Quirky Teacher: 'How I wish more parents would read my blog'

[allchildrenreading]

wp.me/p5b7Us-4w

This teache is always worth reading but this one is particularly relevant for parents - it's a good read, too! It will be interesting to hear Mumsnetters' response.

you specified that you don't think teachers should have the TIME to write 1500 words. A teacher who truly believes they don't deserves the TIME to write 1500 words of their own thoughts in one week has been totally brainwashed, ground down, and is suffering from a form of "battered woman syndrome", and if and when they come to their senses are the ones who just turn round and walk out of the class room for ever, and don't even return to the staff room for their coat. I've seen this.

if this is you, you need help.

Charis1 - I think you need to calm down a bit.

Let's face it, how many teachers have time to do fancyschmancy blogs?

This is what you said. About writing 1500 words

if you really are a teacher, then please get help. You have GOT to get out.

rabbitstwew, you haven't seen your friends and colleagues mentally and physically disintegrating under a 90+ hour week, and nights when there is no time to sleep.

When someone reaches the point of actually believing that they personally don't deserve two hours to do their own thing in a week, they are very close indeed to the edge.

I didn't get the impression that DrankSangriaInThePark does believe she doesn't deserve two hours to do her own thing in a week. I merely got the impression she thinks that particular blog is a waste of space.

Where did I say they shouldn't have time?

Please do not put words into my mouth.

If you're working a 90+ hour week maybe you need to rethink all those jobs you claim to have Chabis ??

I'm actually sitting in my jammies MNing, although looking every so often at those 120 tests I have to mark.

If we could possibly get back to discussing the blog (although I think I might you a famous MN headtilt Charis and ask if you might be projecting your own unease onto me? I love my job and have no intention of "getting out" anytime soon)

Rabbit- I don't think it's a waste, and I do agree with some of the premises made in the blog, but I would like to see more active campaigning all round for the whole educational establishment to work in clearer synergy. Government/schools/parents. And of course kids and their expectations of the system. Too often we find the "client" (the kids) being pushed and pulled in different directions by different interested parties. That is, fundamentally, what needs to be changed. And we all have a responsibility to do that with minimum disruption to the students themselves.

Holmes - I don't think corporal punishment is the only 'traditional' way to produce good behaviour in children! And I very much doubt that QuirkyTeacher would advocate it. Remember, we're talking about primary school children here.

I honestly don't think that 'today's children' are psychologically that different from the children of thirty years ago. What's different is the culture. However, if schools are able to create and hold everyone to an all-school culture that expects good behaviour, using for example detentions staffed by SLT for older children, then it's surprising what can be achieved, even in secondary schools. In primary schools, where children are younger and mostly eager for adult approval, I don't really see this as a problem.

I am not a teacher but I have had colleagues doing the same job as me working 90 plus hours a week and crashing - happens often.

I personally work hard but have learned to: work efficiently; reuse; push back on attending meetings I am not really needed at; push back on weekend woeking and too much additional work.

I feel it must be like this in most professions these days, where it is really key to protect yourself.

I think part of the issue might just be that nobody can actually agree who the "client" is. I certainly don't get the impression government thinks the clients of the education system are the children - more the adult voter and future employers.

Where did I say they shouldn't have time?

Let's face it, how many teachers have time to do fancyschmancy blogs?

This is what you said.

I haven't put word into your mouth, these are your own words.

If you're working a 90+ hour week maybe you need to rethink all those jobs you claim to have Chabis

I'm not a teacher, Mrz.

I'm just a witness watching in horror and dread as the education system smashes lovely teachers into tiny little pieces and stamps on them.

"Rabbit- I don't think it's a waste, and I do agree with some of the premises made in the blog, but I would like to see more active campaigning all round for the whole educational establishment to work in clearer synergy. Government/schools/parents."

The trouble is, there is little to no agreement among parents, teachers or anybody else on how schools should be teaching and what their expectations should be. This is because a lot of the assumptions underpinning the way schools have been run over the last 50 years have little to no evidence to support them, and a growing number of people now feel confident to challenged them, using the Internet for research and social media like blogs and tweets, to question them.

The case of Whole Language methods for teaching of reading, and the way the education establishment pushed them for years, in spite of there being no evidence for them, while ignoring all the psychological research about the effectiveness of phonics, is only the most flagrant example of how evidence that contradicts the predominant ethos in schools has been ignored.

That's why so many teacher bloggers are taking the time to blog and tweet about these issues, and to attend things like ResearchEd, where teachers can get together to listen to and discuss the evidence, and THEN make up their minds about what they think is the right way forward. Without that, "working in synergy" sounds to me too much like 'don't worry about the evidence, just keep on following the party line'.

I won't be reading your blog again, I switched off at the point that you patronisingly assumed that I might not know who Rousseau is.

Rousseau wanted children to be protected from pressures put on them by society so that whatever natural tendency the child had could develop. You say that he still influences education today, I'm not convinced.

Perhaps you have the 'wrong audience' because you are writing the 'wrong things'

Must try harder....

What is school for???

Strange Chabis you claimed to be a supply teacher and a Senco and a full time FE teacher and said you didn't have time to read reports from other professionals ... ??

Yes, Charis, those were my words. You said that I said that they shouldn't have time.

Refresher course on semantics and modal verbs needed.

"But when teachers throw themselves into these online campaigns to Get Things Changed Because They Know Best, I do wonder about the efforts they are putting in to their current classrooms"

Have to say, I think the strong implication of that is that teacher's shouldn't be taking the time to blog.

Whoops, please excuse misplaced apostrophe!

Whoops, please excuse misplaced apostrophe

OK, I thought the Rousseau sophomoric. So, I just skipped it. I was more interested in reading his perception of the job and how he understood his experiences. I've read Rousseau. I've never been a primary school teacher.

It's pretty generally accepted that Rousseau was influential in creating the romantic ideas about how children ought to learn that were later taken up by Dewey. Those ideas were floating around all through the 19th century. Obviously no one was taking every word Rousseau wrote as gospel, but that's not necessary for a thinker to have a strong influence on later ideas.

Yes, I read some Rousseau as part of a PPE degree. Just not interesting in QuirkyTeacher giving me his take on it.

drank