Teachers, what’s the difference between teaching at a Title 1 school vs low ses not title 1?

[Anonymous]

Aren't Title I classes smaller? Our low SES not Title I school has huge classes and 1/3 of the teachers quit last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Many parents don’t think their child is their responsibility while he is at school. They will tell you that.

True, but that happens at W and private schools as well. When I taught at Tilden, more than one parent told me to stop bothering them about all the Z grades (missing work) because it was just middle school. A friend teaches at a local private and a parent told her that he wrote a big check so he wouldn’t be bothered.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17:21, teaching is definitely a safety related job. We are held accountable if children are injured if we aren’t paying attention. We can even be held accountable for not mentioned our suspicions of emotional harm. But no one is writing teachers up for sitting down for a moment.

No but 9:38 apparently wants to burn teachers at the stake for it … I know she is just another whack job parent but she needs to get a grip. She is making the rest of us parents look bad by her extreme position.

We cannot equate the general safe-keeping and care by teachers with that required by police officers, doctors and nurses, the military, etc., for the general public Teachers have a general role in keeping kids safe but it is nothing like those other professions. Sheesh. And even those folks get breaks.

Perfect DCUM moment: I am 09:38! I teach in a Title I School.

I distinguish between the person who takes a few moments’ break to sit and catch their breath and the people I see actually slacking off during class while poor kids are not learning. No one is being put on a performance plan for sitting for a few minutes, but the teachers who don’t make lesson plans and just wing it or play a movie every Friday... Yeah, I will always come after them. I was a poor kid and school was my salvation.

And I stand by my post. People like you are the problem. You are using polarizing language and shouting hysterically without a cogent response. The above is reasonable; your 9:38 response is not. People like you should not be teaching, and you especially should NOT be teaching our society's most vulnerable children.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17:21, teaching is definitely a safety related job. We are held accountable if children are injured if we aren’t paying attention. We can even be held accountable for not mentioned our suspicions of emotional harm. But no one is writing teachers up for sitting down for a moment.

No but 9:38 apparently wants to burn teachers at the stake for it … I know she is just another whack job parent but she needs to get a grip. She is making the rest of us parents look bad by her extreme position.

We cannot equate the general safe-keeping and care by teachers with that required by police officers, doctors and nurses, the military, etc., for the general public Teachers have a general role in keeping kids safe but it is nothing like those other professions. Sheesh. And even those folks get breaks.

Perfect DCUM moment: I am 09:38! I teach in a Title I School.

I distinguish between the person who takes a few moments’ break to sit and catch their breath and the people I see actually slacking off during class while poor kids are not learning. No one is being put on a performance plan for sitting for a few minutes, but the teachers who don’t make lesson plans and just wing it or play a movie every Friday... Yeah, I will always come after them. I was a poor kid and school was my salvation.

And I stand by my post. People like you are the problem. You are using polarizing language and shouting hysterically without a cogent response. The above is reasonable; your 9:38 response is not. People like you should not be teaching, and you especially should NOT be teaching our society's most vulnerable children.

And yet my students show gains in reading and writing that the teachers who slack say can’t be achieved.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren't Title I classes smaller? Our low SES not Title I school has huge classes and 1/3 of the teachers quit last year.

Not at my high school. My largest class had 45 on the roster. I only had 32 desks in the room, so on the off chance they all showed up I would have kids on the floor or sitting in the windowsills. The other classes had about 35 kids in them with no more than 25 showing up each day.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Aren't Title I classes smaller? Our low SES not Title I school has huge classes and 1/3 of the teachers quit last year.

I think it depends on how the extra funds are used. We have two FT mental health counselors at my Title One school.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I teach at a Title I middle school. The most prevalent comment I've heard about our school from new teachers is their surprise at finding that the quality of teaching is very, very high. Our principal is extremely selective and has very high expectations for all staff and students. I think that a lot of teachers walking into a new school that is Title I expect that the teaching and caliber of staff will be sub-par. It is the opposite at our school and new staff generally seem surprised to find that a Title I school like ours is very well run and we have a strong teaching staff. So we routinely (and proudly, I dare say) burst that bubble.

A bubble that new teachers to our school don't expect is that there is a very high level of accountability and need for transparency. Title I status brings significant additional funding but there is a tremendous amount of oversight. The oversight runs the gamut from an increased level of output by teachers of data and documentation to additional meetings, walk-throughs and other things. Because my school has been in the program for a while now we know what to expect; however, the first year or two had a steep learning curve and it seemed that we were always scrambling to meet some deadline. If there is anything that runs the new teachers out fast, it is the difficulty of meeting the high expectations for maintaining quality instruction while juggling the near constant demands for data and documentation, or even preparations for yet another walk-through. It is a significant stressor and you have no latitude at all in when you will respond to a data request or a requirement to adopt a new model of documentation or instruction at the drop of a hat.

As far as the demographic is concerned, working with the student population at a high-FARM school can be demanding and challenging. But kids are kids so a lot of the basics are the same. Structure and consistency reign supreme as well as the ability to meet student physical/social/emotional needs without being enabling.

All in all, if I had to weigh the demands of the student population versus accountability, then I think that the biggest challenge for someone new to Title I will be dealing with the accountability demands. There are two keys to success: being organized and the ability to work well with others. The most successful teachers at my school have their stuff together, are good planners and can manage the paper flow. They also are those who are highly cooperative and who are willing to accept input from other teachers (content or team). This is why my first point above (high caliber of teaching) is so important. If a new teacher cannot lose the generally held bias that Title I schools have bad teachers, then the new teacher won't be willing to work with others or accept help. Then they get into a vicious self-fulfilling cycle of failure and eventually runs screaming from the school.

Good luck in your interview. It will be interesting to see what other replies you receive.

If this was actually true - the best most quality teachers! Great and committed data gathering and analysis! - then Title 1 schools would be knocking it our if the park I. Terms of test scores, basic skill acquisition like reading and math, and achievement gap closure - yet that is almost never the case.

I think like many teachers you have no idea what “quality” teaching is going to look like and don’t seem to understand that data gathering and analysis - basically inputting records into an application or system that spits out analysis isn’t some rare task but rather many people in many fields do this all the time.

[Anonymous]

Then why, with all this great teaching going on in Title 1 schools, is their a persistent diversity gap and SAT scores are in decline in the County? Seriously. The magic happens - despite real efforts I’m sure by some teachers - at cram school (Kumon, Mathnesium, Linda-mood Bell). This seems like a lot of teacher posturing going on. In the end, it is what the Vietnamese call the ‘homework’ table that gets the job done. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because-its-expected-say-scholars/%3foutputType=amp

[Anonymous]

For the DCUM grammarians: why is there a persistent diversity gap. (Writing on phone - mea culpa)

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Then why, with all this great teaching going on in Title 1 schools, is their a persistent diversity gap and SAT scores are in decline in the County? Seriously. The magic happens - despite real efforts I’m sure by some teachers - at cram school (Kumon, Mathnesium, Linda-mood Bell). This seems like a lot of teacher posturing going on. In the end, it is what the Vietnamese call the ‘homework’ table that gets the job done. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because-its-expected-say-scholars/%3foutputType=amp

All the teaching of the world is not enough when there are few role models, low expectations, and - the horror!- the g-word???

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then why, with all this great teaching going on in Title 1 schools, is their a persistent diversity gap and SAT scores are in decline in the County? Seriously. The magic happens - despite real efforts I’m sure by some teachers - at cram school (Kumon, Mathnesium, Linda-mood Bell). This seems like a lot of teacher posturing going on. In the end, it is what the Vietnamese call the ‘homework’ table that gets the job done. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because-its-expected-say-scholars/%3foutputType=amp

All the teaching of the world is not enough when there are few role models, low expectations, and - the horror!- the g-word???

I actually have come to the conclusion that the tests are culturally biased. I was reading an article about academic “skills” v content knowledge. It gave the example of people asked to answer questions after reading or being told a story about a baseball game. It was like “A hit a single to right field, B struck out, C hit a double to left, etc”. The people who could answer the questions best and remember the story and details from the story were the people who knew the most about baseball before reading the story, not the people who were the “best” readers. No test only tests “skills.” They inevitably also test content knowledge that the test makers “expect” to be accessible to kids of that age - generally based on middle class white cultural expectations. Anyway, I’ve been following this for a while, not professionally, and that’s what I’ve come to believe. It’s hidden tests of content knowledge that higher SES kids are getting at home, on trips, on vacation, at camps, etc.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:17:21, teaching is definitely a safety related job. We are held accountable if children are injured if we aren’t paying attention. We can even be held accountable for not mentioned our suspicions of emotional harm. But no one is writing teachers up for sitting down for a moment.

No but 9:38 apparently wants to burn teachers at the stake for it … I know she is just another whack job parent but she needs to get a grip. She is making the rest of us parents look bad by her extreme position.

We cannot equate the general safe-keeping and care by teachers with that required by police officers, doctors and nurses, the military, etc., for the general public Teachers have a general role in keeping kids safe but it is nothing like those other professions. Sheesh. And even those folks get breaks.

Perfect DCUM moment: I am 09:38! I teach in a Title I School.

I distinguish between the person who takes a few moments’ break to sit and catch their breath and the people I see actually slacking off during class while poor kids are not learning. No one is being put on a performance plan for sitting for a few minutes, but the teachers who don’t make lesson plans and just wing it or play a movie every Friday... Yeah, I will always come after them. I was a poor kid and school was my salvation.

And I stand by my post. People like you are the problem. You are using polarizing language and shouting hysterically without a cogent response. The above is reasonable; your 9:38 response is not. People like you should not be teaching, and you especially should NOT be teaching our society's most vulnerable children.

And yet my students show gains in reading and writing that the teachers who slack say can’t be achieved.

How many years have you been doing it? Do you have children if your own? Do you think you can keep up this pace indefinitely? Do you think teaching is a profession that should be done for 5-10 years and then move on for a better quality of life? Honestly curious about your thoughts. There were a lot of things I could do in my 20s that I can’t do in my 40s with two kids in elementary school (I’m not a teacher but see my job as somewhat similar in terms of the commitment and zealousness of the young versus what can realistically be accomplished with a lot more responsibilities and competing claims on my time)

[Anonymous]

Title one have smaller classes K-3rd, then it varies 3-5th. After that no.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Title one have smaller classes K-3rd, then it varies 3-5th. After that no.

Not in my district. We use the extra staff as mental health counselors mostly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Then why, with all this great teaching going on in Title 1 schools, is their a persistent diversity gap and SAT scores are in decline in the County? Seriously. The magic happens - despite real efforts I’m sure by some teachers - at cram school (Kumon, Mathnesium, Linda-mood Bell). This seems like a lot of teacher posturing going on. In the end, it is what the Vietnamese call the ‘homework’ table that gets the job done. https://www.google.de/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2014/04/08/forget-tiger-moms-asian-american-students-succeed-because-its-expected-say-scholars/%3foutputType=amp

All the teaching of the world is not enough when there are few role models, low expectations, and - the horror!- the g-word???

I actually have come to the conclusion that the tests are culturally biased. I was reading an article about academic “skills” v content knowledge. It gave the example of people asked to answer questions after reading or being told a story about a baseball game. It was like “A hit a single to right field, B struck out, C hit a double to left, etc”. The people who could answer the questions best and remember the story and details from the story were the people who knew the most about baseball before reading the story, not the people who were the “best” readers. No test only tests “skills.” They inevitably also test content knowledge that the test makers “expect” to be accessible to kids of that age - generally based on middle class white cultural expectations. Anyway, I’ve been following this for a while, not professionally, and that’s what I’ve come to believe. It’s hidden tests of content knowledge that higher SES kids are getting at home, on trips, on vacation, at camps, etc.

Test designer here- for adults- this is exactly true. The only way to truly control for content knowledge is to make nonsensical logic sorts of tests and that isn’t what they are trying to measure.