http://www.kicktheanthill.com/?p=1559 The mound may settle down, but nothing is ever the same again. Fri, 10 Sep 2010 11:52:19 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.7.1 hourly 1 http://www.kicktheanthill.com/?p=1559&cpage=1#comment-4515 Melissa Miller Wed, 11 Mar 2009 01:05:23 +0000 http://www.kicktheanthill.com/?p=1559#comment-4515 Thanks for the great read. I too am a conservative school teacher. In Virginia, luckily, we don't have a union, but the local group tries to brainwash everyone. While in theory I believe in merit pay (as an outsider) as a teacher it is fundamentally flawed, as you pointed out. It is like the speaker who I heard once who was reformed in his education philosophies. He had a business background and questioned everything teachers were doing.... long story short, the metaphor he came up with that showed him the light was that in the private sector, you have choices over your "products" but in schools, you don't. We take them all, teach them all, and are responsible for them all. No matter if they come to school hungry, abused, neglected, with trauma from birth or childhood - we work with what we get and most teachers (yes there are some bad ones but name a profession where there aren't) work wonders with these children. Schools are so political - certain teachers are given the 'better' students so is it fair to compare those two teachers? On paper one looks so much better but the other teacher might have had other issues going on in the classroom. Thanks for the great read. I too am a conservative school teacher. In Virginia, luckily, we don’t have a union, but the local group tries to brainwash everyone. While in theory I believe in merit pay (as an outsider) as a teacher it is fundamentally flawed, as you pointed out. It is like the speaker who I heard once who was reformed in his education philosophies. He had a business background and questioned everything teachers were doing…. long story short, the metaphor he came up with that showed him the light was that in the private sector, you have choices over your “products” but in schools, you don’t. We take them all, teach them all, and are responsible for them all. No matter if they come to school hungry, abused, neglected, with trauma from birth or childhood - we work with what we get and most teachers (yes there are some bad ones but name a profession where there aren’t) work wonders with these children. Schools are so political - certain teachers are given the ‘better’ students so is it fair to compare those two teachers? On paper one looks so much better but the other teacher might have had other issues going on in the classroom.

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