Capt. Al Haynes sorta OT.

"Dennis O'Connor" wrote in message
...
In NYC it is common for the head janitor to be over a hundred grand...

DAmn!

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote


When I was in school there were teachers able to motivate almost any
student and teachers that couldn't motivate anyone.

Matt


When did you graduate from high school? Not recently, I'll bet.

How do you measure motivational abilities?

It is all objective. I teach carpentry. I am the only one teaching that
subject at my school. How am I to be measured against other teachers? How
do teachers of other subjects get students into their classes, equally
capable of being motivated? The different levels of students are in
different classes, to appropriately challenge their abilities, or to bring
up performance levels of lower performing students. How do you compare the
teacher's motivational abilities, now?

You will say, you "just know" who the teachers are that are the better
motivators. That is simply too objective, and too able for unfairness to
work its way in.

There are no easy answers. When you have them, come and be our state
superintendent.
--
Jim in NC

In article ,
"Morgans" wrote:

In NYC it is common for the head janitor to be over a hundred grand...

DAmn!

The actual job title isn't "head janitor." It's something like "Chief
Engineer, Physical Plant" or something like that.

Morgans wrote:
"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote



When I was in school there were teachers able to motivate almost any
student and teachers that couldn't motivate anyone.


Matt



When did you graduate from high school? Not recently, I'll bet.

Not recently. 1977. However, there are still good teachers and bad
teachers and students who can be motivated. This has been true since
the time of the Greeks.


How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.


It is all objective. I teach carpentry. I am the only one teaching that
subject at my school. How am I to be measured against other teachers? How
do teachers of other subjects get students into their classes, equally
capable of being motivated? The different levels of students are in
different classes, to appropriately challenge their abilities, or to bring
up performance levels of lower performing students. How do you compare the
teacher's motivational abilities, now?

If only it were all objective. Much of it is subjective, but that is
life. If you are a teacher that doesn't know the difference between
objective and subjective, then I can make a pretty quick assessment of
your competence. :-)

You measure the performance of students after they graduate from high
school and move to college or trade school. If all of your carpentry
students go on to carpentry vocational school and flunk out, then I'd
not rate you very highly as a carpentry teacher at the high school
level. I'm not claiming that performance evaluations are easy or
pristinely objective, but they are better than using "seat time" as an
evaluation metric. I evaluate a dozen scientists and engineers every
year. They all do different things in different areas of expertise.
However, I solicit feedback from their peers, from their subordinates
and combine that with my own observations. Not a perfect system, but
far better than using service time.


You will say, you "just know" who the teachers are that are the better
motivators. That is simply too objective, and too able for unfairness to
work its way in.

That would be too subjective. I agree that isn't the best way to do it,
but there are many other tools to use to get a reasonably accurate and
fair assessment.


There are no easy answers. When you have them, come and be our state
superintendent.

Never said they were easy. I'm not looking for easy, I'm looking for
better. Almost anything is better than using service time. That is the
easy way out. Requires no work at all on the part of the
administrators. What a cop out.


Matt

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:



How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.

That doesn't always work. Last year in my classes I had borderline mentally
retarded students, students with autism, students with emotional disturbances,
students with memory disorders, etc. Even if they were highly motivated during
class sometimes the information turned to vapor by the time they got to their
next class. Kids with safty issues at home don't do homework, don't retain
information and tend not to do very well in school no matter what class they are
in. Kids who spend a few weeks during the term in juvie lock up tend not to
score real well on the tests either.

Margy

Russell Kent wrote:

Margy Natalie wrote:

REALLY?!?!? Send them to Northern VA where we had lots of unfilled positions
last year with subs filling in. For quite a while 1/3 of our special ed teachers
were on emergengy certificates. We can't find enough teachers to fill the rooms.

Well maybe that's your problem then: you're supposed to fill the rooms with
STUDENTS plus ONE teacher. :-)

On a different subject, I was considering having Harbor Freight drop ship a bunch
of the cheap stuff (like the $3 voltmeters) to some worthy school science
departments. Know of any such departments? Know what's on their wish lists?


Find a school and contact the science department chair. They will be very pleased with
you!

Margy

Margy Natalie wrote:

"Matthew S. Whiting" wrote:



How do you measure motivational abilities?

By how well the students in a given teacher's class learn and perform.


That doesn't always work. Last year in my classes I had borderline mentally
retarded students, students with autism, students with emotional disturbances,
students with memory disorders, etc. Even if they were highly motivated during
class sometimes the information turned to vapor by the time they got to their
next class. Kids with safty issues at home don't do homework, don't retain
information and tend not to do very well in school no matter what class they are
in. Kids who spend a few weeks during the term in juvie lock up tend not to
score real well on the tests either.

Nothing works always. However, I think that basing pay on service time
is just plain wrong. It is just like communism. You get the same
reward whether you work hard or coast along.

Merit pay systems aren't perfect as I said earlier, and they aren't
completely objective either. You still need administrators to use
judgement in cases like you mention above. However, warts and all, I
think pay for performance is simply better than pay for seat warming time.


Matt

You are clueless.
See Ya - Not

Matthew S. Whiting wrote:
Newps wrote:

A year ago December the teachers in our district went on strike for
better pay and benefits. The conventional wisdom is that your typical
public school teacher is lucky to make $30K after many hard years of
teaching. Since teachers salaries are a matter of public record a
full page ad was taken out in the Sunday paper the first weekend of
the strike. Every teacher in the school district was listed, by name,
and how much they made for that current school year. Turns out the
average teacher salary is $41.5 here with 25-30% of the teachers
making more than $50K per year. Starting pay was mid $20's. You
could literally see the support for the teachers evaporate on that
Sunday. A settlement was reached shortly there after. A teacher
strike will not ever happen here again.


Did the teachers then post the salaries of the administration personnel?
That would be very eye opening...

That was also in the ad however it wasn't relavant because people
weren't complaing about the number of administrators or their pay,
before or after the ad.



Even the salaries you list above are way below the average in my area
for jobs that require a master's degree.

That depends where you live obviously. What was finally driven home to
a lot of people was the fact that simply by spending more dollars does
not make education better.

Newps wrote in message news:sckMb.28303$xy6.71345@attbi_s02...
Matthew S. Whiting wrote:
Newps wrote:

A year ago December the teachers in our district went on strike for
better pay and benefits. The conventional wisdom is that your typical
public school teacher is lucky to make $30K after many hard years of
teaching. Since teachers salaries are a matter of public record a
full page ad was taken out in the Sunday paper the first weekend of
the strike. Every teacher in the school district was listed, by name,
and how much they made for that current school year. Turns out the
average teacher salary is $41.5 here with 25-30% of the teachers
making more than $50K per year. Starting pay was mid $20's. You
could literally see the support for the teachers evaporate on that
Sunday. A settlement was reached shortly there after. A teacher
strike will not ever happen here again.


Did the teachers then post the salaries of the administration personnel?
That would be very eye opening...

That was also in the ad however it wasn't relavant because people
weren't complaing about the number of administrators or their pay,
before or after the ad.



Even the salaries you list above are way below the average in my area
for jobs that require a master's degree.

That depends where you live obviously. What was finally driven home to
a lot of people was the fact that simply by spending more dollars does
not make education better.

Amen to that..... Now, As Rodney King said " can we all just get along? "