"Martha" wrote in message
...
In article . net,
"tanada" wrote:

Guys, if you have a master's degree in Mathematics, please, .....
In fact, if you are job hunting and have a masters or better in any
subject,
community colleges can use you. There are major advantages ...... You
don't have to publish or perish, you can
kick out those who act like horses behinds, and the pay is much better
than
at the grade/middle/high school levels.

I teach math and chem as adjunct at my local comm.college, and I
totally agree with you, even though for adjuncts the pay is not good at
all.


Yes, I looked and that idjit math instructor is still there. I had it
confirmed today that he flunked over a quarter of the class I was in. I
don't know what it says to you, but to me it says that he can't teach.

That, however , is not necessarily so. I have been in classes, as a
student, in which there was absolutely no teaching and everybody got
A's. So the admin though the idiot was great, because his student evals
were great. I had to retake the class with someone else before I
actually learned the stuff.

I have taught one class in which out of 24 students , one passed,
because the others followed an idiot who told them he could physically
threaten me enought to pass them with no work. He did not succeed.
And I point out that for classes in this course in other semesters,
the average grade was 89. Yet if students don't learn, I am NOT going
to pass them.

Of course, I don't know the particular situation. That teacher might
be awful. I am simply saying that he might not be.


I've often wondered, how do they decide who gets to teach math anyway? I'm
good at math and can pretty much learn it out of a book or from anyone who
already knows how to do it. But that it hardly the norm. I was a math
major until I could not learn German, French or Russian and chose to change
my major. But that hardly qualified me to teach math at any level.

I get the strong impression that math in the primary grades is taught by
mostly very nice, very qualified school teachers. A great many of whom
really suck at math. They teach it by whatever method is currently mandated
and it they can control the class are considered a success. Then you get
into middle school and high school. Now the teachers are likely to
understand enough mathematics to cover the subject. But again the odds are
stacked against the student. Because they know next to nothing about how to
teach. College is often even worse. These teachers are usually very
proficient in the subject. But don't have a clue how to share it with
others. Especially with the non math inclined. So too often you have a
very bright mathematician trying to teach a subject to many students who
have never had a decent math teacher and are only taking it as a
requirement.

Yes, at each level a few will shine and learn how to teach. Some primary
teachers are good at math. But I never got the impression in eighteen years
of school that anyone was ever trained in how to teach math.

Jo