While teachers are dedicated, students are another matter

sugar,
These are being given as work. Period. Unvarying, day after day work while the teacher's broken ankle knits.

This sort of work just brings out the tendency in the kids to look for the "answers" in the text without reading first. They make no connection at all. We did work sheets in elementary school, but we read the material out loud in class first.

Seal Poet,
I think a trick question is a good thing. Our high school general science teacher asked one trick question every year and it involved who was buried in Grant's Tomb. He was famous for that.

I agree that no child left behind means no child gets ahead. I think it encourages teaching to the test.

While there should be areas that must be covered -- when I was in grad school at Wayne State, studying English, candidates had to take a Shakespeare, American Lit probably from 1814 - 1850, 18thC British lit, Victorian lit, contemporary AMerican novels and a few others. Because this was grad school, the courses came under the necessary registration numbers but were taught according to "topics," as the professors who specialized in these areas chose. For example, under the 20th Century American novel, I took a class whose topic was Jewish Writers. Under the Victorian number, I took Shaw (yeah, that still gives me a hard time. Other choices included Matthew Arnold and Dickens.) The classes were demanding. WSU had quarters (11 weeks). For Jewish writers, we read 10 novels and wrote two papers and then had a final. For Shaw, we read six of his plays along with their introductions, wrote two papers and had a final and mid-term. I took those classes together while working a 35 hour per week job and working as an active member of a food co-op.

You can't do that with grade school, but you can demand certain areas of math, science, American history, world history, geography, grammar are covered.


let's face it: creative teachers suffer under such a system. Just think of all the ways you can teach Shakespeare (I do all the time) or American history, especially in a town like Arlington, MA where a big chunk of the Revolution took place.

I noticed that one of the 40 biology students I taught for the past t wo weeks just doesn't read that well. He's a nice boy and he's quiet, but his reading is poor. What if he just isn't capable of reading well?

When I was in grade school, we were tested for reading and comprehension levels twice a year. We were told at what level we read. Why isn't that system in place? It seemed simple.

Last year, I sunbstituted for elementary school teachers who were part of a pilot program to test kids for reading. What a waste of money and time that was. I am certain that by the end of the second week of school, each teacher knew the reading level of the kids. Besides, she was paid and I was paid to teach one class that day. What a waste.

My son is a special needs student because he is bi-polar. I have seen special needs kids who have individual tutors. One kid I thought just needed a spanking. An 8 year old gold brick.

Some special needs kids are very disruptive in ways they can not control.

Some children really need the services that the school systems provide that parents could never afford to pay for. Last year, I worked in a special needs nursery school where children received speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy. One little girl, at age three, could say only 20 words that were her version of words. She had one unfocused eye and suffered seizures. Another little girl simply had a body that was skewed like a cork screw. Her mother, a youngish and pretty woman, was widowed. Talk about troubles upon troubles.

I think 766 is the usual special needs (intellectual) and that 504 is the mental and emotional special needs.

Just listening here, no expertise at all.

POM, reading the text aloud, now there's a concept. Of course it might embarrass some students. Embarrassment was part and parcel of my grade school experience, and quite the motivator at the time. But I look back at what must have been some suffering for those who couldn't deal in the class (catholic, lots of students, 'early '50's). Even now I remember the names of some of those students... but I guess that isn't so specific, I remember the names of many of those who weren't struggling, too.

(This next message is from Sealpoet's eldest son and does not express the feelings or opinions of the Sealpoet you know)

I'm a student at the very same High school that plainoldme teaches at. I cannot neccesarily say that eeryone relies on worksheets but the science teachers are setting us up with worksheets just to keep us busy. My own teacher is horrible and any substitute would be a nice change of pace. This teacher constantly changes the rules of projects the day before they're due and such. She also repeats the same exact notes which brings us back to 'no child left behind' or as my dad puts it no child ahead.

That's my boy!

Son of SealPoet had it right about some teachers using worksheets to keep kids busy.

But substitutes are particularly at a disadvantage. I would have loved to have a discussion with the kids about the articles I circulated.


ossobucco -- When I taught at the Junior High School in Center Line, MI,
I divided my English kids in half according to ability and got an easier text for the kids with reading problems. I would have take one group into the hall to read while the kids did writing or grammar exercises in the classroom. The next day, we switched. The kids loved it. They said no teacher ever trusted them before. And the less skilled readers actually improved.

The 504s that I am given this year look exactly like an IEP.


Plainoldme-
I totally agree with you. My husband is an emotional support teacher in an urban high school. He may have one student that has emotional problems--- the rest of his students are criminals. One drives a Lexus to school- obtained from a drug deal with a local Doctor. There are at least one hundred students that belong in my husband's room before this character. - It would cost too much money for the school district - tax payers- to put these students (criminals) somewhere that could help them. However, they are faced with no job market, little to no ability to read and the lure of easy money and lots of it. (most of the students in our area ESOL students (english as a second language) They can speak Spanish and English but can not read or write in either language.

Re: While teachers are dedicated, students are another matte
The best teachers are those that make learning fun. It's not that kids don't want to learn, they do. They are just bored with the material.

Learning is work. Work is not always fun. The expectation that it should be or needs to be fun is part of the problem.

I don't think so, beebo. There should be at least some spark of curiousity behind it all. I had a great time K-8, suffered through h.s., then had a great time in college.

I'm not a teacher. I just know the way I learn best. It's true there are subjects that are just flat out boring and I'm sure it's hard to get students to be enthusiastic about them. I've been out of high school for 14 years now. I don't remember much about the classes that bored me. But I remember lots about the classes that were fun.

I never went to college, I'm self taught in computers and landed a pretty good job as a result. I taught my self everything I would have learned if I went to college because I enjoy it. And the best way for me to learn is hands on, not from a book or from a lecture. That goes in one ear and out the other for me.

I taught Family & Consumer Science (home ec) for seven years. From what the students said they loved my class. I was teaching them how to cook and budget etc. I wasnt trying to teach them to read. But for a nineth grade student that reads on a 2nd grade level it was hard. Now I teach a vocational child care program. Again- the students select my class- so they want to be there. I have a great job. I love it. However, life & work aren't always fun. When I was in school- there wasnt an expectation that teachers make classes fun. It was understood that sometimes you have to work hard now to reap a reward later. This generation of students do not know the concept of delayed gratification. I think that the expectation that teachers be fun is really one of the greatest injustices that we do our students.

beebo, I hear what you are saying... but maybe if it's not fun, it doesn't have to be deadly dull.

Hard work carries its own rewards, whether for money or for knowledge. That's the lesson that is not being taught when schoolwork is made too easy.

And it can be fun... so can work, on a good day.

I've found in my own life that actual learning is hard for me, and I see the same phenomenon for others. By this I mean learning to think in a new way, as opposed to simply learning some new vocabulary words. When I learned about grading in site engineering I had some mental resistance to visualizing what was happening to the land based on raising one grade (site elevation) here and lowering another there.
Resistance? I remember crying about it, and I was a grown woman. Now I love understanding all this, and look forward to doing grading plans.

My point is that I think it is tough to convey the joy that can come from new understanding when all a student sees is
"I don't get it". The surprise is that working through what you don't get and then understanding is actually a kind of fun.

plainoldme

I have occasionally laid claim to the title "teacher" and early on was told of the biblical aphorism:

"Teaching can be like casting pearls before swine.
The pearls may sometimes be a little artificial, but the swine are always real".

Kind regards.

Not getting updates and haven't had much time.

I think a great deal of blame can be laid on the parents. When girls come to school in revealing outfits, it's the parents fault. If kids think they can make animal noises and whistle in class, it's the parent's fault.

I wonder if some of these kids were read to by their parents. If the parents failed to sit with them and watch programs like (sticky letter n) nova, which would spark an interest in science. If they tune into Survivor rather than the history channel or American Experience.

Granted, I read to all three of my kids while their ages were still measurable in months. The two older ones love to read while the third doesn't. We made a point of watching nova (capital n continues to stick) together every Tuesday until my younger son discovered Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

Education begins at home and if parents fail to show respect for learning, where will kids pick it up?

At parent teacher confrences students are blatently rude and disrespectful (to teachers and parents). Things that I won't (as an adult) do to my parents.

beebo,
With the exception of the kindergarten teacher who submitted my daughter (who could read at age 3) for an evaluation because she cried in school and hid under a desk (the same teacher would not hang her art up because on the first day of school, she drew the assigned self portrait but labeled the drawing, "Princess Leia"), I have not had teachers exhibit rudeness. In fact, considering my son is bi-polar and very difficult, I am amazed at how well I have been treated.