Stress??? Teachers Don't Suffer from No Stinking Stress!

This proposed study made me laugh out loud:

University of Nevada, Reno researchers want to help teachers recognize thoughts and feelings that indicate stress or burnout and how to take control so they can remain effective and satisfied in their field. Dr. Steven Hayes, professor of clinical psychology and Doug Long, a graduate student, are seeking K-12 faculty and staff throughout Nevada to participate in their research. Those participating will use a self-help book and a series of assessments to promote healthier living under demanding conditions for educators.

“Teachers, especially K-12, face a lot of stress and are stepping up to the challenges of a work environment where they’re asked to do more with less,” Hayes said. “I don’t think it’s necessarily different from what a lot of people have faced in a lot of work environments, but (teaching) does have some unique characteristics … like they’re working with a lot of things beyond their control.”

The study, called WALRUS, or Working And Living Resiliently Under Stress, aims to draw attention to the external demands teachers face, which can create internal stressors that are often irrational, and find out what methods are best to cope with underlying emotions, thoughts, memories and sensations related to stress.

Whether subjects are teachers, staff or administrators, education seemed to be an excellent field for analyzing the impacts of layoffs or other critical changes to the classroom.

No terminated teachers will be asked, of course, how they deal with stress--REAL stress of not having a way to earn a living anymore while these fucking asshole principals are allowed to keep their jobs earning six-figures in salaries and benefits.

If You Thought the NYT Magazine's Article This Past Weekend

"creating" better teachers was yet another example of anti-teacher bullshit peddled by know-nothings about the field of education, you are correct.

Just the author's background alone should have raised red flags:

The New York Times Magazine has a fondness for giving great swaths of paper and ink to the reform schoolers' mission to turn K12 education over to the corporations, and this week's 8,000 word piece by Spencer Foundation fellow, Elizabeth Green (former ed reporter for the right-wing New York Sun), does not disappoint in that regard. The operative metaphor of the piece, "Building a Better Teacher," follows from the ed deformer's core conceit that teachers are like mousetraps, devices that can be designed, re-designed, torn down and tinkered with to produce a more efficient way to capture and confine, er, educate.

And if you don't like the mouse trap metaphor, how about tinker toys or bricks or computer components, all of which may be assembled by curious tinkerers like charter schooler, Doug Lemov, whose quest to fabricate the best teaching tactics by the nation's champion test score producers is matched by another mission to turn his ultimate "taxonomy" for test score production into the bible for teacher training. Lemov's new bible would be composed of 49 commandments that are to be committed to memory and practiced until perfected. That, for Lemov, would be teacher training aplenty.

It is just too bad that author, Green, did not learn something about education before she landed her $75,000 grant to learn how to write about it. If she had, she would not have spent so many of her 8,000 words oohing and aahing about commonplace practices in teaching like "wait time" and "calling on non-volunteers," which she seems to think were first documented by Doug Lemov. And even though Doug has come up with 49 commandments, Green pretends that educational thinkers over the centuries have been in search of "one essential trait for good teaching:"

And there's more, of course.

I Mentioned the Upcoming

documentary about the so-called "rubber rooms" of the New York City public schools which are designed to humiliate so-called "bad" teachers while their cases are being handled by the union. Here are a couple of links with audio of teachers who had gone through this humiliating and really unconstitutional process. The pictures shown are not actual pictures of the teachers talking on the audio:

link link


Teachers are so complacent, but being paid all during that time is apparently incentive enough to endure the indignities.

Miscellaneous Stuff

I am surprised my old Phoenix-Talent School District superintendent is still alive, and yes, this former teacher definitely was ahead of his time.

He wouldn't have cut it in this day and age, either, not with all of the teaching-to-the-test mania.
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Why hell, maybe if the Atlantic City casino slot machines weren't so tight, perhaps this couple wouldn't have gone to such desperate measures to "win" in a casino.
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The woman caught in the Italian "right-to-die" case has died. She had been in a coma since 1992, when she was in a car crash.
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Whatever Harry Reid's Flaws,

he doesn't compare with the dipshit with the silver hair:



And yes, teachers' jobs are certainly at risk. If there is no revenue, there is less money for government employees.

Dipshits like Ensign think public employees don't work, except people like him, of course.

The Booming Economy

L.A. public school teachers protest layoffs and budget cuts.

By the way, just because a teacher has "tenure" doesn't mean he or she has real job security. About the only thing "tenure" is good for is when it comes to layoffs, and districts have to go by seniority. But that's about it. It doesn't mean a teacher has a job for life or that districts can't get rid of him or her if they want. In fact, it is EASIER for districts to get rid of teachers they don't want with so-called "tenure" than if it didn't exist. The key is to con teachers marked for "death" to go through arbitration instead of hiring an outside lawyer and thus lose their rights to redress of grievances through trial by jury and be allowed witnesses. Neither exists in arbitration, which almost always favors the employer. Tenure is useful only during reductions in force; it isn't protection from asshole administrators.

Teachers in This

survey give their opinions on their profession.