I don't do fishing. I don't have a talent for it. I tried it once because someone made me. I just sat there and waited and waited and I didn't catch a fish. I just don't understand fish. Besides, I don't even like fish. I am a beef person living in a vast prairie, I won't ever need to fish in future. Why should I learn to do it? If I had to fish for any reason, I'd would just hire someone to do it. Someone like a fish-geek. I never understood those people. They are not very social, always alone, by themselves in a boat. I don't even understand what they are saying. They are always talking bait, lures, and the "one that got away," whatever that is.
Now, replace fish with: tying shoes, riding a bicycle, reading, math, thinking anything. Math is not something you need any talent for, no more having a talent for parenthood. And if your for real, everybody sucks at that from the start. It ain't stopped people from having babies. Saying you suck at something is an excuse to avoid doing it.
Here's reality. Yes, there are companies that sell canned units with lesson plans. These are generally forced down teacher's throats in spite of the fact that they should have known better.
Good teachers match the lesson plans to the students which are different from year to year, class to class, day to day, depending one which way the wind is blowing or whether the moon is full. Canned lessons cannot possibly cover that.
Of the teachers who actually write lesson plans (and very few do after a couple of years), most write their lesson plans at home. This is where food, drink, restrooms, and UNDISTURBED time happens. Even then, they have to keep in mind that these lesson plans will not survive an encounter with students or states changing the standards, yet one more time. Lesson plans also occur because someone (a bean counter) requires them, but the teacher doesn't actually use them. Most lesson plans are an outline so that the teacher doesn't forget something. It's like lecture notes, but without the lecture part.
Teachers (for-real teachers) don't get 9 months on and 3 months off. They usually work year around, at nights, weekends, and are on call any other time. Average pay is one thing, but starting pay is another. Most are required to take an additional year or more of coursework at their own expense while being payed Sure, teachers write lesson plans and sell them. They also write educational software. Many teachers take on second jobs like flipping burgers, retail sells, and college level teaching. I knew a teacher once who stripped for additional income. Are the schools going to lay claim to that? One could ask, why do teachers put up with it? They don't have to.
Yes, there are bad teachers out there, more than you would think. Most did not start out that way. Most were made by the same system that keeps them employed, and it isn't unions. Obama talks about connecting teacher pay with student success. Great idea! Now, teachers will be less willing to deal with difficult students. You know, the students that need good teachers the most. All the time, politicians talk about parents, students, teachers, and administrators are part of the problem and the solution, but efforts are always directed at the teachers and schools. They often talk about graduation rates, like getting more warm bodies through the system is the problem. They are only peripherally concerned that any content was actually learned.
By the way, I teach in a rural school with high minority rates (97%) and overcrowding. Having parents involved is great, but right now I could use a little less outside help thank you. I don't go to your job and tell you how to do it. I don't require you to re-certify on a regular basis to keep your job (at your expense). I don't tell you what you can say, do, wear, or hang out with to keep your job. I don't redefine what your job every few years. (Like somehow, children have changed that much over the last 5 centuries.) I don't expect you to work many free hours outside of your job environment. I don't expect you to take your work home at all. Don't expect me to satisfy any of your expectations that I don't expect of you.
In order to turn things around we need to get rid of the G.E.D. and let kids know that if they drop out they will live in poverty and follow that up by demonstrating that we are more than willing to toss kids out of school. That may sound cruel but it could stop the current loss of lives and futures that now are consequences of a broken educational system.
As long as people with a HS diploma get paid the same minimum wage as those who drop out, it won't make a difference.
I am a teacher, albeit not a a math teacher but teaching in general has a lot of problems in the U.S.
I am a teacher of mathematics (high school), all the problems I see come from outside the classroom, not in it.
On the other hand, he wrote an essay/article based upon his reasoned judgments about subject he was taught poorly by people
that didn't know anything about it while claiming that this education provided no means of making the argument he just made.
If you only knew what really happens in the classrooms today.....
2.4 statute miles of surgical tubing at Yale U. = 1 I.V.League