the course, lol... but you can bet that future ALTIS grads will be stuck extolling the Core 2 Duo or some stupid BS.)
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What made the school choose the no zero-tolerance policy in the first place?
Do they have any statistical data that shows this policy works better than the more traditional policy?
I would point out that, while this was very likely not in the forefront of the minds of the people who suspended this teacher, they'll never get good statistical data about the policy if it's only patchily implemented.
Now, the question of whether the school has/had any intention of gathering this data (and, very importantly, acting on it as required) is an open question.
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excuse me?
if a student just sits in class and does no work and learns nothing because they don't care, that's the teacher's fault?
What about a student who does no work, but learns everything?
There are some things you can't learn just by observing. :P