The Kyle Phoenix Blog: Kyle Phoenix Answers: Many public schools have teachers that don't teach (effectively/rarely). Is there a reason?

Teaching isn’t easy.
Teaching isn’t easy mainly because parents assume that their children are in school to learn exclusively from the school.
If your child attends a perfect year in public school that’s 180 days. There are 365 in a year. Why aren’t parents, who have 5 more days than a school year, adding in 50% of that time to reinforce the learning curriculum?
If you child attends school 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. That’s 40 hours. There are 168 hours in a week. Which means your child is in school between 20–25% of their total time in a week. Let’s say we spot them 48 hours for sleeping. That’s still 80 hours, what are you doing with your children in those 80 hours?
Parents assume that a school is like an auto repair shop-=—drop it off, pick it up repaired/fix/ready.
That’s not how learning works.
Now let’s couple in all the other bs that children first bring from home—-all their parents:

dysfunction,
issues,
drama,
impositions,
belief systems,
contrary beliefs
and simply wrong facts. Got to dismantle that.

Then add in:

emotional issues from either the parents,
environment (got poverty, anyone?),
emotional/mental issues within the child
or a combination of all of the above.

Teacher—-if you check the spelling you’ll see that doesn’t spell:

social worker,
child psychologist,
child psychiatrist,
doctor,
nurse
family therapist.

Teacher.

If you’re going through a break up/divorce, your kid brings it to school.
If you’ve got bills up the whazoo, in debt, getting evicted, lights out—-your kids bring that to school.
If violence, screaming, tantrums, stonewalling, biting, sarcasm and authority issues are how you example dealing with stress at home—-your kid brings that to school.

On top of all of the above, your child is a short, powerless, resource-less, near rights-less pawn for about 18 years that is forced to do things that may or may not feel good in the moment. Oh, did I mention they’re going batshit on hormones for years on end? Now you know where all of their attitude comes from.
Now go to your job and organize 35 people who don’t want to be there, are high on their own hormones, have all kinds of home drama and bring all of that concentrated madness into 40 hours.
Did I mention schools have that allotted time to do stuff that’s completely off center to all of the above? Do your children want to discuss forms of government, the 7 parts of speech, geometry or frog biology casually at home? What makes you think they walk into a classroom and suddenly feel all inspired to do so? The expectation of what you’re there to do and what the participants want, try and don’t want to do are vast and insane.

Imagine at your job as a car salesman, every customer comes in and disrobes for their prostate exam.
Imagine at your job as a nurse, every patient refuses to cooperate until you unravel their family history and emotional problems from years prior to when you met them…multiplied by 35.
Imagine as a cashier everyone pays you in Monopoly money and won’t stop taking food and running from the store.
Imagine your 40 hour a week job, you’re given 10 hours to get it done and when you come in the next week, half of the information has been erased.

Most teachers are good and overwhelmed because most parents drop off their kids like broken cars to school. If you ask your kids what did you do today in school during school days, you’re part of the problem.
How about you ask them: what are WE (you and them) doing for schooling, the days there is no school?
You’ll have a stellar student because they’ll show up to school ready for….wait for it—-school.
You want better teachers?
Come and get their books early and read them.
In fact every complaining parent is only allowed to complain if they have a full bookcase at home, TV is monitored and on less than 1 hour a day for EVERYONE in the house, no cell phones/IPads, video games for children as distractions. If you read regularly and example that to your children you’re in the top 2% of parents in America who regularly READ for pleasure. Now imagien if YOU don’t read regularly, someone trying to get your child to do so when the behavior at home is counter-educational?
If you say you hate math—-your children then norm hating math—-instead you bust out refresher books so that you can teach YOUR kid algebra and basic math alongside the teacher who only sees your child 25% of their lifetime over 13 years—-approximately 3/12 years out of 13 years, has a better chance.
If you can bust those moves and keep your children in therapy, not doped up or down, well fed, clothed and well mannered by the time they hit the door, you’ll find that there are far fewer “bad” teachers than people who signed up to be teachers and get to be:

de facto parents,
social workers,
psychologists,
community activists,
medical practitioners
and family counselors——for one paycheck.

How about this?—-if you think there are so many bad teachers. Come teach for a month. Any subject. 160 hours, day in day out. We’ll show you into a classroom and lock you in with all the innocent children who are being corrupted, coddled, drugged, abused, neglected, overlooked, and poorly taught by ….their teachers. And you’ll rea;ize their issues have nothign to do with school.
You wouldn’t last a week.
Oh, then let me introduce you to your other jobs:

Bureaucracy and Administration manager,
data specialist,
and curriculum designer.

No, it’s all excitingly within the same paycheck.
You know why people are so critical of teachers?
Because kids can’t completely rage at their parents because they need them, to survive and parents haven’t graduated past sound bites as exampling their ongoing ability of critically thinking about problems, solutions, concepts and solutions related to education.
Essentially the manufacturer (parents) and children (the product) are lying to themselves and each other about the process and blaming the store for bad packaging and therefore low sales.
If you’re so bright about what’s wrong with education why are you busting a home run move those other 80 hours a week, twice as much time as school has your kid to create a passel of Nobel Laureates? If you invested 20 hours a week, home schooling on top of the 40 they get at school, you’d have an A student. Do that. Map out 20 hours. no TV, no phones, no video games. You, your child, a desk, books.
There should be a parent scoring system, formally, that schools would pass out to parents based on their attendance to events, what your kids say about you and what you do and don’t do/allow.
That said there are:

burnt out teachers,
people who don’t have time for professional development,
teachers who have learned to coast because the enthusiasm they brought was crushed
and teachers who thought your child was a team project, not a box of legos you dump at the door and speed off, expecting the Eiffel Tower when you return.

Unless your kid is being beaten, raped or bullied, YOU as a parent need to set up a desk, chair and blackboard in your living room, in front of the TV and reinforce what we’re trying to do.
Get off the cross, we need the wood.