Some teachers are, my English teacher just goes off and talks about random things just to waste time.
At least my Political Philosophy teacher doesn't mean to go off on tangents.

My Agriculture class teacher kind of talks about useless stuff that everybody already knows, like she will discuss the essential things a plant needs to grow, sunlight water, and soil and she takes forever to talk about something. Most of the kids in that class including me really dread this class. It is long, boring and lots of people have stopped and dropped out of the class when they realized how boring it is. She just drones on talking all class long about wood and boring stuff we probably already know or don't need to know. I don't like this class at all, it is a waste of my time, I regret putting it as an elective, I knew I should of put in study hall instead so I can actually do my work and it is useful....

My music teacher in 5th grade, she wasted time because she didn't have the right tools to teach music.(She was in a very small class room.) So she taught us interesting tidbits so we wouldn't get bored.
~S.S

Oh sure. It happens, and I hate that it happens. I am a teacher myself, and it is those kinds of teachers that make the rest of us look bad. No wonder so many people think it is such an easy job. If you do it that way, sure it is. But it is the wrong way to teach.

I like to believe I am not one of those teachers. Granted, I am just finishing up my first year, so I have a LOT of room for improvement. But I try to make every lesson as purposeful and applicable as possible. But again, there are those out there that do just wait out for the weekend.

Cloe : They might be what we call in the teaching profession "lemon teachers". But since that would take us off topic of the thread, you can PM me if you want me to explain what that actually means

I like how it says "some teachers", personally... I believe MOST teachers waste our time.

Like, I understand education is important... but come on, why are we all forced to learn things we may NEVER use?

Heck, science isn't even something you should learn except the basics... like "what chemicals not to mix" and so on....

Finally some people who understands me!!!

A lot of Teachers I had were pretty much "Time Wasters", pretty much say the same thing all day for different classes in Middle school and High school.

Smoe subjects I didn't really cared that much about because I already know about it or I ain't going to use it.

There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that many teachers 'waste time'.  In fact, I'd be so bold as to say that MOST modern teachers do so.  Thanks to legislative decisions, paycuts and payouts, decreasing integrity and increasing laziness.....  Well, I feel that most teachers have been reduced to babysitters.  Some teachers have chosen to do this, while some feel pressured into it.  In fact, I was actually supposed to lose my job this year.... Why?  Because I actually do my job.  The principal doesn't like the fact that I challenge my students and then give them grades they actually earned. She wants me to just pass them on by, and she told me that if my grades look the same next year, she's going to get rid of me for sure.

There are many sad things about this, but one of them is that my grades actually make almost a PERFECT bell curve, slanted to the right.  This means that most of my kids are 'average', while the appropriate number are above average or below average.  However, more of my kids are above than are below.  On top of this, our school's math scores have increased significantly since I began working there, and I was the only new math teacher added five years ago.

I walk around my school and I see teachers sitting back and chatting on their cell phones while kids fill out worksheets.  I see teachers roaming the halls while their kids watch movies in the classrooms.  I even see classrooms in which there are students and no teacher... because the teacher took off and didn't care enough to get a sub.

It's really quite frustrating to teachers like me, who get up and teach every day.  The teachers like me who stay after school, come to school early, and work their butts off to do everything they possibly can.  I will admit that I've had a day or two where things weren't going my way, and I 'wasted time'.  That being said, those days are far and few between. And when I waste a day, that simply means I'm not at the board teaching.  I give my students something to do ALWAYS, and that something is ALWAYS relevant to the material being taught.  If I have a day where things are going wrong and I have to improvise or take a breather, I'll come back the next day and make sure that the assignment actually has value in the learning progress.

I could go on this topic forever, but YES.... teachers waste time.  And it's infuriating.

Nope, teachers are not a waste of time. That's like saying Singelli is a waste of time.

I don't think so everything they say is very important.Who knows what the teachers might say might be the key to getting good grades on tests.

A lot of teachers could be considered "time wasters" but that is because don't have things easy as Singelli said with the pay and pension cuts, and then you have the kid who always causes trouble in every single lesson. I know I could never cope with been a teacher because of this, I know some people will say they have great holidays and yes they do but they still have to work in their own time just to get lessons ready and interesting and to be honest people get fed up and won't be bothered to try anymore. I think teachers are getting it in the neck from everybody and need to be given a break for once. Of course not all teachers are like this because they have it hard some are just lazy by nature, I had a teacher at secondary who used to hand out one worksheet which would take be 10 minutes to compete leaving me with nothing else to do for the hour, throughout the lesson he would either go to sleep or play on his phone.

Singelli : I will say that probably nobody else will even get some of the things I will say to you cause they aren't in our profession. But aside from pay cuts and payouts, it really plummeted when the country decided that classes based almost completely on standardized testing was the way to go. When they make a system where schools LOSE funding if they don't have ALL students improving on standardized tests. Because apparently tests are the best way to measure knowledge and progress. This forced schools to pressure their teachers with micromanaged ways of doing things. If you stray from the style of preparing for a test, you lose your job. It is ridiculous. NCLB has to be one of, if not the worst thing to be forced upon our education system. 

That is why I am so excited for Common Core to be fully implemented (this is the part I am sure nobody else will even know what I'm talking about). Working in the common core system is fantastic. It is student driven. Knowledge comes from learning to ask the right questions, not just look at text to find answers to questions asked for them. The school I just finished teaching in already almost fully integrated the system in their classes. Teachers met as teams to work together to see how they could integrate each others subjects in their lessons. That way, it isn't just individual classes, but an overall lesson that you see from different subjects. We had parts of science classes put into English lessons. I was teaching science, but applying it to what they were learning in history. We were discussing where our students weaknesses were in our own classes so we can all help integrate that part into our own lessons to help them practice and also see how this is all relevant.

For example, SacraRain said how in science, we only need to know the absolute basics. That is farther from the truth. So the history teacher put in his lessons over more recent events that showed that it was because of our population's lack of understanding of scientific concepts that lead to many people just trusting what politicians say, causing them to vote for the wrong decisions. It is because we have such a lack of understanding of both Earth science and chemistry that people still believe in politicians who say humans have no contribution to the current climate change. It was because of our lack of understanding that caused people to buy 'ear protectors' for the cell phones because they just believed that phone signals could give them cancer because someone announced "radiation". No offense to SacraRain, but it is thinking like that that causes us to have so little understanding of how our world works, leading our population to just believe whatever the media says. Our history teachers showed my students how bad this way of thinking is just by integrating my lessons with theirs. It is reasons like that that make me love Common Core, and can't wait until it is fully integrated into our school system. 

rcarter2 : I completely agree with you about standardized testing and NCLB.  I have tons of students who are brilliant.... and yet fail every test they take.  However, thanks to the way I manage my class, if a student truly knows what she or he is doing.... they could (with hard work) get a high B even while failing every test.  Standardized testing was part of what I was referencing when talking about paycuts and payouts..  People want to say "Schools are doing better!  Their grades are higher!"  But that's a load of crock.   Grades may be higher, but when you tell schools that they will only get funding (or increased funding) if they improve every year..... of COURSE grades are 'magically' going to become better!  It's a ridiculous system, and it's killing any sense of quality and standards.

See though, about Common Core, your school must be doing it the right way.  Maybe it's just because I'm in an urban city, or maybe I'm being left out of the loop.... but our school isn't doing that.  I LOVE the idea of a kid being able to take up, move away, attend a new school, and be learning the SAME thing (military lifestyle should speak for this!).  However, that really seems to be all our school and city thinks of it.  We even watched this promotional video for one of our professional developments, and the video didn't really say anything about interdisciplinary teaching.  That's a HUGE thing in my classroom: application. If I tell my students how to solve a quadratic equation, but I don't tell them where or how that can be useful, in the end I've only taught them to be robotic thinkers.

I'm super shy, so it's hard for me to work with other teachers.  Not only that, but the other teachers don't seem to WANT to.  Why?  Because they're babysitters.  I've asked a few teachers across various disciplines if we could work something out, and while they always exclaim it to be a fantastic idea...... their proclamation is all that takes place.

Maybe I just need to come teach where you teach.  LOL  I really think your school is in the minority, here.

Singelli : It is in a minority, but the thing is, Common Core isn't implemented officially yet. It is still something being developed, and many districts don't even know what it is exactly, let alone know how to set it up in their schools. It doesn't help that there really are a lot of people fighting it because it does require them to put more thought and effort into their jobs (the time wasters). But it isn't going anywhere. It's going to happen, so they will have to just deal with it. I was lucky to work in a school that had pretty almost everyone enthused and advocates for it. Hopefully I get the same work environment in the school I am in now. 

Yes. One of my teachers talked all period every day. AND they talked about their life and their daughters college experience.