Posts by jadetinker85

They're probably working part-time.

Susan James said:Yeah, we have this computer science class that the school keeps announcing only to cancel three competitions in a row—or, let's be honest, it's mostly just kids playing video games. Still, she can go ahead and claim she was the one who successfully brought the curriculum to life. And now, on top of all that, she’s actually acting offended because they're cutting back on the computer science hours.

If she were actually in power—though thankfully, the President was polite enough to give her a nod of thanks instead—things would look very different. 🙏 🙏We probably would have transitioned to full-day schooling by 2021. She actually finished drafting her strategic roadmap back in 2020 and had already started all the prep work for the CN.
I ended up skipping that one because my kid was already a bit too old for it, but I’ve heard people talking about how during her term, teachers at the local elementary schools had to deal with all that remote learning chaos. They were basically expected to send home piles of creative assignments via email, acting like they were running an after-school program from their living rooms—all without ever checking if the families actually had reliable high-speed internet at home. It felt like she just assumed every parent was working remotely and had nothing better to do than spend the entire day playing school with their kids. For those of us with children in public school, it honestly felt like we were stuck in an endless cycle of supervised playtime instead of actual parenting.

One silver lining to the pandemic was that it actually hit the pause button on everything happening around the CN. My only real concern is how much of that budget has ballooned since those documents were first drafted back in 2020. It feels like we’re now in a position where they have to rush through spending it all during this 23/24 cycle for what they're calling an "experiment"—even though, if you ask me, it doesn't feel like an experiment at all.

I just checked Divjakica's profile; this whole full-day schooling nonsense is entirely her own agenda.

hiddenseal14 said:In all seriousness, the concept of full-day schooling has been a recurring theme in every single education strategy and policy document floating around since 2008. It doesn't matter if you're looking at Republican platforms or Democratic ones; the goal remains the same. Yet, somehow, Fuchs is the only one with the "good fortune" of actually having the budget to make it happen.

If Divjak were the one running the show right now, we’d already have this program implemented in every single school by the ninth month of the year, regardless of the circumstances. Honestly, who could even criticize her? She forced computer science into every elementary school curriculum with more authority than any elective subject has ever seen—mandating it for every grade level simultaneously and forcing every single school to offer it.

Great. And I suppose the growing number of people working afternoon shifts in retail, service, or hospitality should just plan on seeing their kids on the weekends?

Sure, but everyone’s going to be pulling in over 10 $0.00 an hour if they get that 4.5% raise, right? Someone should ask the referees what their take is on that. ☕

hiddenseal14 said:1. And who exactly is claiming that absolutely nothing in the Congress proposal is any good? We had 1,000 people participate in the public consultation out of 60,000 total in the education sector. Out of 3,000 comments, 80% just say the Congress plan is "bland" or "I won't do it"—what kind of actual argument is that? It's completely worthless.

2. Then there’s the claim that they want to work only 4 hours a day because otherwise they won't have time for a private life. That is also a pathetic excuse. If you want that much free time, you might as well not work at all so you can have time for everything.

3. Or the idea that kids will be stuck in school all day. Kids are already in school until 2 or 3 PM without even getting lunch, so that argument is equally nonsense.

4. "Parents will complain about this and that..." Please. Most parents actually benefit from this setup, so that's just another useless complaint.

5. "Teachers will quit en masse." Oh, really? I see. Maybe if you're living in New York City you can afford to be picky about your job, but in the rest of the country, you can't—and education is still an area where people pull rank just to get their foot in the door.

6. There will be plenty of unqualified teachers because there are plenty right now. Honestly, in the Los Angeles area, everyone is highly qualified except for the physics teachers. Even in the most remote areas. Believe me, I worked there for years.

By the way, I am a linguist myself. Greetings, 🙂

Times have changed, and we need to accept that. We aren't going to work 20 hours a week in schools anymore. We aren't going to be paid the exact same amount, whether someone teaches 16 hours or 22 hours. Those who work more should earn more. Period. That's just how it works. What we ought to be doing is pointing out specific organizational details that need changing rather than just screaming "I won't do it!" like a bunch of whiners.

Besides, this is just a pilot program for 50 schools; it isn't the final version of the Congress plan that will be rolled out to every school nationwide in four years.

Could you elaborate on that? How can someone working in a school even say that? What 4 hours are we talking about, especially if you're a language teacher?

Counter the arguments made by the American Psychological Association, all of which are backed by research findings.

Sarah Hall53 said:It’s not even like the European Union actually handed us any cash—instead, our own leaders just went out and racked up this massive mountain of debt. And now they're trying to shove this absolute disaster of a reform down our throats, all just so they can make us look like better little rule-followers for the OECD.

Wait, what? 😲

William Nelson4 said:I gotta wonder, where the hell are the unions in all this?

Regarding point number one, they seriously need to address the whole classroom teacher issue. AT&T is basically pushing those roles onto other staff members while only offering a measly 2.5% bump to the base pay.?!
That’s easily the absolute worst part of being a teacher. In most other places, it doesn't even work like this—the counselors handle all the parent communication, and administrators take care of the paperwork side of things.

Thank God I don't work in an elementary school. My kid's heading off to college soon anyway, but man, I just can't stand watching this total mess they're cooking up without even asking the people actually affected by it.

Personally, I think AT&T should only be for grades 1 through 4, and even then, only for the teachers who actually want it and need it.
The only decent thing about this whole situation seems to be the lunch program. Though, I guess that only works if the food is actually good and free for everyone.

That should have been the actual reform.

Susan James said:Are we talking about your specific union representative for teachers, or just someone else from your union?
How can they be so sure your administration (what a great word, by the way!) won't actually post a job opening?

I'm a union rep for the teachers. Management wants to stay on everyone's good side, especially the elementary teachers—they're tough negotiators.

Susan James said:I really think we should bring something like this to the States, too.

As for the unions, where exactly are they when you actually need them? 🤔
We’re currently in the middle of negotiations with the ruling party. 🤔 I think they're probably just waiting for the Easter Bunny bonuses to be officially approved first. From what I’ve heard through the grapevine, they aren't actually allowed to start negotiating raises, salaries, or working conditions until that's all settled.

Our union rep basically said there's no point getting worked up over something that might not happen for another four years. Like, who cares what happens by then?

Years back, we had two kids slash the tires on a coworker's car. Fast forward a few years later, and they're basically camping out in state prisons. Someone really dropped the ball on early intervention.

wanderingbadger44 said:We just need actual punishments for bullies, plain and simple.

Why didn't the kid being extorted speak up?
It's not like he was blind or stupid. He's likely wondering what would actually happen if he did. Would some CIA agent pull him aside and say, "Oh, now, that wasn't very nice! You should apologize!"? We all know how that goes.

The reality is, the kid just got a stern warning and life went on. We have kids collecting warnings like they're trading cards. For a troublemaker, a warning doesn't mean anything at all.

Bryan Wells11 said:Exactly. But anyone working outside the system doesn't realize the sheer number of combinations we deal with here. We have to navigate bizarre situations and incredibly nonsensical behavior. There are endless life stories and circumstances that leave our hands tied, forcing us to operate within extremely narrow margins just to manage everything. Honestly, I get overwhelmed by how problematic this gets. I constantly wonder why I, as an English teacher, am expected to play psychologist, social worker, priest, and whatnot. Why isn't this being handled by the people actually trained for it?

That's the thing. 👍

Carl Bishop2 said:Honestly, the easiest way to prevent kids from being bullied would just be to pull them out of school entirely—it’s certainly simpler than actually doing the hard work of preventing violence in the first place.
I mean, regarding that little kid this person wasn't even extorting—and let's assume he wasn't lending him money at some predatory interest rate, but rather using blackmail instead—why didn't anyone come forward? Maybe he didn't know who to turn to, maybe home doesn't feel like a safe haven, or maybe he just held onto hope that the bullying would magically stop on its own... perhaps none of this would be happening if we actually focused on real prevention. Even now, certain behaviors are still brushed off as "just kids being kids" rather than being identified as actual bullying. And who is actually conducting these school violence surveys among the students? Is anyone? What do we really know about how often this happens or what the different forms of violence look like? All we know is that physical abuse is down compared to before, and that’s about it.
None of this has anything to do with the daily curriculum. I'm not talking specifically about Fuchs's CN, just speaking generally.
Fuchs is running an experiment right now, and I suspect we'll see some changes depending on how things progress.

Maybe it's this, maybe it's that. You have no idea how many cases like this exist; I'd bet there are plenty. How exactly are you going to prevent violence? If you teach math or physics, tell me: how does that help stop these things from happening?

We once found out by pure chance that two classes had planned a fight after school. One kid even brought a slingshot and hid it in the schoolyard. That’s how I specifically found out—because some kids actually trust me. Our principal was absolutely floored; you know how badly that could have ended. But how are we supposed to prevent a fight if we don't even know it's being planned? Or how to stop the agreement from happening in the first place?

Then you have the kids with behavioral disorders. In my view, they’re the toughest group—often dangerous to themselves and everyone else. There isn't much you can do with them; they undermine the entire teaching process and cause near-daily disruptions, yet they just drift through the school system without any real progress or change in behavior. It gives me chills thinking that under this grand new plan, kids will be stuck in classrooms with them twice as long as before. Some kids are already desperate to run home the second they're in a room with someone like that—or even just a bully without a formal diagnosis. Now imagine having to eat lunch with them and stay all afternoon in that chaos. Terrible. What a "wonderful" way to enrich their education.

Exactly. The American Psychological Association recently raised the question of what to do with students who don't feel safe at school. We talk about peer bullying constantly, too. For example, toward the end of the last school year, you hear stories about a student being extorted by a classmate for months, stealing money from his own parents just to hand it over. You wouldn't have even known if the parents hadn't bypassed the school and gone straight to the local police department. Kids like that are going to have a real great time spending their whole day stuck next to bullies.

rowdypanther12 said:@Susan James, they used to be more organized about high school admissions back when a 4.5 GPA was the standard 😁
A friend of mine managed to get into her preferred prep school with a 4.4 😁

But they had entrance exams. Even now, those schools still require them for tenth graders.

Ever seen what schools look like in Canada? Or do you actually know what their standards are? People I know who worked on projects over there say we won't even be on that level for another twenty years. It’s pretty clear they put serious money into education.

I dig certain aspects of the Finnish school system, but who’s actually footing the bill to put two teachers in a single classroom? For subjects where mastery is non-negotiable, though, it’s probably worth it. Just imagine cutting the grading workload in half. Or if the kids start acting up—you’ve got two sets of eyes on them immediately.

Anthony Harris2 said:So, once we finish—oops, let's call it "enriching" the curriculum—we trudge home by 5:30 PM just to prep lessons, grade homework, and deal with parents if we’re lucky enough to be assigned as homeroom teachers. Or better yet: after all that enrichment, we have to sit through a grueling session at the University of Virginia or some faculty board meeting, and *then* we go home to do all the stuff mentioned above. All this madness just for a potential 25% raise—which only applies to the base salary, not the total take-home pay—that hardly anyone will actually see. As for hitting full hours through actual teaching? I know very few colleagues who can claim they do that with pure classroom time. Most of us are sitting at about 16-17 hours, which we then pad out with advisory duties, tutoring, or extracurriculars, so our
Secretary of Education is definitely lying when he claims nobody is going to lose their job. But hey, at least I still have the rest of the world and my own sanity.

Honestly, you might as well send me out to pick cotton or bananas. I think manual labor would be less exhausting.

urbantinker8 said:we really shouldn't be letting the conversation drift away from the actual core issue here.
setting aside the fact that that old slippery politician is shamelessly lying and throwing around fake percentages—not to mention how teachers are going to see their workloads skyrocket just to earn a measly extra twenty bucks a week (which, honestly, means they'll still be making barely anything more than the local sanitation workers)🎉🎉—the point is, we don't want (well, any sane person wouldn't want) kids spending their entire lives trapped inside a classroom!!!
to be perfectly blunt, I’m kind of over all this obsession with Denmark and Finland; sure, they might have a "perfect" educational model, but they also deal with massive youth suicide rates that sit right at the top of the global averages. I mean, why aren't we holding them up as some flawless gold standard if that's the case? (and if people claim those rates have nothing to do with the school system... yeah, right, as if that isn't directly linked to the lack of sunlight. maybe we should just lock the kids in school from dawn until dusk then, since that seems to be the trend)😬😳😛)

Look, I don't know about Denmark, but Finland doesn't do the whole all-day school thing. They have two teachers per classroom. That means when it comes to prep work or grading tests, there's always someone to split the load. Plus, one teacher can actually walk around and help students who need extra clarity during a lesson. It’s the polar opposite of this amateur setup we have.

The American Psychological Association noted in recent comments that research shows no actual correlation between full-day schooling and academic success.

urbantinker8 said:but it's funny how those slimy characters always use every interview to drone on about how wages will rise or how nobody will lose their jobs, blah blah blah, just to distract everyone from what matters and shift the public's anger toward protesters for the umpteenth time:
man, look, we aren't even talking about our crappy, miserable, bottom-of-the-barrel wages here. This is about the fact that it's just not normal to keep kids stuck inside an institution for hours every single day, and to do it for gooooood years on end. It's about the fact that kids NEED to have a life outside of school. Anyone with even a shred of pedagogical understanding knows that. But he doesn't know the first thing about education; he's more of an expert on poultry pathology and cattle gynecology.
ABSOLUTELY NOT.

How they won't. You've got a guy saying everyone in the study gets 4.5% at 11:00 AM. View on facebook It’s not exactly a 25% raise, but if you pull overtime until 5:30 every day, you might actually see some decent cash.