I feel like the worst at my job

[cornerofmadness]

I know I'm not. But with every passing year it's getting harder and harder to teach these kids anything. I never used to give words banks for the organ test because I figured you fucking had to know how to spell lung, heart, liver etc. They don't. Not any more.



I thought I was giving them a hand by saying the pin in the pancreas was in which gland? So the only word with gland in it on the list was cowper's gland. They couldn't figure out the pancreas was a gland (in spite of discussing in two separate units). One even argued with me that it wasn't so she was afraid her answer was wrong (it wasn't. she had pancreas). BTW the cowper's gland is at the base of the penis and they had an essay about its function.

I had a bonus question about a pregnant uterus complete with kittens and asked what was the organ these kittens were in. BRAIN. HEART. Oh fuck me. Do you have kittens growing in your brain? Might as well have.

I had the uterus also tagged in the animal and I had three people say it was the penis. I had the scrotum tagged half a dozen said it was a vagina. On the outside of the body. I'm so fucking done I don't know where you begin to fix this. And no for the most part the offenders here won't pass and I won't be letting them loose in a hospital where they'll hurt someone


Watching S6 of Inspector Gently. Mom too. She called me to tell me unfortunately John lived. You know you could almost be sympathetic to him if they didn't write him like they do. Instead, you want to slap him.


What I Just Finished Reading:

Deadly Fates - Chinese mythology inspired, I really liked it


What I am Currently Reading:

Keeper of Lonely spirits - LGBT paranormal with older mains. It was slow starting but I like it.

Dungeons and Danger - a paranormal mystery arc


What I Plan to Read Next:

Hooked on Murder - lousy so far

Death al Dente - so far terrible

The Death Card

Comments

[ashelterofpages]

Oooomph, I send you so, so many hugs. That's got to be such a disheartening job situation to be in.

I might need to look into Keeper Of Lonely Spirits. I'm always excited to see older protags.

[cornerofmadness]

thanks it is disheartening

the book is pretty good barring a few weird world building hiccups

Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I feel like the worst at my job

I know I'm not. But with every passing year it's getting harder and harder to teach these kids anything.<<

1) I'm seeing more and more teachers complain about this. Admittedly the slide has been going for at least 30-40 years -- I heard all about it in my parents' teacher's union meetings on top of my own observations -- but the last ... hmm, 10 or so seem to be dramatically worse. "Kids these days" may be a complaint as old as writing, but academic performance is a documentable fact. At least insofar as the testing methods remain stable enough.

2) If the outcome is changing, look for what variable(s) changing is behind that. If you haven't made significant changes to your teaching method or materials, then you are not the variable causing the change and it cannot be your fault. Something else must have changed. If it's not in your classroom, you likely have little or no control over it.

3) Making tests easier is a trend that leaves parents and students deceived about the student's knowledge level, which leaves A and B students getting sorted into remedial college classes that cost money but give no credit. That tends not to help and runs up the dropout rate. It's better to fail students earlier, so everyone knows something is wrong in time to fix it -- whether that's poor study habits, a learning disability, or whatever. Making college classes easier, which also happens in some places, then defrauds students and employers about the graduate's knowledge base.

*ponder* Now I wonder if this connects to the weird pattern in majors and requirements. Many colleges are down to 2 years of major classes, in what's supposed to be a 4-year degree but now often runs 5-6 years. The rest is lard. Are colleges piling on general crap in hopes that students will understand it better, and pass more of those classes, compared to the more specific ones for a major?

4) I got to thinking how I knew what a lot of body parts were when I was a toddler. I am a nerd; I'm hippiespawn; my mother taught math and science; I grew up out in the country cleaning chickens and dissecting roadkill. And it's the latter bits that have definitely changed over the last decades. The vast majority of people now live in cities rather than rural areas. If you don't grow up watching animals live, die, and become food then you miss out on a lot of learning opportunities about anatomy. Kids whose meat all comes in a plastic package are at a disadvantage. Granted, my grandmother said town kids thought you milked a cow by pumping her tail, so the dumbness of town kids is not new, but I have a sense that it is getting worse.

Anyhow, it's useful to see concrete examples from someone I actually know, so thanks for sharing those appalling details.

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

1. The decline has been slow at first but as you said in the last ten years it's gotten worse and post-covid it was such a jump it's scared most teachers I know. We could blame 2021-22 on Covid and the shock of zoom classes but we're now 5-6 years out and it's getting worse. I gave them a test to study from from when I started 20 years ago and they had no idea even though it was material we had just gone over (their ability to retain information is sad and there are enough studies now showing that online reading contributes to that)


2. I have done a lot of trying to keep up with teaching and switching things up (I'll be at my work con again at the end of May which contains two full days of workshops) but I really see a lot of this coming out of K-12

3. The asinine way we fund schools is contributing to some of this. They lower the expectations, the testing etc to artificially inflate pass rate and they especially will repeat the same test again and again until they pass (and come to me expecting multiple do overs they're not going to get because I'm training them for fields where do overs aren't a thing because you've fundamentally harmed if not killed someone if you don't know what you're doing)

4
Like you I grew up in the country and had a strong sense of anatomy long before I took classes. What I run into in my field is so many of them see nursing and other allied health careers are high paying for low level of time commitment college wise but hate science and don't want to do it.

Re: Thoughts

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> we're now 5-6 years out and it's getting worse.<<

I warned people at the time that society isn't something you can turn off and back on again without damage. Nobody believed me. Now some of that damage is turning out to be lasting or permanent.

>>2. I have done a lot of trying to keep up with teaching and switching things up (I'll be at my work con again at the end of May which contains two full days of workshops) but I really see a lot of this coming out of K-12<<

That makes sense.

>>3. The asinine way we fund schools is contributing to some of this.<<

I agree. The budget should be state or national and divided equally across schools.

>> (and come to me expecting multiple do overs they're not going to get because I'm training them for fields where do overs aren't a thing because you've fundamentally harmed if not killed someone if you don't know what you're doing) <<

You definitely need to fail them. Medics are dumb enough already.

>>What I run into in my field is so many of them see nursing and other allied health careers are high paying for low level of time commitment college wise but hate science and don't want to do it.<<

That is a painful level of stupid.

I was in junior high when I read about romance authors making lots of money. So I checked out an armload of romances from the library. I quickly decided that no amount of money was enough for me to do that. 0_o And I already knew not to consider anything requiring math because I suck at it and hate it.

Re: Thoughts

[the_siobhan]

Well it's not like Covid has stopped infecting people since 21-22. And we know it causes brain damage and that the damage is cumulative.

I have a coworker who gets it at minimum once a year, most years twice. I have literally been able to watch her memory and focus decline over time.

Re: Thoughts

[cornerofmadness]

Exactly but it's the vaccine causing the problems, right (literally had someone tell me that this week)

[winterfirelight]

I always enjoy your updates on your students, even when it's disheartening. It's good to keep up with the state of things. I've been reading lately about literacy rates declining, and... well, yeah. It seems we can tell.

I try not to blame the kids for it, at least not en masse. It's the educational system as a whole that's failed them, when it's happening with this many. Not that it makes it any easier to deal with. Strength to you!

Thank you for not letting them loose in a hospital.

[cornerofmadness]

You are entirely right. Whatever the heck is going on k-12 is doing them a disservice. I want to say it's Sweden Norway or one of the northern European countries (Denmark? Damn I can't remember) that is now trying to take away all screens and teach them the old fashioned way because not only do they use AI, they don't want to think, they honestly will say to your face I don't know why I need to think, the computer will do it for me.

[winterfirelight]

Yeah, it's the ones who seem content with not knowing anything that scare me the most. I have heard that there's a contingent in this younger generation who recognize how they've been failed and are rightfully upset about it and trying to figure out how to catch up, but I have no idea how large that contingent is among the whole.

[cornerofmadness]

That group needs to step up and be heard. Because they're not wrong.