kev211

Iowa played like s*** today. That Jordan Lynch guy has a chance to be really good in the MAC, if he can figure out how to throw it.

QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 31, 2012 -> 09:44 AM) Who? Did anyone in this thread start by saying teachers suck and need to shut up? Or did a teacher b**** about their pay first? That's the way this argument always starts. I brought up higher teaching salaries because the governor of New Jersey had just s*** on teaching unions on national television minutes before my post, and then talked about how we needed better teachers. I never said that I wanted a higher salary(I obviously picked this profession because of the passion I have for helping people not because of the salary). I said that a higher salary = better teachers across the board. Read my post and tell me exactly where I was "b****ing." And then only after someone happened to point out that my life was easy and I only worked 75% of the year is when I brought up the long hours I work during the school year and that my life was not that easy. So not b****ing there either. If Republicans get rid of teaching unions salaries are going to go down everywhere and teachers are going to get s***tier going against exactly what he preached. So no a teacher didn't b**** about their pay first. A republican leader in this country brought it up so I brought it up in the republican thread. All I said is if you raise salaries you'll raise teacher quality. But its become pretty apparent that you know little about education and the profession of teaching so your opinion on this topic is pretty much irrelevant. Any of you against raising teaching salaries have yet to provide a valid argument to why is shouldn't be. Talking about how teaching is easy when you've never taught a day in your life doesn't count.

Kind of amazing to think where I was 7 years ago when I started posting here and where I am now.

QUOTE (Marty34 @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 08:14 PM) How many holidays, non-summer vacation days do you get? You may not be able to slack during the day, but how much daily pressure is a teacher under? You're not going to be held accountable by your bosses if a student fails a test. No vacation days outside of summer. You get the usual holidays (labor day, memorial day) and then a few more just because its a school (columbus day, president's day) but the majority of the time if the students are off the teachers are still at the school having an institute day. And teacher's are under a tremendous amount of pressure especially the ones who coach or sponsor clubs. I will be coaching girls basketball and when the season starts I wont be done with my day until 6pm on days without games (between 8-9pm on days with games). And then I have to go home and make sure that I'm ready to teach tomorrow and grade any assignments etc. That's with days starting at 7am. Teaching isn't easy. The misconception that it's easy and you get 25% of the year off needs to change and the profession needs to start being respected otherwise education will never be fixed in this country. Edit: And I will be held accountable if I cannot keep control of my classroom or the entire class fails etc.

QUOTE (Jake @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 11:00 PM) I haven't read the entire thread, but it shocks me that I haven't seen anyone posit the argument that perhaps teachers' jobs should have more "perks" because they are one of, if not the most important profession for the maintenance of American society. Good educators are the key to social mobility, ie the American Dream. We can't really control if kids are born into ideal situations, but we do have some control over their educational experience -- it should be a huge priority that children should have every opportunity to utilize their public education to move up the socioeconomic ladder if they wish. It starts with teachers. Pay them more, give them more protection if that's what it takes to attract the truly talented people to the profession. I can't even begin to tell you all the people I know who consider their dream job to teach, but they can't fathom taking on all the debt to become college educated (post-graduate experience needed in some states, even MORE debt) and then receive what is often not nearly enough to live a decent lifestyle and make meaningful progress on paying down loans. I realize there are exceptions to this based on where you teach, where you went to school, if you were able to get financial assistance in college, etc. I wanted to mention that it was one of the most important professions in this country but I figured I'd get ridiculed with a bunch of these " " or someone would point out that I get my summers off and that my job is easy. Little do they know. Excellent post. Make teaching worthwhile and the quality of teachers will go up.

So Mitt Romney wants to invade Iran and doesn't care about the environment or the planet? And he openly said this tonight. Why again should this man be the president? Those two things right there are enough to eliminate him from consideration.

I'm going to say it again. In order to fix the quality of teachers in schools the answer is not eliminating tenure, unions, etc. The answer is that it needs to be harder to become one. Require a master's degree to even get your teaching certificate. Require more years of college. By raising college expectations your going to eliminate anyone who just falls into teaching because they can't decide what to do with their life (this describes a ton of teachers and they're always the bad ones because they have no passion for the job). Then pay them more so more intelligent people with skills see money in teaching and instead of using their skills to become doctors or lawyers or other high paying professions they use it to become teachers. If you make it a lot harder to become a teacher and than pay them for doing it the quality of teachers is going to skyrocket. You've fixed one issue with education the quality of teachers and can than focus on the parents even though there's nothing you can really do about it. Edit: After attending ISU the biggest teaching school in the state and near the top in the country I've seen far too many people just barely get by in the program(it scares me these people will be teaching children in the future). You raise expectations and make it harder to get certified you eliminate these people.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 04:24 PM) OMG 10 hour days noooooooo. Give me a break. My entire family is teachers, and I see how much they "work" over summers, and how much they b**** if they put in an extra few hours of prep. Also I can't slack during the entire school day. I can't just go read soxtalk whenever I feel like it because I've got 25 students in my room who need to learn. Not complaining. I'm just saying sure I get june-mid august off but in the end I'm working just as hard as anyone else in any other profession.

QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 30, 2012 -> 04:24 PM) OMG 10 hour days noooooooo. Give me a break. My entire family is teachers, and I see how much they "work" over summers, and how much they b**** if they put in an extra few hours of prep. I'm just saying I put 10-12 hours a day in during the 9 months I work. Instead of the 8 hours most people who get paid roughly the same as teachers do. I get my summers off, but in the end we work the same amount so the "they only work 75% of the year" argument is invalid. Also your family might consist of these bad teachers who are taking advantage of tenure. Sorry to say it but that's generally what I've found of teachers who b**** about putting in extra work.

MSNBC is making Scott Walker their b**** right now.

And here is Scott Walker who Rachel Maddow just asked if the plant closed during Bush, and he completely avoided the question hahahahaha

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 10:07 PM) So when Obama or Biden give their speeches during the DNC, will Wolf point out that there were 'several facts that the fact checkers will have fun with if they want", or will he stay mum on that point? Because he sure couldn't wait to get those words out of his mouth tonight once Ryan was done. edit. Since I posted this he said it 5 more times in less than 2 minutes. Geeze Wolf, STFU and report. Well he did go on an on about a plant that closed in his hometown, blamed it on obama etc. When it closed while Bush was still president.

Dylan Axelrod: The Stopper

QUOTE (pittshoganerkoff @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 06:06 AM) I disagree. I think it's a very good show. The character interaction is great, and the writing is top notch. Agreed though it seems to be a love it or hate it type of thing.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 11:00 AM) Maybe instead of wasting your time posting a f***ing smiley you actually make an intelligent post and tell me why you think I am wrong.

QUOTE (Cknolls @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 09:39 AM) Wow. Way to throw all the teachers in catholic schools under the bus. Yeah you can only be a good teacher if you are in the union. LMAO. No, I'm saying without teacher's unions to look out for them the first thing that every state is going to do is cut education and teacher salaries. Which in turn will lower salaries causing anyone worth anything to move onto a field where they can earn what they are worth. Catholic schools don't need a union right now because public schools force them to be somewhat competitive in what they pay their teachers. It's the same reason that people who are not in unions or in fields without them still reap the benefits of them. QUOTE (Jenksismyb**** @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 09:58 AM) More money isn't the problem here. Teachers make a good living, especially with benefits. And money isn't stopping good teachers from coming through the system because it's (1) still an insanely competitive industry and (2) there a ton of amazing teachers. The problem is our society and parenting specifically. We now EXPECT teachers to provide for our kids, when in reality teachers are meant to teach kids some things that parents don't have the time or expertise to teach them. If a kid f***s up in school, it's not the parents fault, it's the teachers and that's f***ed. Also, I agree with getting rid of standardized testing, so long as you meet me halfway and get rid of the tenure system. An out of touch, grumpy old teacher working the last 5 years to get that nice pension bump screws up the system. Same with the bureaucracy behind school boards. There's no reason for those boards to have as much power and authority as they do. Running a school district isn't rocket science, and it's ridiculous how much school administrators make and how much authority they have. What's wrong with having the principal be the main authority figure at every school? Our system is stupid. Teacher's in the huge districts and around here make a good living. In other parts of the country the salaries teachers make is an absolute crime. Its only competitive because education got cut and thousands of teachers got RIFed not because a million people want to be a teachers. If you pay teachers what they're worth you'll eventually weed out the ones who game the system and don't give a f*** about their students. Your second two paragraphs are good though besides the tenure system. Tenure is in place to make sure a school district doesn't cut someone with 25 years of experience to bring in a college graduate at half their salary. Yeah it sucks about the grumpy old people gaming the system, but it's not fair to the 45 year olds with 20 years of experience if tenure didn't exist. This wouldn't be a problem if states were actually giving the districts the money they owe them, but they're not and any district worth anything would eliminate the older expensive teachers today if they could. QUOTE (bmags @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 10:00 AM) Why should we eliminate any ability to determine whether you are teaching your kids anything? I think it's been answered already, but all standardized test cause is other teachers and myself being forced to teach my students how to pass the test and not teaching them the material and content they should be learning. Also standardized test are used more as a judgement on the school and district than an individual teacher anyway. QUOTE (Steve9347 @ Aug 29, 2012 -> 10:46 AM) This is such a common mis-perception. Teachers get paid plenty and work 75% of the year. Maybe teachers should stop gaming the system, getting 15 master's degrees, and pricing themselves out of positions. And in that 75% of the year they're working way more than 8 hours a day. 10 or 12 hours a day usually, if they coach or run a club its even longer. Any good teacher is spending a decent amount of time during the summer preparing for the next year anyway. If you pay them more and make it harder to get a teaching degree you're going to eliminate anyone who games the system. Your statement is the real common misconception

QUOTE (Rex Kicka** @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:34 PM) Please tell me that my colorblindness isn't letting me see the green here. That's what I was thinking and why I didn't bother to give it a response.

QUOTE (mr_genius @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:21 PM) So how much should a teacher make? Should teachers with more in demand degrees make more? Every teacher should make 6 figures, and college standards should be raised(require all teacher's to have a masters or more). You do that and you eliminate the people who fall into teaching because they didn't know what to do with their lives. We also need to eliminate the importance on standardized testing. It's an absolute sin how much instruction time I have to lose this year in order to prepare students for standardized test. If we stop teaching to the test and start teaching the students, and we get the best people in the teaching profession education will turn around in this country.

QUOTE (Alpha Dog @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:20 PM) Well we pay politicians 6 figures and look what THAT gets us. ANd we spend more per pupil in education than many countries that have better results, so again, look what that gets us. Money isn't the answer. What are the statistics on teacher pay? We might pay more per pupil in education than many countries, but how much of that is entering teacher's pockets?

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:19 PM) What is his specific stance on teachers? Teachers need to be paid more. Is it true almost all teachers are females now? Why is that, Kev? Educate me pls. His stance on teachers are that teachers unions shouldn't exist and that only the best should be teachers(create standards they have to meet). If teaching unions don't exist or they try to pull a Wisconsin there wont be any good teachers left. Because anyone worth anything(including me) will be looking for a new job. I totally agree with him on only the best should be teachers, but the best wont be teachers unless you pay them like they're the best. The majority of teachers are Woman(especially at the elementary and middle level). In High schools there's a lot more male teachers.

QUOTE (greg775 @ Aug 28, 2012 -> 11:03 PM) I am a Republican and I agree with your stance on teachers. I'll never say this current crop of Republicans is any good. Romney sucks. Obama is miserable as well. I probably won't vote at all. I truly detest both candidates. Their views on teachers especially Ryan's is exactly why I will be voting for Obama. I don't want Romney in office and the only way to do that is to vote for Obama.

Serious question for all you republicans. If you don't want to pay teachers a good salary(and you don't if you want to get rid of their unions) how the hell can your keynote speaker stand up there and talk about making sure the teachers are the best of the best and having standards and evaluations they must meet? Making sure the students come first etc etc. Here's how to fix education. Pay teachers what they're worth and the best people will become teachers. Anyone with any kind of talent is going into other professions because they wont make as much if they're a teacher. Make teaching a respectable profession and pay them like it and you will have good teachers. Edit: I'm a first year teacher who just graduated college and want to know the answer to this question.

QUOTE (Swingandalongonetoleft @ Aug 27, 2012 -> 02:27 PM) Quentin Tarantino movies work here. . "I don't need you to tell me how f***ing good my coffee is, okay?" Vincent: Have you ever given a foot massage? Jules: Don't be telling me about foot massages, I'm the foot f***in' master. Vincent: Given a lot of them? Jules: s***, yeah. I got my technique down and everything, I don't be tickling or nothing. 5 long years he wore this watch...up his ass If you threw a dart at the script of one of his movies, odds are it will land on something very quotable. I think every single line out of Bradd Pitt's mouth is quotable in Inglorious Basterds

I'm in the market for a 1TB external hard drive.... Price isn't an issue, any suggestions?

Big run here Alex.