Now that that’s out of the way, I feel a need to say that younger teachers are overrated. I’m not saying that they don’t have the potential to become excellent educators one day, but the buzz and preference to have a “new teacher, just out of college” is unfounded.

I understand that movies like Teachers and most television shows depict teachers over the age of 50 (which I am not) as sleepy, unmotivated, uninformed dinosaurs whose apathy and stubbornness impedes the education of our youth. As a foil, young teachers are depicted as being able to reach students in innovative ways and to be able to make the most dry subjects fun and interesting. While I understand the source of those stereotypes and cannot say there are no individuals who fit them, I must emphatically declare that it simply isn’t the case.

When I was first hired as a teacher, I liked to think I fit that stereotype. I’d just spent hundreds of hours studying the latest incarnation of my state’s standards and the national guidelines. I had drafted pages and pages of highly detailed lesson plans and familiarized myself with all the latest ideas on how to make learning productive and fun. I was hip (I used AIM and watched all the right TV shows). My student-teacher experience was positive, but in hindsight very sheltered. My cooperating teacher ran interference for me on much of the bureaucracy involved in being a teacher, and much of the planning that goes into a school year was already done long before my 8-week stint began.

I began my first teaching job, as one of a handful of young teachers. We “new teachers” stuck together and truly bought into the hype that we were somehow a better option for our students: that we understood our students, the material, and how to teach, better than our older peers. Our gung-ho ideas and right-from-the-movies enthusiasm ran into several obstacles, which we blamed on our older colleagues. With more than a dozen years of experience, I now see that our frustrations were misdirected and our perceptions of our peers were wrong.

Once my ego fell in check, I began to look more closely at what my older colleagues were doing. They were using some of the older, familiar techniques I grew up with, but there were some new ideas mixed in there. They were not resisting change or fighting against the progressive ideas bandied about in college – they were picking and choosing what they felt were best for their students. Using their experience as educators, their understanding of their students and the community in which they taught, to craft a teaching style which met their students’ needs. They had seen many “latest trends” come and go in their time as teaches, and knew better than to try and shift everything which each new journal publication. They were not ignoring what I had learned in college, they were adapting it… taking ownership of the suggestions and implementing them in a more effective way than I or any of the younger teachers were doing. What I had at first considered to be stubbornness, I now saw to be confidence and (again) ownership of their methodology.

By contrast, I look now at the teachers who are just coming out of college, and I cringe. They do things in their classrooms because someone told them to, not because they truly understand the reasoning behind it. They do not have the comfort, confidence, or wisdom to customize what they have been told to best fit their teaching situations. When something is challenged by a student or parent, they run to an administrator – most often because they cannot justify their actions. They genuinely do not know WHY they are doing things the way they are.

The younger teachers are happy to jump on any suggestion from an in-service day or workshop, and do not think twice about the consequences for students when you change style and focus abruptly. They have not yet seen the ebb and flow of support for various education movements, nor do they realize that the models sold by these traveling in-service salesmen speakers are purposefully generic and made to fit all schools on the surface, but none perfectly without some customization.

But the outside public doesn’t realize this. The thought is that these younger teachers are far superior to the burnt out, older teachers. I do not think there are nearly as many burnt out teachers as the public thinks, and I would contend that many of the not-so-good teachers have moved into administrative roles and are no longer in the classroom. I’ve seen more than ten colleagues who my peers and I felt were not strong teachers (I wouldn’t want my children to have them as teachers) go on to become vice-principals, principals, and department heads.

I would further contend, and I may well have been guilty of this 13 years ago, that the younger teachers are making it harder for the older teachers. It’s easy to sell out others to try to make yourself look good, and when you’re chit-chatting with the principal it’s easy to throw those veteran teachers under the bus for not rushing to support the latest administrative effort. Sitting squarely in the middle, age-wise, I see how little voluntary interaction there is between the younger and more senior teachers. I see the veterans shake their heads at the arrogance and quick-judgments of the newbies, and I feel badly for the veterans that they are stuck with this unfavorable image by so many.
If I had kids, I would not want them to have any teacher with less than 6 years experience. I share that advice with my neighbors and relatives all the time, but continue to see them clamor for the class with a student-teacher or the new hire from the teachers college down the road. I’m sure their children will turn out all right, but I strongly believe they are worrying about the wrong aspect of the education process. Instead of fighting to get your kid out of the class with a 22-year veteran because the son of a guy you know from the gym had bad things to say about her, fight to restore the school band or to see the school put a working pencil sharpener in each classroom. Contest the way winners of a county championship are each bought a $50 jacket (in addition to their varsity jacket) by the school when your school cannot afford to have their textbooks rebound.

There may be some brilliant young teachers, but you will find that they, like their peers, only get better with age and experience.

Senoritis is usually limited to high school seniors, although a few juniors have been found on occasion to show symptoms.  Senoritis can become contagious – especially among students who are often in close proximity of each other. Symptoms include:

A desire to skip classes (especially in the mornings, or on Fridays, or minimum days, or when the weather is nice). This desire strengthens as the school year progresses, reaching its peak around May.

Procrastination:  May show a tendency to do the minimum work required. Often manifests itself in the form of  waiting until the last minute to complete homework assignments, studying for tests, or completing projects.  This typically results in 2:00 AM cram sessions that cause parents to question why they had children in the first place.

Lack of motivation: Includes going through classes with very little concentration and a tendency to either sleep, text, or do anything except pay attention to the lesson.

Appearance of ‘short-timer’ syndrome:  A short-timer is one who is approaching the end of his/her high school career and as such begins to demonstrate a lack of caring for high school overall. Also known as “I’m outta here” disease.

Thankfully, my 8^th grade daughter has a few years before she is at risk for Senoritis, but I know it is coming.  I can already see some symptoms of ’8^th-gradeitis’ (a sister disease of Seniorits, but not as severe) in her daily routine. I am sure she will be in for a rude awakening this fall when she begins her Freshman year at the local high school.

Even with the symptoms mentioned above, I don’t believe Senoritis is all that terrible as long as it’s kept in check. I am a survivor of ‘Senoritis’.   My attitude toward school during the end of my Senior year plummeted.  By May, Fridays were known as ‘beach days’ rather than school days.

In the end, I, like the vast majority of Seniors, made it through the end of high school and was completely symptom free by the first week of my Freshman year at college.  Then again, I had my Dad – a seasoned high school teacher – who knew how to manage the disease: allowing me just enough freedom to let the disease run its course, but all along ensuring that I did not steer too far away from the path to college.

These students are fucking stupid!

As one of the VPs at The College Board points out, the purpose of an essay question is to have students form a persuasive verbal argument. Regardless of the subject matter and which side of the issue you take, the question can be answered with successfully without using specific details in order to prove your point. Quoting another VP at The College Board, “everything you need to write the essay is in the essay prompt.”

What about the essay question that asks, “Is patience a virtue?” Considering that most high school students live in a world where everything is immediate, wouldn’t this question be unfair as well? Almost every high school age student is familiar with Twitter, Facebook and other outlets that enable him or her to immediately give and receive information. Whether it’s a quick dinner or the results of a pregnancy test, patience is something that is rarely required in the daily life of today’s young hipster.

What really bothers me about this outcry is that it clearly stems from the bias that people automatically have (or pretend to have) against reality television.

We can all agree that certain reality shows are worthless and barely even qualify as mindless fun,  but to lump them all together as a waste of time is as wrong as painting all sitcoms with the same brush. Do people consider Cheers and The Cosby Show garbage television just because they share the label of “sitcom” with Small Wonder and The Mike O’ Malley Show?

The other issue I see behind this controversy is the prevailing opinion of today’s young person that unless something involves them, it doesn’t matter. This attitude is usually expressed with the phrase, “I wasn’t even born yet.” (As if anything that happens before your birth should be of no importance to you.)

I find it delightfully ironic that these kids who are complaining are smart enough to know that an understanding of history is important to be a well-educated individual, but they are too stupid to realize that television, all television, is as much a part of history as any other media.

In other words, these students are fucking stupid!

Hear more from the King of TV on The Paul Goebel Show podcast and at his website, www.TheKingofTV.com. You can also follow Paul on Twitter @PaulGoebelShow.

As I matured, I, of course, realized that the difference between TV school and real school wasn’t just that most teachers were boring but there was also a strict set of rules that prevented most teachers from having the kind of relationship that Pete Dixon shared with Bernie.

The biggest revelation about the public school system hit me when I worked as a substitute teacher for a short time. The more time I spent teaching, the more I realized that today’s litigious society had no tolerance for violence or sexual situations in today’s schools.

As a parent, I was comforted to know that my children could go to public school without fear of unwanted advances of any kind from another student or an adult, but as a TV fan, my life was forever changed.

I could no longer watch any TV show set in a high school.

For some reason, a majority of TV shows that take place in a school setting have an inordinate amount of sex and violence involving students. A teacher on Boston Public had a sexual relationship with a student. Pacey did it with his teacher on Dawson’s Creek. The rich kids on Veronica Mars often terrorized Veronica and her friends. The worst offender, however, has to be Glee.

Not a month goes by when someone on Glee is getting a face full of chemical laden ice and syrup, and it seems that this kind of assault is the best you can hope for at McKinley High. Any student who isn’t viewed as strong or popular is in danger of being thrown in a dumpster, and God help you if you’re gay. Kurt was so scared he had to transfer to another school.

There was a gay kid in my high school that had to transfer because he told the police that a teacher, who also happened to be the wrestling coach, molested him. While the administration tried to keep the scandal under wraps, the entire school knew and you can probably guess that this kid didn’t get a scholarship to a private school where he found another gay student that he could sing auto-tuned duets with. Incidentally, that teacher was found guilty of molesting multiple students and was sent to prison, something that you would never see on the CW.

In one particular episode in the first season, Puck and the other jocks are in the process of shoving Artie into a port-a-potty with the intention of tipping it over with him inside. It seems to me that even a person with two working legs could seriously hurt by that kind of prank, but a kid in a wheelchair faces a real possibility of drowning in the feces and chemicals that only an Ohio construction site can supply. It was at that moment that I realized something that changed the way I watch Glee. William McKinley High is the worst school in America.

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense. The school has an emasculated, ineffective principal. The cheerleading coach encourages girls to harm themselves in a variety of ways. There is little to no money for arts programs or extracurricular activities, and the only guidance counselor is unable to sort out any of her many personal problems – let alone those of the kids.

Once I accepted the conceit that McKinley High was a crappy school run by incompetent adults and attended by borderline criminals, I enjoyed Glee on a whole new level. Now when I watch the show with my kids, I can enjoy the mash-ups and laugh at the jokes and tell my kids how lucky they are to go to a decent public school.

Hear more from the King of TV on The Paul Goebel Show podcast and at his website, www.TheKingofTV.com. You can also follow Paul on Twitter @PaulGoebelShow.