Political Crossfire Forums

Open question to anyone interested in answering. What would you have preferred a high school class to be like? What are some problems you have with education in general? Rant to me. When my students reviewed me, almost all said they loved the class, but I want to incorporate more inputs. I'm a physics teacher who always aspires to achieve maximum results across the board.

Teaching is easy- all you have to do is follow the teacher's edition of the textbook and youre done.

To Hyperion, HS was a while ago so I don't really recall many specifics other than overall it was boring and the pace was slooooooow. There were exceptions, where I thrived was in the college setting, much more on your own, here read these chapters, do these problems, show up in class and we'll go over them and I'll give you a primer on the next section... rinse and repeat. If you can't keep up, buh bye. We were on the quarter system (3 quarters vs 2 semesters during the "normal" school year), seriously we covered and learned as much in a quarter as it would have taken an entire school year in HS. Much more to my liking.

Even now with AP and other "advanced" classes the pace is set to the lowest common denominator with the goal of presenting just enough info so everyone has the capability of succeeding, failure isn't an option. There is no structure to allow those that can excel and move beyond the rest of the pack to do so and reward them for doing so. With the importance placed on grades for scholarships/college entrance we also have put in place a system where students avoid risk by taking less challenging courses so they can get the easy A and stay competitive. As a parent (my kids are all out of HS now) I always told them to take the hardest courses that were available as I'd be much happier with them if they got a B in a "hard" class vs an A in an easier class because the goal ought to be to learn as much as possible not get the best GPA. I always used my best friend growing up as an example, brilliant guy, but wouldn't take typing (an elective back then) because he didn't want to get a B in typing and screw up his 4.0. He still can't type for a damn and IMO it has turned into a critical skill that he would have been well served to learn.

I'd much rather see students ranked by the amount of material they can master by the time they leave HS (grades aside) rather than here are the minimums you need to pass and rank them on GPA with the minimum being the acceptable standard.

I wish my teachers would just leave me the f**k alone. I'll get good grades, ill pass the AP test...so get off my dick about attendance and shit.

Socratic method. Be a fun teacher - joke and chide but know how to make stuff interesting and memorable. Come down hard on sh*t that's out of bounds.

Expect more from the students than the students expect of themselves. It helps them.

Slipping in bits of black-people slang here and there really helps me with my inner city K-2nd graders. Also, subtle pants-sagging.

thas wussup