Re: [Phys-L] teaching credentials +- qualifications +- administration

[Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net>]

Did you read my later posts?  Just because Princeton grads hold impeccable creds and have the knowledge doesn't mean they, personally, have the aptitude to teach well anywhere.    We are talking past each other... you are a college prof, while I come from the trenches for over 30 years.  So, just listen to what I am saying about high school, teachers and teaching in general.  

Successful teachers must possess a lot more than just similar academic or socioeconomic credentials.  Successful teachers must have the right personality and ability to hold a class, maintain discipline and control, be interesting (yes... there's a lot of that necessary in high school teaching), and maintain focus despite some rather obvious distractions ( p.a. calls from the administration, students pulled out for various reasons, lesson plans that go awry, fielding off topic questions, and a myriad of other things that you in university do not have to deal with.).   There are so many things that mentors have to get prospective teachers from outside the field to understand and do... eyes in back of your head when someone in the front of the room is texting while you are in the back of the lab instructing;  knowing when to separate two boys who are about to go at it over some girl;  some kid who tries to show you up because his father is an engineer so the kid thinks he knows it all.    These things can happen anywhere, not just in the city.  

On Oct 20, 2013, at 2:05 PM, Bernard Cleyet wrote:

> On 2013, Oct 20, , at 05:52, Marty Weiss <martweiss@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> > No.. you are 180 deg. from what I was trying to convey.  It has nothing to do with statistics.  Remember who the students "are" not how much money their parents make.
>
> I thought most of the studies correlated socio-economic class w/ school success.   Parents income is who the students are.
>
>
>
> > These are teenagers who take 6 or 7 classes, not just physics or chemistry.  They enjoy their video games, sports, girls or boys (depending).  They may or may not even like some of the subjects they have to take.  Plus they have to pass some cockamamie state test to graduate.  So here comes the BS in physics from Pronceton.  WHAM!  What a rude awakenibg.  The degree means nothing in the high school environment.  Classroom control, knowledge of the teenage mind and emotions, keeping the room clean and enticing, satisfying some principal who may or may not even know any science or understand what it is all about to teach science,... all of these things mean just as much as all the subject knowledge the university gave them.   Just because a person has a degree from an Ivy doesn't mean they can teach high school students. 
>
> This is what I thought you meant, and since the Yardly HS is v. not inner city, I thought a Princeton grad. would be a good match, similar to the "upper" stream in 50's Santa Barbara, where the students wouldn't even dream of the behaviour common now.
>
> See next post, later.
>
> > Teaching is an art that not everyone has the talent to do.  The attitude that anyone with a top tier degree can enter a high school and become the savior of a physics program is why the teaching profession is filled with TFA people who do it for 3 years and leave;  why the turnover rate for 5 year teachers is approaching 50%;  why everyone who ever sat behind a desk thinks they can teach kids;  why professors with their huge lecture halls and myriads of TA's and a captive audience think they can suddenly produce tons of successful teachers better than the rest of us who made careers of understanding the thousands of teenagers who passed through our doors.  
>
>
> bc,  v. shocked when he subbed at N. Salinas HS.
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