Nursery day today, so kids have been there moslty. Last day tomorrow.
It was Stringbeans last Ballet clss of the term, turned up there a found that it was a session for parents to sit in on while they should us the sort of things they ahd been d…

You asked whether or not my wife, in her culinary arts program in a large public school system, was “bound by the same curriculum and procedural restrictions as teachers of core subjects.” Of course she is, though neither she nor I would choose the word “bound” to represent a teacher’s relationship to curriculum.
My wife utilizes the National ProStart Program and with that comes tests on national standards at the end of the 11th and 12th grade years.

I do not want to get into any sort of comparison between homeschooling and teaching in public and private schools. As I said in my earlier posting, I don’t know much about homeschooling. I only know what I have heard from people who do it, websites I have read, and online curriculm I have investigated regarding teaching writing at home, and that in no way is a substitute for the experience of teaching in homeschool. Any opinion I would have would be immediately invalid because of my lack of real experience. The same applies to teaching in public and private schools. Unless you have actually done it, any opinion you form is just based on the experiences of others which is a hollow and useless substitute for the real experience.

As an example, like you,I am no fan of grades, yet I issue them. I in no way find that a barrier to my relationship with my students or their relationship to knowledge. I don’t find them a particularly useful way of evaluating a student or a particularly enlightening way for a student to demonstrate his learning, but I don’t find them barriers either. I also teach the International Baccalaureate. If you know that program, you know that at the end of it students face comprehensive oral and written exams based in a large part on work done in 11th and 12th grade. I in no way find those looming exams barriers or restrictive. I teach as I teach and the exams take care of themselves. My wife, I assure you, does much the same.
My son and daughter attend public school, though they are in a different public school system than the one in which my wife teaches. The county curriculum is highly structured and the students do have to take state standardized tests, but I see none of the relentless drill you reference above, and I follow their curriculum very closely.
But back to barriers… My experience is that the most intrusive barriers are those set by teachers themselves, not by boards or administration. Any good teacher can make any curriculum exciting. And frankly, if a teacher doesn’t believe in what he is teaching, he shouldn’t be doing it. Curriculum doesn’t come as a surprise. Anyhow, all good teaching comes not from a teacher’s relationship with his curriuculm but his relationship to his students. I know I have wanted to take my students places they were not willing to go and I either forced the issue or could not find a way to make the trip exciting, and I should have backtracked, started over, abandoned ship, so to speak, but on and on I went. In such cases these were times when I placed an unnecessary barrier between my students and me, between my students and knowledge, and I had to find a way to sort that out and of course my students assisted in that process even during the times I let them down.

Lastly, I do not view teaching in public and private school as being institutional. Institutions may set curriculum. Insitituions may make demands. But individuals teach. Institutions do not. There’s a huge difference.

Tom

I hold teachers in very high regard, especially public school teachers who persevere to kindle sparks of enthusiasm in their students despite the relentless drill required by teaching to the test. I wholeheartedly admire the men and women who pour themselves into this work. It is important work.

But what I’m hearing from public school teachers is that it is frustrating work as well. In my post I wrote about the barriers that institutional education can place between the teacher and the student, or between the student and knowledge. I really do wish those barriers could be removed. Every student and every teacher deserves the kind of exciting and thrilling learning experience you describe.

I have never had a day that began with the knowledge that I would spend it filling a bucket, and while some days have surely been difficult I have had none that ended with my thinking that’s all I accomplished either.
What a dreary couple of decades I would have had, had that been all I thought I had accomplished, experienced and shared with my students.
Teaching is exciting, thrilling, and rejuvenating work. It is more than that. It’s a way of life, an identity. I do not see myself as teacher morning through afternoon and then another person in the evening. I am a teacher and the fires that keep that burning come not so much from some stubborn force within me but from experiences shared in the classroom.