W. Tanner’s blog of great knowledge

I was recently given the opportunity to interview for a job at a private institution near my hometown and it really made me start to think about all that we have talked about in class when the conversation turns to public versus private. 

As I walked around the school with the headmaster (which is also one of the differences) it just made me think of how much money these people are spending to send their children to a rural private institution which is not at all stellar academically.  I know that the titles of the classes may sound more preperatory or the student-teacher ratio may be substantially less but what type of teachers are these schools getting??

Teachers at a private institution (at least this one) have nothing in the means of retirement, social security, or any type of pay increase after reaching a certain plateau.  So, I am very aware that the decreased class sizes can be very nice as can the ability to use the cirricilum you desire but we all must understand and be aware that we all check to make sure that the school we decide to do our internship/apprentinenceship at is SACS certified and meets the requirements of the state of Georgia.   

Coming into the education field at this time is both a great thing and a not so great thing.  As we talked about in class, some 50% of educators will retire by the year 2010 and some 60% of administrators will do the same but there is a problem with all of this.  The certification process.  This process of becoming a Georgia educator in the public school system is in my humble opinion is getting harder and harder.  The testing that we future educators are forced to take began with the TCT, got somewhat harder with the PRAXIS and now we are faced with the GACE which has a few problems of its own to say the least.  I not saying that testing is a bad thing but, have the teachers gotten that much better over the past 50 or so years since the testing of Georgia educators began???  I highly doubt it and if anything they have gotten worse.  Hope this post isn’t too radical but just wanting to know if the testing is really going to prove whether we can teach or not.

On top of the lack of funding in some schools, the other major problem with the school systems and their ability to use “up-to-date” technology is the fact that so many teachers are not willing to learn the new programs or learn how to use the new machines…..What can we do to fix this problem?  If the state of Georgia wants to tie in technology so much into the cirriculum the why do we keep waking into classrooms and see nothing but lecture especially in the history field that I personally am in.  Technology is a great learning resource and in my opinion, these more experienced teachers feel like all technology is evil and nothing good can come out of it.  So, my question to my fellow bloggers is what do we need to do as the new and fresh teaching workforce to influence these older teachers that technology is not the devil and that a lot of good can come out of actually trying new things?????

My dad is a principal of a elementary school in rural Central Georgia and we got on the subject of technology this weekend.  I even ventured as far to ask him if the money was distributed evenly and he quickly said no.  He got the subject that at the high school in our county every classroom has at least 8 computers and the computers at his school are very limited and even much older models.  This problem has been facing him for years and he even went as far to say that the county has plenty of money and the schools have even tried to raise their own money for technology but the central office quickly shot that idea down and said that technology money would come from them and them alone.  I guess this all goes back to the “haves” and the “have-nots” of the school system.  Just unfortunate that one of the best schools in the system is the school that is getting the short end of the stick.

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