Recruiting Professionals to become teachers

[maccatak11]

Neither Teacher or Professional can do anything about a disruptive student, because of the piss weak parents

I kind of agree with you here. I have never met a really disruptive student who comes from an excellent, supportive family who value the importance of education, but thats a different point entirely.

corporal punishment didn't hurt us mentally, we may have had a sore arse or hand for short time.

This is anecdotal only gunny. Lots of studies have demonstrated why this can be bad for a lot of people, and for education - stifling impulsivity, creativity and fun with the use of such punishments is pretty harmful.

I found the practical use of maths in real situations became easy.

How come you can't calculate outs or pot odds correctly then?

As an employer many kids leave school not prepared to enter the workforce, because their basic 3 R's are somewhat deficient, they maybe good with a calculator and a computor, and this has even disintergrated even futher with text talk.

Again these are different issues entirely. The three R's are outdated; its important to talk about literacy and numeracy in lots of different contexts. Obviously maths and english but also scientific literacy, ICT literacy and critical inquiry and reflection skills. Being good with a calculator and especially with a computer is almost (not quite, but almost) as important as general standards of literacy and numeracy. It has to be, otherwise you are defeating your own argument about kids being prepared for the real world.

things like behaviour management are small issues imho - they can be worked out with proper planning.

Wanna spend a day with my mate Strucky at Pt. Augusta high school? You will soon find out that these types of issues are bigger than knowledge of content.

[666HARPS666]

A ruler of Maths would be consecutive kings named Mathew MATHis numbers / equation

[rcon]

MATH

you are correct

[David]

Math or Maths - both are acceptable Harps.

They are both short for Mathematics anyway.
"Math" is a more American term, where as Maths is other places in the world.

[rcon]

Well said Matt.

I've 2 teachers in the family - mum and sister - and since becoming a dive master I've assisted on many courses in interesting conditions and many with students of varying motivations to be there. Even tho students have paid for the privileged of being there, the ability to communicate and find the right path to impart you experience can be challenging. You soon come to realise imparting knowledge is far different to spewing information up. Even in my 9-5 job it can be difficult to train people to do a job right, and these people are *paid* to be there. I've not been involved with many dive courses with under 20s there, but I've enough not to envy teachers their position!

This plan sounds fantastic in theory, but where its needed most (county and low socio-economic areas) I think it will fail both for the professionals and more importantly, will fail the students most in need.

[bennymacca]

i think you guys are getting caught up on the 8 weeks training bit.

the article says it is an 8 week intensive course followed by 2 years on the job training.

i cant be sure, but i would bet that the theory in the 8 week course would be exactly the same as the 12 month diploma of teaching. in a typical uni year, you are only there for 24 weeks. and if you are a teacher, then a significant part of that is prac. 1/3 of it? so lets say you now have 16 weeks of theory. at probably 15 contact hours a week.

so i dont think its a stretch at all to condense it down into 8 weeks.

so rather than it being a cut down, crash course, i think it would just be condensed for practical reasons - if a professional is switching careers, he cant be at uni for 12 months without pay, so it needs to be condensed to get them on the job quicker.

after 8 weeks, there would be no way that a professional would have to handle a class. this is where the 2 years on the job training comes in.



a question for the matthews


lets say, after 3 years of experience, i switched over to this course in order to teach maths and science.
after 2 years on the job training, i am now a fully qualified teacher.


now lets pick a classmate who decided to do pe teaching instead, and has graduated and been working for 5 years now.
this person is an excellent teacher, but, after 2 years of teaching pe, is forced to start teaching high level maths because there is a shortage. this person has next to no experience in maths besides high school.

who, out of these two people would be better qualified to teach year 12 maths? the person who has been in the system for 5 years, and knows no maths at all, or the person who has been in the system for 2 years, but was a professional engineer for 3 years.

what about 5 further years down the track when it is 7 years of teaching experience compared to 10 years? the long term payoff would be huge


i know that the above is probably an extreme case, but the point i am trying to get at is the long term payoffs of this type of scheme, not the short term troubles that you guys have correctly identified.

[rcon]

reply tomorrow

[maccatak11]

Your example of a PE teacher teaching year 12 maths simply would very very rarely happen, as i said in my long winded reply, the few experienced maths teachers do this job, its in the middle school where the biggest shortages are.

The benefits of somebody with "expert knowledge" in maths and science anyway, would be limited to probably 4 subjects. Specialist Maths, Maths Studies, Chemistry and Physics (not biology or maths applications or trade maths etc).

A good mate of mine, PE trained, had been teaching for a few years, and always had an interest in chemistry. One year they were short for a year 11 chem teacher, so my mate did the job, liked it and taught year 11 for a while. In the last few years he has taught year 12 chem and has done a fantastic job - he will teach year 12 chem for the next few years also.

His background knowledge of everything chemistry (and at a uni level) would be good, but not excellent, but his knowledge of every concept in the year 12 course is second to none. Does the fact that he did not study chem at uni hurt the success of his students? Overwhelmingly no - his students have achieved some brilliant results in year 12. And before you say "yes but if someone had a chemistry degree they could do it better", a recent graduate (in her second year of teaching - so not completely new either) DOES have a degree in chemistry. Her knowledge of all things science is excellent - so why don't they give her the year 12 chem kids (and why won't she get the year 12 chem kids any time soon)? Its because all of the other aspects of teaching add up to being much more important than subject knowledge.

Also, how many teachers could be reluctant to have somebody follow them around for two years? Having been the mentor to a few student teachers, i can tell you that it is LOTS of work. Very rewarding, but basically any non-teaching time during your week is spent giving feedback/assistance/ideas etc etc. And the student teachers coming to me will have generally a higher standard when they come to me in the first place. If you told me i had to take on a student teacher for two years, i would probably decline (there would have to be some excellent incentives for me to do this).

Again, good idea in theory, but maybe these resources and cash from the government would be better spent trying to attract more school leavers to study undergraduate degrees in maths or science teaching would be better.

(btw i would be interested to do a little research, as i believe a program similar to the one mentioned has been in place when trying to attract tradies to become technology teachers in the past. i will do some investigation)

[bennymacca]

fair points, in the situations where i can see it being beneficial, it would probably be limited to high level maths and science.

. And before you say "yes but if someone had a chemistry degree they could do it better", a recent graduate (in her second year of teaching - so not completely new either) DOES have a degree in chemistry

this is a different thing entirely. a degree in physics or chemistry or engineering would help, but wouldn't be a deal breaker. BUT someone who has EXPERIENCE in the field, not just a degree, would be a lot more valuable.

and at any rate, your mate clearly has a passion for the subject matter, which much more important than the knowledge itself.

His background knowledge of everything chemistry (and at a uni level) would be good, but not excellent, but his knowledge of every concept in the year 12 course is second to none. Does the fact that he did not study chem at uni hurt the success of his students? Overwhelmingly no - his students have achieved some brilliant results in year 12

so what you are saying is that an english teacher could teach year 11 physics better than a professional engineer (given the proper training)? would they have the same passion to see kids follow on and get degrees in maths and science? undoubtedly no.

if this was correct, there wouldn't be a shortage in maths and science teachers. as a specific example, your mate clearly has an interest and a passion for teaching chemistry. which makes him an ideal chem teacher, regardless of his past experience. but what if he had to teach maths instead? which he would have some knowledge, but little passion for the subject matter?

this is where the professionals would come into their own. provided they switched careers for the right reasons, most of them would have a passion for teaching, and an intimate knowledge of the subject matter. i would say that 90% of these people would take a pay cut to become a teacher. so they passion will be there, and that is very important, probably the most important aspect of this.

Also, how many teachers could be reluctant to have somebody follow them around for two years? Having been the mentor to a few student teachers, i can tell you that it is LOTS of work. Very rewarding, but basically any non-teaching time during your week is spent giving feedback/assistance/ideas etc etc. And the student teachers coming to me will have generally a higher standard when they come to me in the first place. If you told me i had to take on a student teacher for two years, i would probably decline (there would have to be some excellent incentives for me to do this).

yeah it would be pretty tough, and something that teachers would have to be compensated for.

(btw i would be interested to do a little research, as i believe a program similar to the one mentioned has been in place when trying to attract tradies to become technology teachers in the past. i will do some investigation)

good point, i would be interested to hear the results of this.

once again though, i think this would be a good thing, because the tradies clearly have a passion for this sort of thing, which helps them become a better teacher than someone else who is forced to teach tech because of a shortage.

[Bacon]

As someone who has (twice) attempted to get into teaching, I'll give my experiences.

I was always a good maths student and did well in Chemistry as well, and after 5 years of working in Finance/Office work, I thought about studying again. While quitting my job in October, for the new Uni year in February, wasn't smart I was pretty keen. Then, the course I took meant NO SCHOOL ACCESS until 3rd year. The first two years was spent taking University level Science & Maths. I quit after 6 months, cos I wanted student contact. After all, that's why I went into teaching.

Worked again for 4 years, and decided to go back to study part-time. My work was very helpful in giving me the time off, and the course I did actually had student contact in Semester 1 (for FT students). I missed the information session, so stuffed up this. I chose middle primary/upper secondary teaching, and I was in a class making play-do, and cutting up magazines. I felt the course wasn't actually tailored to the course I had taken. Maybe this was my mistake, but I'm sure I had other students with me in the same course.

Unfortunately, I got a promotion, and couldn't handle the extra responsibilites & studying part-time, and being a Fortnightly Father didn't help, so I stopped after a year.

Having done 1 semester of Learning Development, if they had the right people and the right information, it would be great towards people who were coming out of the workforce (hell, if this gets off the ground, I'll look into it although I'm not a degree holder). I actually used the information in my workplace.