[Newsbot]

Title: Edmonton teacher fired for giving students zeroes for incomplete work wins appeal
Category: Misc CDN
Posted By: N_Fiddledog
Date: 2014-09-01 01:02:17
Canadian

[Strutz]

Good for him.

It was a stupid policy by the school board to begin with to not allow teachers to assign zeros when deserved.

[2Cdo]

I guess teaching kids that their actions/inactions have consequences is back in fashion.

[ShepherdsDog]

And then there is this. While I'm in no way, shape or form advocating for the homework levels most Asian kids face, I do believe some homework for spelling, multiplication tables and reading should be mandatory for Grades 1 - 3. Grades 4 - 6 should have a bit more. An hour a day, three times a week, is not in the least bit too onerous.

[andyt]

Finland seems to take a different approach and beats our pants off. Of course in Finland teachers are respected, their training is very rigorous and they are very well paid. Very little homework, nobody flunks, education tailored to the learning style of each child, and they consistently come out on top in PISA.

$1:

Finland has one of the narrowest achievement gaps in the world. Academic success appears to have lifted all sorts of other economic and quality-of-life indicators. According to the OECD, “Finland is one of the world’s leaders in the academic performance of its secondary-school students, a position it has held for the past decade. This top performance is also remarkably consistent across schools. Finnish schools seem to serve all students well, regardless of family background, socioeconomic status or ability.”

Finland has accomplished all of this by moving in the exact opposite direction of most other countries undergoing educational reform. Pasi Sahlberg, a Finnish educator and author, has chronicled Finland’s rise to educational powerhouse in his book Finnish Lessons. He argues that when most countries experience declining educational outcomes, the tendency among policy-makers is to crack down. They increase standardized teaching and testing. Students are subjected to more school, given more instruction in the core subjects of reading, writing and math. Ministries of education draft stricter curricula. Schools are compared to each other, with the hope that greater competition will trigger better results. Schools, teachers and students that persistently lag behind are punished – closed down, fired, failed or expelled.

Finnish education rejects all of these notions. “This little Nordic country of barely 5.5 million people has illuminated a different path to educational and economic goals than those being forged by the Anglo-American groups of nations,” Mr. Sahlberg writes. My family was about to walk it.

In Finland, students aren’t subjected to standardized tests, nor is it possible to fail a grade.

Finland abandonment of standardized testing is one of the biggest factors that sets it apart from other systems. Another is its teacher training. In Finland, teaching is a highly prestigious profession, equivalent to medicine or law. All teachers, regardless of what grade they instruct, must hold at least a Master’s Degree. For every hundred people that apply to teacher’s college, only six are accepted at one of eight Finnish universities.

The final paradox of Finnish education only dawned on me when I received the girls’ school calendars. At first, it looked a little thin. School began at 7:30 every morning and ended at 1 p.m. No lesson appeared to last longer than 45 minutes, after which 15 minutes was given for a break. The Finns appeared to have several names for this down time. Besides “break” there was “lunch,” “long break,” “breakies,” “mini break,” “extracurricular activities” and (my personal favourite) “Golden time.”

The theory is that children learn just as much during unstructured play as they do inside a formal classroom setting – arguably more. The Finnish system flies in the face of the logic that poor student performance can be somehow cured by increasing class time. In Finland, students don’t begin school until the age of 7. The school days are shorter and students are almost never given homework.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, a typical Finnish student, by the time he or she has reached the age of 14, will have spent 5,500 hours in the classroom. A Canadian student of the same age has spent 7,500. Several OECD studies show Finnish students experience far less anxiety than their peers in other countries. They also do better at school.

In Finland, children are neither coddled nor condescended to. They are expected to take an active role in their learning. When our daughters signed their names, it symbolized they were expected to take personal responsibility for their own education. I wish them all the sisu in the world.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/nat ... 11/?page=3

[fifeboy]

Well one thing we know for sure, this teacher can't be doing it for the kids, must be for the paycheque . Was his name Johnny?

[Freakinoldguy]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

And then there is this. While I'm in no way, shape or form advocating for the homework levels most Asian kids face, I do believe some homework for spelling, multiplication tables and reading should be mandatory for Grades 1 - 3. Grades 4 - 6 should have a bit more. An hour a day, three times a week, is not in the least bit too onerous.

I used to think like that until I realised that homework shouldn't be all about learning. The kids get enough of that in school. Homework should be used as a tool to develop self discipline and a work ethic in children and the learning part should be viewed as a bonus.

[Jabberwalker]

I'm relying on the Cadets to do that for my daughter. She is a LAZY student and the harder we push, the lazier she gets (the politics of adolescent females!!!)

[Xort]

andyt andyt:

Finland seems to take a different approach and beats our pants off. Of course in Finland teachers are respected, their training is very rigorous and they are very well paid. Very little homework, nobody flunks, education tailored to the learning style of each child, and they consistently come out on top in PISA.

I doubt the pay teachers get or the requirement for a masters has much to do with the student's outcomes.

The method of education seems important. But that looks to require a lot of effort on the part of the teachers.

A simple test would be to allow some schools to operate without teachers educated to the masters level and see if the whole thing fell apart.

We already know from the Kansas City experiment that school funding and teacher pay has no real impact on student performance.

Lastly they don't beat our pants off, they don't beat anyone's pants off. They score high, but close to most other high scoring nations.

In 2012 Finland was one point out of one thousand higher than Canada in Math and Reading and 20 points higher in science.

That's a VERY long way from beating the pants off us.

When you really look at the data from the PISA the clear conclusion is that formal education tends to produced educated populations no matter what method is used. From a laid back Finish system with no homework and short school days, to a soul crushing Japanese system with high homework and many school hours.

It's almost as if young humans are super learners able to take on massive amounts of information and learn things. I wonder if their was any evolutionary advantage to that?

So why not pocket the pay difference, save on the extra school years for teachers and have happy students? Because it seems that no matter what you teach, how you teach it kids come out about the same. This was another conclusion of the Kansas City experiment by the way.

~

On topic, nice to see this teacher was finally ruled to have been correct. Although the fact that it took 2 years to figure it out is kind of a let down.

[Xort]

Freakinoldguy Freakinoldguy:

I used to think like that until I realised that homework shouldn't be all about learning. The kids get enough of that in school. Homework should be used as a tool to develop self discipline and a work ethic in children and the learning part should be viewed as a bonus.

Their are a few things that must be memorized, and the best method to memorize them isn't repetition. It's to refresh just as you are going to forget it.

Work ethic isn't learned by doing homework. Or rather some people learn that doing pointless tasks over and over for no personal benefit is the losers way of working. Work smarter not harder.

I had the same math teacher for 3 years in high school that would check homework by class answer. Pick one edge of the class at random and then work to the other corner student by student, question by question.

After I figured that out, I sat in the middle of the class waited for the homework check to start, count to my spot and do one question before I was called on for my answer. Or do a few question around my predicted middle point if I had some time in the math class.

I could have spent the 1-5min x 30 odd questions doing math questions, or I could spent 30min to 2.5 hours doing what I wanted after school. I think I selected the option with the best return for myself.

~

Being an adult hard worker or dedicated worker is not something that I believe you learn from doing school work or homework, chores at home, taking a summer job, or any other of a thousand things that simulate work for children.

It's some mix of personality, situation, experience, chemical balance of the brain and body, and just a bit of random luck.

The research is mixed at best on the topic of work ethic in humans. Both at the research level; Tormenting poor college students for a few bucks to help out in a research experiment.
And at the self help book level; Here are a bunch of statements to make you feel like this book has helped and maybe you will tell your friend so they will also buy this book.

Jabberwalker Jabberwalker:

I'm relying on the Cadets to do that for my daughter. She is a LAZY student and the harder we push, the lazier she gets (the politics of adolescent females!!!)

That's most teens male or female.

[housewife]

That is crazy no zeros. What else are they to do when they get nothing. Mind you my brother saled though high school on a solid P average, still can't believe my father alowed that.

Oh for those of you who don't know a 'P' was a mark between 45 and 50%. But they knew that if he had tried he would have passed. That was BC in the late 80's. What a crock should of failed him.

[BartSimpson]

There are no problems with the public schools that can't be solved with an ample amount of funding for teacher salaries, benefits, and pensions. I know this because the teacher's union keeps saying so.

[wildrosegirl]

He should get a medal for having some common sense.

I hope this sets a precedent for more to start following suit.

This coddling bullshit is doing no one any favours. Not today, nor in the future.

[wildrosegirl]

ShepherdsDog ShepherdsDog:

And then there is this. While I'm in no way, shape or form advocating for the homework levels most Asian kids face, I do believe some homework for spelling, multiplication tables and reading should be mandatory for Grades 1 - 3. Grades 4 - 6 should have a bit more. An hour a day, three times a week, is not in the least bit too onerous.

You know who has gotten that abolished?

Lazy f*****ng parents!!!! They screamed and hollered and made such a fuss (because it was cutting into "important" things in their dear little children's lives, and they simple didn't have time for that nonsense), that the schools phased homework out.