Teacher Recruitment

mtoutlemonde

joebloggs32 wrote: »

It is bad enough staying late for training a couple of evenings a week in the winter, without expecting someone to stay late on an afternoon off especially if it is Friday.

I agree but that's the way things are in schools today - extra curricular is king.

Mardy Bum

rainbowtrout wrote: »

I would agree, and I know some like that and there are good reasons they are not getting jobs. But I'm talking about good experienced teachers, where schools do not want to see them go but they have to move to another part of the country or something like that and they can't get jobs

Fair enough but I don't think this is happening as a widespread practice.

Experience is vital for improvement but if a person does not have the capacity in the first place (desperate subject knowledge, lack of social skills, very unassertive, poor worker etc.) they are unlikely to ever be good enough to improve significantly.

This may be controversial but if you are travelling for 12+ years the length and breadth of the country and you have never had a permanent job, the problem is the person not the system.

I have sympathy for those experienced teachers who want to move to a job closer to home because this can be very difficult depending on the subject.

marriedcouple

rainbowtrout wrote: »

I would agree, and I know some like that and there are good reasons they are not getting jobs. But I'm talking about good experienced teachers, where schools do not want to see them go but they have to move to another part of the country or something like that and they can't get jobs

Do you think poor teachers know they are poor teachers or are they under the illusion they are great teachers but it's the system at fault? How does own rate or measure one's own teaching? Is it solely on exam results? What if you are the eternal.sub who has never actually carried a class through from say 5th year to leaving cert. If you are always inheriting someone's else's class are exam results down to your teaching or the main teacher?

Johndoe1962

rainbowtrout wrote: »

Regarding unions involvement, I agree it's a tricky one, but when you consider what people are applying for it's crazy how people get hired sometimes. Going for a French and Geography job? It's your intercounty foootball that makes the difference.

Often it seems the job that the teacher is being hired for is secondary to everything else. I rarely hear parents complain about school teams not winning the provincial school cup for whatever sport. I do hear them complain about poor teaching or poor grades. My gut feeling is that parents given the choice would by and large opt for the best subject teachers possible and extra curricular is a bonus after that. Most kids seem to be happy playing on the school team regardless of wins or losses. /QUOTE]

Couldn't agree more but surely parents can see this pattern?

rainbowtrout

marriedcouple wrote: »

Do you think poor teachers know they are poor teachers or are they under the illusion they are great teachers but it's the system at fault? How does own rate or measure one's own teaching? Is it solely on exam results? What if you are the eternal.sub who has never actually carried a class through from say 5th year to leaving cert. If you are always inheriting someone's else's class are exam results down to your teaching or the main teacher?

It's hard to know. From my experience of teacher's who I don't think are doing a good enough job, I think they are under the impression that everything else is the fault but them, and I suspect that is their attitude to life in general.

E.g. we had a sub in a few years ago, she was a qualified teacher and was having trouble maintaining control of her classes, so one day she just waltzed through the connecting door of the prep room between our labs, and asked me if I could 'sort it out'. No please, thank you, and no hint of mortification either at not being able to do it. It can be hard coming into the school, getting a tough class and then for them to act up because they are seeing how far they can push the sub. But for her not to acknowledge any of this or even attempt to do anything was a bit much. In her mind, they were the problem, she was completely removed from the problem and it was up to someone else, me in this case, to sort out. She didn't last long.

Other problems where a teacher wasn't covering the course, or going to get it covered. Students were stressed, teacher was fobbing them off and fobbing me off when I tackled her. She decided to do things her own way, even though she had a very specific set of guidelines to follow. She got eaten by the external examiner as I knew she would and had warned her about, but still wouldn't just hold her hands up and say she screwed up, it was still the system's fault 'for designing a stupid marking scheme' that she decided to change despite being the national standard.


As for the rest of your questions, they are hard to quantify, we've had a variety of excellent and poor subs in my school over the years and you get a feel for what they are like if they are in for an extended period of time like a maternity leave. You pick up rumblings from kids whether you want to hear it or not. And you certainly hear it from the established teacher on their return, if they find their classes are up to speed or not, some teachers end up taking extra classes after school to make up the shortfall if the sub has been poor.

So grades can get masked in that way. Obviously it can go the other way too, but there are so many factors, kids get grinds, some get them when they have a good teacher and are just lazy, so if they just did the work in school it wouldn't be necessary, and some get them because they have a poor teacher, and the extra tuition possibly masks the poor teaching.

I had a rubbish maths teacher (honours) myself for LC. Most of the class went to grinds in 6th year. Students in HL maths tend to be motivated. There would have been good results with several As. That would have masked the poor teaching.

On the other hand, a teacher with say the bottom class in Irish/Maths could have a string of fails despite working their arse off all year because they have a group of students who are poor attenders and show up twice a week, won't take the foundation paper and insist on doing ordinary level when you know they will fail etc. And you can do very little with them.