Selections from Carnival of Education - week 53

The Carnival of Education has it its one year anniversary! The Education Wonks kicked off the first Carnival of Education back on the 9th of February, 2005. The carnivals have been very informative and I look forward to many more years.

It seems this week there were a number of posts about how the environment at public schools can make it hard for the teacher to teach, and the student to learn.

At Polski3's View from Here a teacher relates how he struggles to get support from the school administration. One boy threw another into the teacher's classroom, but the teacher had a hard time getting anyone from the school administration to come deal with the boys. These two boys disrupted the class, and probably won't have any consequences. The students in the class were cheated out of their learning time.

At Three Standard Deviations to the Left another teacher has to spend a lot of time dealing with one disruptive Special Ed student. The blog has a number of other posts about problems the teacher has had with special ed students. It seems like at some schools regular students end up suffering because the special ed students get special privileges.

At Going to the Mat, Matt evaluates the issue of teachers wanting to be treated like professionals. Matt is currently preparing to become a lawyer. He see a big difference between how lawyers and doctors who most people acknowledge as professions, and teachers. The big difference is how doctors and lawyers will try to discipline, and even remove those who are acting unprofessionally. In contrast most of the time there is a move to fire a bad teacher, many teachers will automatically rally to support the teacher.