Understanding Public School Education System Limitations, Flaws, Shortcomings
During my youth and university years, I held the belief that some of the teachers, professors and instructors I met was underqualified for their positions. What I absolutely detested was when teachers had bad attitudes and were hostile/moody/negative against their students. Other reasons were for incompetence such as doing the absolute minimal work in their teaching style, trying to deflect blame to someone else, repeatedly making mistakes or not having enough preparation. It was not professional.
Disgusted and disappointed with their behaviour, I decided to come up with my own teaching styles and sought to try to out-do them. Hence as I was finishing high school, I was on a self-imposed mission to transform the teaching experience for my current/future students.
It’s been about a decade since I taught my first lesson. I still remember how wonderful of an opportunity to teach my first grade 12 physics class was. Since then, I’ve tutored and taught many classes and students of all ages and background. I’ve acquired many tactics, methods and strategies that works best for as many students as possible. I’ve had some success and I was even originally considering a Master’s of Education to enter the public school sector. However, these ten years as a part-time educator have shown me the issues of the current system and who I am as a person. Although I’d like to help out as many student as possible, being a public school teacher isn’t the right career path for me. I’m good staying as a part-time instructor helping from time-to-time.
Why?
As mentioned previously, as a student, I personally didn’t like what some of my former teacher did. However, as an instructor and having gone the process myself, I understand them better. The educators I use to resent are all human just like the rest of us. Although, as a child/teenager, it can be hard to empathize and understand them. Now, as an adult, undergoing the very same struggles my past instructors experienced, I can see that during my youth, I was too naive and expected too much.
So what what some of their hidden struggles?
1-Working hours are not 9–3. The hours are twice that.
Right now in this period in history, a full time job usually means anywhere between 35–40 hours, including lunch break. Anything over 40 hours would begin to be considered overtime. It would seem that a teacher’s shortened working hours of 9–3 (30 hours a week) would be very appealing, right? WRONG.
The 30 hours a week is only on the surface. There’s actually a lot of “extra” time that needs to be spent that students are not aware about.
The first is lesson prep. A “proper” lesson prep can sometimes double or even triple the amount of time needed to deliver a class. Although an one hour class is what the students experience, the teachers themselves can experience anywhere from 2–3 additional hours just for the preparation. Doing a preparation one or few times is OK, but doing them regularly for nearly ten months during my own non-paying hours can make me feel like I’m being underpaid for the job I do. Then when the actual lesson happens, despite all the hours of preparation, it can become very discouraging when students don’t pay attention or don’t understand the material.
The second is coming up with appropriate evaluations. It can take quite a lot of time and energy to come up with an evaluation that’s fair game for the students. If an evaluation is too easy, students learn nothing. If an evaluation is too hard, students do poorly. It can be very hard to find a middle ground for an evaluation for a class, and that’s only the beginning. Sometimes a class I’d get would be filled with geniuses and sometimes, they would be filled with people who need a lot of extra help. Every evaluations has to be tailored to the specific class because I never know when one evaluation may be too hard for one class, and another is too easy for another. Further, an evaluation have to be very well-worded without any room for misinterpretation. Strong and weak students alike may intentionally or intentionally misread instructions and submit solutions based on what the instruction asks them, instead of what the instructor is asking them to learn.
The third is marking. I’ll discuss more about this in the next section.
All in all, the hours needed to put in for lesson prep, creating assessments and marking them can greatly multiply the actual work hours. When I was teaching computer science (ICS3U1) at two different for-credit private schools back in 2019 and 2020. Even though I was get paid for two hours of work a day, I had to work about 4–6 hours a day for the class preparation.
If I had to put an actual number, the real working hours of a public school teacher are more like 60–80 hours a week.
2-Teacher:Student ratio can be excessive
Something I really resented during my senior high school and university years is that instructors try to get you to give up on the class. They do this by making the material very hard at the start, and usually a month later, a large majority of the class disappears.
I, myself unconsciously did this when I first taught in high school too. However, I see why they did this. A teacher can be assigned anywhere between 20–100 students per semester or per year. The number of students to deal with on a daily basis on can be exhausting. The emails students send, the questions all of them ask, the marking I have to do, dealing with every single one of them (especially if they’re troublemakers )and their parents requires a lot of non stop communication. The larger the classroom, the more intimating the combined student body can feel like.
3-Students & Parents can really push you
This was actually the hardest part of the job. It would be fine if the students are well-behaved and follow instructions as asked. However, when students are troublemakers or don’t wish to do their work, I’d have to act as their authority figure. Although I can be patient with them, it does take a toll on me when I have to continue to deal with their immaturity (play on their phone, talking with each other, sleeping in class, not doing their work) on a regular basis.
Handling one troubled student can be tough. Handling a few (3–9) can be a major headache. However, handling as many as 20–30 students can be nearly impossible. It gets even way worse when they work together. Then it becomes impossible when parents defend their children’s immature behaviour.
As time passes, these difficult students begin to wear me out and I find it hard to pay attention to the mature students properly.
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As someone who underwent the Ontario public school system as a student, I believe some teachers need a career change. For example, one of my past grade six students was sharing about how her teacher didn’t really handle her class properly. Now that I’ve been on both sides of the education industry, I now both their perspectives. Neither of them are fully “wrong” or “right” in this situation but it really seems to me that some teachers don’t want to be this difficult industry anymore. They’re exhausted by the three above reasons(and perhaps even more), and their performance suffers accordingly.
So how do we address these issues face by teachers then? One possible solution is delegate less students per teacher. Another possible solution is we can pay the teachers better so they’re willing to endure the stress they have to experience (explaining the teacher strikes). Either way, we would have to increase public funding(taxes) or decrease the number of available students that can enroll in school. The public would be not be too happy about this. I’m not a politician so I wouldn’t know the best solution. However, the current system is just not really suited for me at this point.
Despite all these struggles and hardships, I’m not completely giving up in this industry. Seeing students having a good time, wanting to attend class and be positively transformed by each of my classes is very encouraging. Nevertheless, these ten years of educating various people in my life have helped me identify my limitations on how much good I can do versus how much good I want to do. As much as I care, I’ve identified my performance suffers when there’s too much thrown at me. Right now, working part-time, occasionally helping various students seems the best.
