In case you’ve all forgotten, we live in a free society. Every teacher who is overworked and underpaid should seek their opportunity elsewhere. Yet teachers aren’t leaving the profession in droves which tells me that the benefits continue to outweigh the (perceived) negatives.

#9 @craig makes a great point.

When it comes to killing your baby freedom of choice is a good thing but if you want to educate that same child…

School choice (competition) will solve most of our education issues and create a true market value for excellent teachers.

Why is the NEA fighting school choice? It proves that parental involvement is the most important factor in determining your child’s success in school.

Im sorry I’m going to have to agree with Mossy here. Teaching tricks to spell and do all these things.. while sometimes useful.. are not always necessary. I may not be as old as you but when learning to spell.. I never needed all these little tricks… i used phonics… “geography” amongst other words do not need tricks to help you remember how to spell them. they aren’t even tricky. So if your kids havent been taught that.. then you should be thankful they aren’t being taught useless tricks that take up extra time instead of just learning how to spell the word.
That said, the math concept (its actually 3 not 9), is very useful and I myself used it. But it would not taught in school, it was something I picked up along the way from an uncle or someone. I understand that you feel teachers should go above and beyond to help students learn, but where would you draw the line between teaching and helping, and just making students lazy and relying on tricks and shortcuts to do everything instead of just learning how to do it??

@Mossy, can we agree that we’re going to disagree? There will always be employees who do “enough” to get by and those who go above and beyond the minimum required. Giving kids tips to learn how to be better students must obviously be in the category of going above and beyond the minimum since it appears no one else was ever taught these shortcuts. And rather than thinking the “9″ rule is worthless drivel, when you’re teaching your children how to find the factors of a number to find the least common factor, etc., you will find this rule quite helpful.

Give me break. Totally catering to lazy kids who won’t put in the effort to learn.

How about kids just continually fail until they get into their heads to put some effort in understanding the subject matter. It’s ludicrous to expect volumes of volumes of tricks to be stuffed inside a kid’s head to understand BASIC material.

Also re: the supplies, teachers can deduct up to $250 on their 1040. At our school our PTA allocates several hundred dollars per grade for the teachers’ discretionary use.

One of my (many) pet peeves is when teachers’ web pages or notes home have poor grammar (its vs. it’s; too, to, vs. two; they’re, their, vs. there, etc.) or misspelled words. Makes me want to scream! So maybe there is something to be said for the supply vs. demand argument. If you don’t need to be that bright to earn a teaching position, perhaps you shouldn’t be paid as much as another professional would be.

Also, when my sons haven’t been taught the trick for remembering how to spell “GEOGRAPHY”(Go East On Gravel Road And Paint House Yellow) or that if the sum of the digits of a number can be divisible by 9, then the number can be divisible by 9…(234=2+3+4=9 so 234 can be divided by 9)well that just irritates the crap out of me. Are teachers too young that they themselves, were never taught this or is everyone just plain ol’ stupid & clueness now? I’m grateful for the nuns and other teachers (and my parents!!) who prepared me so well for my life. Now I just try to help my sons when I see deficiencies…

PS I’d take a career in teaching over accounting any day. However, I’d be fired within a week b/c I wouldn’t be tactful re: the lousy parenting I’d be sure to encounter. So my hat’s off to teachers for that burden they have to bear…along w/ the generally good job they do. There’s only so much you can do w/what you’re handed…