NationStates Jolt Archive

Does anyone remember a while ago my post about how I found out from a teacher friend of mine that they can't score kids lower than a 50 here and that suddenly 50 is a D?

I also mentioned, I think, that the kids in her class were pretty much illiterate. Well, I was talking to her Sunday and she told me that she has to go back for her teacher certification test because she has failed it 4 times, apparently you don't have to be a certified teacher to sub. here..... well, anyway after I got over the shock of her failing the test 4 times, she gave me a letter of hers to proofread.

All I can say is if the teacher can't read or write, how the heck is she supposed to teach the kid?

and I would like to know from anyone who has any idea at all, how the heck does someone get a master's degree without basic writing skills and a shoddy vocabulary?

I just really don't understand.

I am calling today to find out how I might volunteer my time with the local literacy program, because not only does it annoy me that there are people who can't read, it's also very sad to me, my life would suck if I couldn't read. :(

and I would like to know from anyone who has any idea at all, how the heck does someone get a master's degree without basic writing skills and a shoddy vocabulary?

I just really don't understand.When I was doing homework help with the Caritas, we had a boy that had serious trouble reading because his relatives would always do his homework for him, not knowing the negative side effects that would cause. If teachers here were more lenient, he would have been out of second grade by then.

It's appalling here in HK. I'm not entirely sure, but from what I seen I can only surmise that you don't need a teaching cert to teach here. In NZ, you wouldn't be allowed in the classroom without one.

it annoys me now that people ask me if I have a teaching certificate when they find out that I homeschool.

she only failed last time by 3 points, but still she has sentences like

In regards to the letter regarding the mediating circumstances regarding the stuff with schooling that I paid for and attended that needs to be question answers brought forth.

:confused:

then I had to argue with her for at least 20 minutes that she probably meant "mitigating circumstances" :headbang:

it annoys me now that people ask me if I have a teaching certificate when they find out that I homeschool.

she only failed last time by 3 points, but still she has sentences like

In regards to the letter regarding the mediating circumstances regarding the stuff with schooling that I paid for and attended that needs to be question answers brought forth.

:confused:

then I had to argue with her for at least 20 minutes that she probably meant "mitigating circumstances" :headbang:

That is pretty depressing.

What's her Master's Degree in? Origami?

That is pretty depressing.

What's her Master's Degree in? Origami?
I had to email her to find out....



Master of Arts in Education with a Specialization in Teacher Education for Elementary Licensure

Does anyone remember a while ago my post about how I found out from a teacher friend of mine that they can't score kids lower than a 50 here and that suddenly 50 is a D?

I also mentioned, I think, that the kids in her class were pretty much illiterate. Well, I was talking to her Sunday and she told me that she has to go back for her teacher certification test because she has failed it 4 times, apparently you don't have to be a certified teacher to sub. here..... well, anyway after I got over the shock of her failing the test 4 times, she gave me a letter of hers to proofread.

All I can say is if the teacher can't read or write, how the heck is she supposed to teach the kid?

and I would like to know from anyone who has any idea at all, how the heck does someone get a master's degree without basic writing skills and a shoddy vocabulary?

I just really don't understand.


It gets even worse than that in some places Smunk. Principals are the ones that push for non certified subs because it makes their job easy. They can just pick from a pool of people who got their degree based on life's experiences, affirmative action, or got gold stars promoting the notion that it was acceptable to use education as a tool for social change. I call it the "California Concept", but it is no means limited to there. In D.C. 40% of the principals are now not certified to do their job, which falls in line with the progression of the "dumbing down" process, this time in favor of making life easier and more profitable for their respective school board administrators. It is easier for them to promote a like minded idiot, than it is to find qualified help, and cheaper too.
Fortunately this is all changing, and even though we in Kansas have the sixth highest educational system in the country, we are replacing those responsible for this sort of thing, at break neck speed.

I had to email her to find out....



Master of Arts in Education with a Specialization in Teacher Education for Elementary Licensure

Being serious... that sounds like a joke... it sounds like her course qualifies her to teach TEACHERS? And yet, she has problems with kids?

I need to find out where you get a degree like that from... and whether you actually have to attend or anything... or if you can just send them your money and a forwarding address to send the 'qualification' to...?

Being serious... that sounds like a joke... it sounds like her course qualifies her to teach TEACHERS? And yet, she has problems with kids?

I need to find out where you get a degree like that from... and whether you actually have to attend or anything... or if you can just send them your money and a forwarding address to send the 'qualification' to...?
okay, so she says that she is "finishing her masters" online, through University of Phoenix, I know she got her bachelors at the local private college though, I really don't see how she graduated highschool like this though.

I had to do some "social experiment" for my HS sociology class, so I went around to 2 high schools in my area and had English teachers of different levels of Senior English (IMPACT [remedial], regular, Honors, and Advanced Placement) grade 2 essays: one was a short (less than one page) thing tHat Basiklee red lyk dis. The second was an example review of Macbeth that I, with permission, borrowed from book on how to write essays. (The book claimed that the essay had recieved an A in a Yale writing course.)
The results from this experiment were disgusting.

The second essay recieved an A from all 8 teachers (Well, one of the IMPACT teachers gave it an A+ and a sticker)

The near illegible essay got a B from both remedial courses, a B and a C in regular, a D in both Honors courses, and it only failed in the AP classes (both). (The teacher from my own school gave it a 5% for "pity points")

An "essay" that had NO coherence, might have been written by a student who used English as a second language, and contained disgusting levels of "cyber speak" and "1337" actually PASSED in both HONORS level classes!

Hey, y'all better pipe down or NERVUN is going to come in here all selfrighteously indignant. :rolleyes:

"Among the community of people who have backing in scientific methods and use objective principles, [we see] a real difference in standards education research that appears in education journals and what appears in psychology and science journals."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"University schools of education are held in low regard by others in the arts and sciences."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"Teacher licensing programs are cash cows. ... The schools are interested in filling slots instead of trying to raise low standards. The departments are often segregated and taught by professors of education who've gone through the same (unscientific) program."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"[Education] students don't get the same grounding in psychology, linguistics, language development or neuropsychology."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"Whole language made its way into schools with no strong research backing. In fact, the tenets of whole language were actively contradicted by reading psychologists for 25 years. It's appalling."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"There is no relation between what is practiced in a classroom and what is validated. It is unusual for consumers in education to decide what they are going to do and what materials they are going to buy based on independent, scientific validation."
-- Louisa Moats, National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

"We have too many teachers who are graduating with degrees in education. They go to schools of education or they major in education, and they graduate knowing something called education, but they don't know a subject."
-- Historian David McCullogh

"Too many teachers are not qualified in the subject they're teaching. Too many states do not test to make sure teachers know what they're teaching. Too many states that do test set the bar for passing way too low."
-- Rod Paige, U.S. Secretary of Education, June 2002

"[Most state certification systems] assume that teacher quality is best attained when the state heavily regulates employment, requiring teachers to take numerous education courses before they can be considered for a teaching job. ... [But] many education courses lack academic substance and none is highly predictive of success. Yet they dilute prospective teachers' undergraduate education by displacing academic courses."
-- Leo Klagholz, former New Jersey Commissioner of Education, Education Next, Summer 2002

"How do kids learn to read? What goes wrong when they don't? How do you prevent it? And what do you do about it when you don't get to them early enough to prevent it? That should be the content that teachers and others in education actually acquire. Do they acquire it? No. You know, [B]if there was any piece of legislation that I could pass, it would be to blow up colleges of education. I know that's not politically correct. Those are some of the most resistant, recalcitrant places you will ever get to. And I'm not sure it's going to get a heck of a lot better, because again philosophy and belief drive how their folks are taught and how their folks come out and teach others."
-- Dr. Reid Lyon, November 18, 2002

"If I were seriously ill and in desperate need of a physician, and if by some miracle I could secure either Hippocrates, the Father of Medicine, or a young doctor fresh from the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, with his equipment comprising the latest developments in the technologies and techniques of medicine, I should, of course, take the young doctor. On the other hand, if I were commissioned to find a teacher for a group of adolescent boys and if, by some miracle, I could secure wither Socrates or the latest Ph.D. from Teachers College, with his equipment of the latest technologies and techniques of teaching, with all due respect to the College that employs me and to my students, I am fairly certain that I would jump at the chance to get Socrates."
-- William C. Bagley, Education and Emergent Man (1938), quoted by Diane Ravitch in Left Back.

"I have met more school teachers recently who ... wouldn't know a verb if it was as big as a table."
-- Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

It's like they say...those who can't do, teach.
And those who can't teach, teach P.E.
But that's irrelevant.

If people had to hand in their Master's Degree work handwritten, I bet that wouldn't be much of a problem anymore.

The real problem are all those spellchecking features. I mean, honestly, who of you has used the spell-check when you TG someone?

If you can't write, learn it or don't write.

I can totally see your frustration, though, Smunkee. I just spent 5 weeks teaching English to German highschool students in an internship and boy, do they not know how to write. Jeez, some of them have such a bad handwriting, they can't even read out their own scribbling.

And instead of reading books way too many kids grow up in front of the telly or video games. Not that I didn't watch and play (probably way too much, too), but I had someone to check on what I was doing and what I was up to...

That's the other problem... Parents don't care anymore or have too much to do to actually take care of their kids - and all of the sudden it's up to the teachers to make up for it? Uh-uh. Screw that! To educate is one thing, but I ain't raising others' kids when they f_cked it up.