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Comment by dwater | Hacker News Reader

This blog post is not enough background for me to make a judgement about this particular teacher, but I will say as someone who spent a decade teaching high school, I have general disdain for people who spend 2 years teaching and think they have learned enough to leave the classroom forever and improve the system by becoming an instructional advisor. 2 years is about how long it goes from being completely underwater and just struggling to get through the year, to being competent enough that you stop worrying about the basic responsibilities and start thinking about how to fine tune your approach.

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I don’t have much insight into the teaching environment so take this with a grain of salt, but in general, when bringing new people into an environment, one of the most useful periods of time to get feedback is during and just after the onboarding process. This is when all of the things long-timers have become blind to are most visible.

Someone who has been in a role for years has often absorbed the issues and found ways to navigate around the biggest pain points (the upside of this is a deeper understanding of the environment). But someone who just joined can often see some issues more clearly than anyone else, and someone who is just finding their stride is in a sweet spot for delivering useful feedback.

I’m not claiming to know the ins/outs of classrooms, nor do I know enough about this person to pass judgement, but disdain seems rather misplaced and counterproductive.

Neither should all decisions about improving the system fall on newcomers, but they will have extremely important and valuable feedback. This seems like unnecessary gatekeeping if not tempered by reasonable policies that seek feedback from numerous sources, especially at a time when classrooms are in crisis and improvement is critical.

Blanket disdain is always a red flag.

I have a lot of friends (including my spouse) who are teachers, and I can pretty confidently say that an office environment/culture/work sphere as we as engineers are used to is vastly different than working in a classroom. We don’t often value experience because, you’re right, often times fresh eyes do bring useful insights. But in the case of teaching (and probably many other things), consensus seems to be that experience does vastly affect one’s effectiveness.

I applaud the OP for their attempt to bring something new, but I feel like if maybe they’d waited a couple more years they may have an easier time thinking through the problem set and creating a product to fit the need. Perhaps I’m wrong! But that’s just my feeling from the many conversations I’ve had with teacher friends.

> We don’t often value experience because, you’re right, often times fresh eyes do bring useful insights.

This isn’t quite what I’m getting at. Even in an office environment, I bias towards valuing experience over naive and idealistic attempts to fix everything that’s wrong.

My point is closer to: those fresher experiences are ephemeral and also an important signal alongside deeper experience and institutional knowledge.

Office environments are also full of inexperienced people trying to fix systems they don’t understand.

My point is not that inexperienced people should be taking over, but that people in positions to institute change should be listening to newcomers along with seasoned veterans. I don’t see this as an either/or stance.

For me the disdain comes from the fact that in my time in the classroom, I was constantly given advice on how to do my job from people who either had never done my job themselves, or like the OP had done it briefly before bailing out of the classroom to become consultants or administrators. There is a whole industry of education consultants who couldn't hack it as educators. All of the other educators commenting on this post are echoing that 2 years is not enough to understand the job while the OP is happily tearing down Chesterton's Fence.

> the disdain comes from the fact that in my time in the classroom, I was constantly given advice on how to do my job from people who either had never done my job themselves

I’ve been in tech for ~20 years, and if there’s one thing that never changes, it’s that newcomers are eager to tell me how to do my job.

Fresh grads come in convinced it’s their time to shake things up.

Management brings in consultants to tell me how to do my job.

The new SVP comes in and tells me how to do my job despite not understanding the environment, etc.

Over the years I’ve found it far more useful to frame this kind of feedback as just another signal among a myriad of signals, which collectively can be quite valuable.

It seems common to any human organization, especially those that rely on specialized skills, and I’d argue that the outcome is similar: just as experience and deep understanding can be important for stability, questioning the status quo can be just as critical for navigating societal change and long term success.

I’m here to argue against the binary position, not to claim that newcomers should be running the show.

At least for the urban school district I went to - of which many school districts are similar (although less represented among the HN crowd), I think your comment is totally off base. There is no chance of learning what to do in these schools during the 'onboarding' process.

I taught physics for about 7 years and I completely agree. I had a number of students who suggested teaching as a "backup" or a "temporary" career between college and something else, and I tried my best to dissuade them. It's not enough to have people who come in for just two years, get frustrated and leave because of "bugs" in teaching software. It took me about four years to really get the hang of the job and the idiosyncrasies of HS students and how they work, and even when I left I never felt like I truly got the hang of it.

I agree. I had the benefit of going through the top curriculum and instruction program in the nation. I was considered a high performer right out of the gate; however, I don’t think that I really started to “get it” as a high school English teacher until around 4-5 years in.

Edit: I don’t mean to be dismissive of the submitter. You very well may have a unique insight into CS instruction based on your time in the classroom. I would just caution that - from a marketing point of view - two years in the classroom is not going to instill confidence in your expertise with long term educators (so avoid making it a selling point as such).

I've never seen so much bitterness. Teachers in this thread are really, really salty. Just ask for his hall pass already and demand he call you "MISTER dwater".

Imagine if we talked about people learning programming the same way?

I have a general disdain for anyone who programs for 2 years and then thinks they have learned enough to teach anyone or improve the system in any way. 2 years is how long it takes just to learn git, let alone be comfortable teaching it. You better wait awhile, chief. Programming is the most important, most hardest, most critical thing in the world. Imagine thinking you could just stroll into MY world and make a possible difference in somebody's life with your abysmal and inexperienced self. The hubris! Y'know what? Go to the principle's office. This will be on your permanent record.

I think there is an eternal battle between Cosmetologists and Teachers who are fighting over who is the most miserable, while still saying "I love my job".

> ...fighting over who is the most miserable, while still saying "I love my job".

my wife is a HS teacher of about 15 years, truer words have never been said.

The English teacher in me reminds you it's "principal's" in this case. These teachers sure can be an obnoxious lot.

It's like people who spend 2 years programming and become an engineering manager or worse director

Sounds almost expected for anyone stuck in public education for a decade or more would have disdain for anyone talented and/or ambitious enough to get out.

It's pretty clear that the guy is more of a hobby programmer than a teacher, and is trying to hobby program teacher. It's unlikely to succeed.

I think you're right: as a teacher, they clearly have much to learn, and as an instructional advisor, their authority ought to be suspect. But as an EdTech entrepreneur? Eh, let's see what they come up with. They're not instructing anymore; they're building. If they're smart and work with experienced teachers, it might be interesting.

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