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Saturday, March 10, 2012

Daily Kos: why as a teacher I am not "objective"

Daily Kos: why as a teacher I am not "objective":


why as a teacher I am not "objective"

and before you have a cow and assume I am biased in my teaching, that is not the point of my statement.
I write only about how I approach my students.
I do not treat them"objectively."  I do not compare them to some arbitrary and thus artificial standard which is not relevant to them.
Insofar as i can, I attempt to treat each as subject in herself, her uniqueness.
In fact, I try to approach all of my fellow human beings that way.
Or to put it another way, in the words of George Fox, I am trying to answer that of God in each person.
Students are persons.  Not People - not a collective, even if a collection of individuals.
Oh, and I do believe that in many areas there is an absolute truth or reality, even if what often matters is the perception thereof by individuals.
So criticize me for not being "objective" towards my students.
I proudly claim to be "subjective."   And I do not intend to change that.
Peace.


The crisis of teacher satisfaction - what we can learn from the MetLife survey

Teachers are less satisfied with their careers; in the past two years there has been a significant decline in teachers’ satisfaction with their profession.  In one of the most dramatic findings of the report, teacher satisfaction has decreased by 15 points since the MetLife Survey of the American Teacher measured job satisfaction two years ago, now reaching the lowest level of job satisfaction seen in the survey  series  in more than two decades. This decline in teacher satisfaction is coupled with large increases in the number of teachers  who  indicate that they are likely to leave teaching for another occupation and in the number who do not feel their jobs are secure.
That is from the Executive Summary of The MetLife Survey of the American Teacher: Teachers, Parents and the Economy, conducted last year and just released.  Let me repeat several key parts of that paragraph:Teacher satisfaction has decreased by 15 points since MetLife last measured it two years ago and is now reaching the lowest level of job satisfaction seen in the survey  series  in more than two decades.
One simply need think of Wisconsin, Ohio, Florida, New Jersey and other states and cities like NY and Washington where public schools, public school teachers, and their unions have been under serious attack to begin to grasp the "why" of that drop in teacher satisfaction.
But is is more complicated than that.