Well everyone it's been an interesting week here on small perversions.
My general issue being: when people take actions or decisions that affect/concern the lives of others without really putting any thought into it. I think this issue was more than adequately addressed here on this blog. I know I personally gained a lot of insight on this issue and have a more developed stand, I also think an absolutely beautiful poem (and this is a certified editor speaking) came out of it.
I'd like to thank the people I care about for speaking their minds with their myriad of differing opinions. Your differences are why you are all my friends. And in the spirit of keeping open debate going , and of getting the fucking ad for the circumcision web page off the top of my blog (yeesh, how appreciative am I of customized, automatic blog advertising? Need to get my own site) I am setting up a new little topic that I got from the glorious globe and mail today.
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031011/PARENTS//
The article says that in Philadelphia the schools are now handing out Parent Report Cards with the student ones. This means that on the student report card is a rating of their parents. Yep. It is a report card dealing with whether the child has been satisfactorily cared with such categories for health, being well fed, attendance, cleanliness, completed homework etc.
Okay, my thoughts. While many parents out there need to be given a spanking (and not in that good way), I don't know that their kids should see how their teachers rate their parents. However, I'm not sure what would be a good solution for schools getting more involved with the parents, as I know as a teacher you see things going on in the students homes that you wish you could do something about. But at what point does the home life become the business of a public institution? Something else really irked me, I am not sure how it works in the States, but I don't recall ever filling out an evaluation form for any teachers of my high school or elementary classes so why does the school get to judge the parents but the students don't get to judge the school? If the schools really feel it necessary to get attendance up (and I have many problems with the overly strict attendance laws they talk about in the article, but then again they are talking about inner city kids so the problems might be different from the ones I know of) then they should spend some more time fixing the "quality of teachers" problem before they start going after the private lives of others.
I'm not sure how to start anything, but when I'm through living la vida loca I'd like to do something about getting teacher evaluations into the schools. I think that yes, some kids would just be mean so you'd have to be careful with them, but at the same time there are many problems that come from not having them.
1. That good teachers never get any real reward or praise that tells them "yes you are doing a better than average job"
2. The bad stuff never changes. Not that evaluation forms would really create massive changes (I sadly know this much about the public school system) but at least they'd point out some of the major problems. And they might actually help average teachers to figure out how to become great ones.
When I was in high school I went to a higher up and complained about an absolutely heinous teacher (Mrs. T-bone for those of you who'll recall). The VP made me and this other girl sit in a room with her (didn't call our parents about to stand with us and just directly took us to her after we made the complaint to him) and tell her directly why we didn't like her. Of course, she just got defensive and nothing changed and she then totally hated me after this so I ended up protesting by not going to class for the last term. I think the way the VP handled this was totally inappropriate.
Luckily I had a fabulous French teacher the next year and she tried to get the previous teacher to give her the work I had missed so I could finish it and not have an Incomplete for French 11. The other teacher just wouldn't give it to her. Now I had a 98% in the French 12 class and luckily for me the fab teacher was the head of French (which I hadn't known in grade 11) so she just told me the other teacher was a cow and changed my grade for French 11. But still, the whole experience was nuts - it should never have happened that way but kids in high schools don't really have many recourses (or at least they aren't told about them) for complaining about bad teachers.
If anyone has any ideas/opinions about the evaluation forms or if you want to comment on the parent report cards, please feel free.
And please check out this not-well-proofread but interesting page from a New York teacher
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
My general issue being: when people take actions or decisions that affect/concern the lives of others without really putting any thought into it. I think this issue was more than adequately addressed here on this blog. I know I personally gained a lot of insight on this issue and have a more developed stand, I also think an absolutely beautiful poem (and this is a certified editor speaking) came out of it.
I'd like to thank the people I care about for speaking their minds with their myriad of differing opinions. Your differences are why you are all my friends. And in the spirit of keeping open debate going , and of getting the fucking ad for the circumcision web page off the top of my blog (yeesh, how appreciative am I of customized, automatic blog advertising? Need to get my own site) I am setting up a new little topic that I got from the glorious globe and mail today.
http://www.globeandmail.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/TPStory/LAC/20031011/PARENTS//
The article says that in Philadelphia the schools are now handing out Parent Report Cards with the student ones. This means that on the student report card is a rating of their parents. Yep. It is a report card dealing with whether the child has been satisfactorily cared with such categories for health, being well fed, attendance, cleanliness, completed homework etc.
Okay, my thoughts. While many parents out there need to be given a spanking (and not in that good way), I don't know that their kids should see how their teachers rate their parents. However, I'm not sure what would be a good solution for schools getting more involved with the parents, as I know as a teacher you see things going on in the students homes that you wish you could do something about. But at what point does the home life become the business of a public institution? Something else really irked me, I am not sure how it works in the States, but I don't recall ever filling out an evaluation form for any teachers of my high school or elementary classes so why does the school get to judge the parents but the students don't get to judge the school? If the schools really feel it necessary to get attendance up (and I have many problems with the overly strict attendance laws they talk about in the article, but then again they are talking about inner city kids so the problems might be different from the ones I know of) then they should spend some more time fixing the "quality of teachers" problem before they start going after the private lives of others.
I'm not sure how to start anything, but when I'm through living la vida loca I'd like to do something about getting teacher evaluations into the schools. I think that yes, some kids would just be mean so you'd have to be careful with them, but at the same time there are many problems that come from not having them.
1. That good teachers never get any real reward or praise that tells them "yes you are doing a better than average job"
2. The bad stuff never changes. Not that evaluation forms would really create massive changes (I sadly know this much about the public school system) but at least they'd point out some of the major problems. And they might actually help average teachers to figure out how to become great ones.
When I was in high school I went to a higher up and complained about an absolutely heinous teacher (Mrs. T-bone for those of you who'll recall). The VP made me and this other girl sit in a room with her (didn't call our parents about to stand with us and just directly took us to her after we made the complaint to him) and tell her directly why we didn't like her. Of course, she just got defensive and nothing changed and she then totally hated me after this so I ended up protesting by not going to class for the last term. I think the way the VP handled this was totally inappropriate.
Luckily I had a fabulous French teacher the next year and she tried to get the previous teacher to give her the work I had missed so I could finish it and not have an Incomplete for French 11. The other teacher just wouldn't give it to her. Now I had a 98% in the French 12 class and luckily for me the fab teacher was the head of French (which I hadn't known in grade 11) so she just told me the other teacher was a cow and changed my grade for French 11. But still, the whole experience was nuts - it should never have happened that way but kids in high schools don't really have many recourses (or at least they aren't told about them) for complaining about bad teachers.
If anyone has any ideas/opinions about the evaluation forms or if you want to comment on the parent report cards, please feel free.
And please check out this not-well-proofread but interesting page from a New York teacher
http://www.spinninglobe.net/againstschool.htm
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home