New Boot Sergeants

[DangerDwarf]

Just a work related venting. Move along. Nothing to see here...

I'm a lieutenant at a rather large prison and in addition to my officers, I have three sergeant that work directly under me as well. Two of those three are newly promoted.

It's cool that they promoted, bettering yourself in your career and all that. But sometimes I just want to shout, "WTF!!!! You CHOSE to promote! Act the role or get the hell out of the way!"

*sigh*

Of the two new sergeants, one is extremely green. He's untested and has little experience in the field. Both of them have great attitudes and have the ability to be good at this but damn it gets frustrating at times trying to get them there. Seriously, we work in a field where when things go wrong, people get hurt which makes it hard for me to give them too big of a learning curve.

Ah well. I know I'll get them there, I always do; I just needed to vent before my growls of "Damned new boot sergeants." to them escalated to something more.

I just wish the higher ups would quit sending the new boots my way. Let me keep the ones I train for awhile and reap the benefits before they send them to someone else and give me more new boots to train.

[Freehold DM]

What is a boot sergeant exactly? Is that like calling Gunnery Sergeants, "Guns" or "Master Guns"? Explain plz.

[Heathansson]

I gotta shake down newbies too.
What helps me is thinking back to when I was a newbie, and some poor grizzled veteran had to square me the hell away, and all the damage I did to his or her arterial tensility.

[Tarren Dei]

I blame it on the high schools. I feel like an old man saying this but 'Kids these days!'. In Ontario, the high schools are under so much pressure to achieve better 'retention' that they simply let students coast through. Then, I get them in the uni and find they are unprepared for the hard work.

[Bill Lumberg]

Tarren Dei wrote:

I blame it on the high schools. I feel like an old man saying this but 'Kids these days!'. In Ontario, the high schools are under so much pressure to achieve better 'retention' that they simply let students coast through. Then, I get them in the uni and find they are unprepared for the hard work.

Do Canadian high schools follow the British model of teaching that stresses memorization? Do they use many multiple-choice tests like they do in the US?

[mwbeeler]

Bill Lumberg wrote:

Do Canadian high schools follow the British model of teaching that stresses memorization? Do they use many multiple-choice tests like they do in the US?

The one question every single American public school child can answer without delay: "Who invented the Cotton Gin?"

Spoiler:

Eli Whitney

[Tarren Dei]

Bill Lumberg wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

I blame it on the high schools. I feel like an old man saying this but 'Kids these days!'. In Ontario, the high schools are under so much pressure to achieve better 'retention' that they simply let students coast through. Then, I get them in the uni and find they are unprepared for the hard work.

Do Canadian high schools follow the British model of teaching that stresses memorization? Do they use many multiple-choice tests like they do in the US?

There's probably a difference between theory and practice on this. We have a large-scale assessment in Ontario that contains multiple choice items and that is having a washback effect on the education system but the theory stresses multiple forms of assessment and alternative assessment (e.g., portfolios, self-assessment, performance assessment, etc.). I suspect that teachers in class mostly use rubrics but, unfortunately, I'm in the university and teach teachers and rarely get to see the inside of a high school classroom. I blame them, nonetheless.

[Charles Evans 25]

As someone currently living in the Uk, and whose mother is working in the teaching profession, I can report that British schools these days (except maybe a few of the private ones) do not involve 'memorisation'. There is 'coursework' because someone had the idea (originally) that it helped girls get better grades and catch up with the boys, except now of course there's nothing to stop everyone from downloading pre-written work off the internet and trying to pass it off as their own in many subjects. Then there are the exams- or what passes for exams these days. Multiple guess (sorry, 'choice') and papers where they virtually give you the answer to some of the questions actually in the question are rampant, thanks to 'school league tables'. This beautiful invention, whereby schools are obliged to submit their exam results on an annual basis so that parents can try to work out where to try to send their children, results in schools wanting to get grades that look as *good* as possible (more pupils=more funding), therefore many of them submit for the easiest exam around, to get those grades up. The exam boards (in competition with one another) naturally want as many pupils as possible sitting their exams, and having the schools pay them for marking, etc, so make their exams easier year after year. The exam boards deny it of course, and the government (ten years of Blair spin) is happy to let the situation go on because it allows the department for education to claim that pupils are getting 'brighter and brighter' every year- even though some private schools are now threatening to withdraw from the exam system altogether and make their pupils take international bacherlaureates instead.

If nothing else, Blair will be able to proudly look back on presiding over the decline of the British school education system.

Please do not hold British schools in general up except with regard to decent school meals for children for families in poverty (thanks to a celebrity chef, Mr. Jamie Oliver, we're finally getting *THAT* right), as anything but a joke.

Apologies to the OP for going quite so far off-topic, although he has my sympathies for not being able to hold onto sergeants, once he's trained them, for at least a little while.

[DangerDwarf]

Freehold DM wrote:

What is a boot sergeant exactly? Is that like calling Gunnery Sergeants, "Guns" or "Master Guns"? Explain plz.

Not a "boot" but "new boot".

"New boot" = green, inexperienced, their boots are still shiny and new, etc.

[Heathansson]

Oh. Like a "fuzzbeard" in dwarven slang.

[Kruelaid]

Tarren Dei wrote:

Bill Lumberg wrote:

Tarren Dei wrote:

I blame it on the high schools. I feel like an old man saying this but 'Kids these days!'. In Ontario, the high schools are under so much pressure to achieve better 'retention' that they simply let students coast through. Then, I get them in the uni and find they are unprepared for the hard work.

Do Canadian high schools follow the British model of teaching that stresses memorization? Do they use many multiple-choice tests like they do in the US?

There's probably a difference between theory and practice on this. We have a large-scale assessment in Ontario that contains multiple choice items and that is having a washback effect on the education system but the theory stresses multiple forms of assessment and alternative assessment (e.g., portfolios, self-assessment, performance assessment, etc.). I suspect that teachers in class mostly use rubrics but, unfortunately, I'm in the university and teach teachers and rarely get to see the inside of a high school classroom. I blame them, nonetheless.

Depends on the school, Ontario probably has some breakdowns. I'd be careful about blaming poor college performance on the school system alone, though--and I'm pretty sure Tarren Dei doesn't mean to.

Sadly, although the standardized tests that Canadian provinces administer are quite useful, and they're very well written as far as such tests go. Many high schools and teachers choose to teach TO these tests because that gets better results ON the tests and the students NEED the tests.

[DangerDwarf]

Heathansson wrote:

I gotta shake down newbies too.

What helps me is thinking back to when I was a newbie, and some poor grizzled veteran had to square me the hell away, and all the damage I did to his or her arterial tensility.

*chuckles*

Yeah, I try to keep that in mind. Its just hard to do that at times. Last night I was close to throwing things. My one veteran Sgt. knew it too and stepped in to provide some peer to peer guidance for the newbs. Spared them my thermo-detonation.

[DangerDwarf]

Heathansson wrote:

Oh. Like a "fuzzbeard" in dwarven slang.

Ayup.

It's not exactly an endearing term. I'm trying to correct my bad habit of referring to all the new officers in that manner as well. My occupation has a high turnover rate and I have new officers on almost a weekly basis. We lose them so quickly at time that I generally don't learn the officers names until they've worked for me for 6 months. Until then they are "Hey. New boot."

[Tarren Dei]

Kruelaid wrote:

Depends on the school, Ontario probably has some breakdowns. I'd be careful about blaming poor college performance on the school system alone, though--and I'm pretty sure Tarren Dei doesn't mean to.

Sadly, although the standardized tests that Canadian provinces administer are quite useful, and they're very well written as far as such tests go. Many high schools and teachers choose to teach TO these tests because that gets better results ON the tests and the students NEED the tests.

I blame poor college performance on a culture of entitlement that pervades our school system from jk through MA. Make the schools tougher and stop expecting everyone in every job to have a university degree. ... sorry DangerDwarf for threadjacking. I have the same sentiment albeit in a different setting.

Oh, and no, I don't blame the teachers. I blame the system and the expectations. Largescale assessments are useful. High stakes assessments tend to lead to backwash.