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After working on these lofty essays for the Disney Award, I'm feeling a bit frustrated and hypocritical.
Ideal teaching and reality seldom match up. And if you are in an inner city school with a school district that refuses to realign boundaries, you will have nothing but students who can understand only what they have grown up with--a cut throat, dog-eat-dog world. The girls are awful these year; the boys are big into the gangs. God knows what their neighborhoods are like or whether many of these kids will survive to graduate high school.
But the schools are becoming segregated again, although this time it's not really about ethnicity. It's only about poverty. So, will my school be closed? End of this year? Next year? Isn't that the only way to make it go away? Because no one wants to bus kids; that's much too controversial. Better to create a magnet school and then declare the school mixed when it's nothing more than a school within a school, like my son's school. The magnet kids are predominantly white with only 20% minority, and then there's the rest of the school which is almost entirely dirt poor Afr Am. But I bet their numbers look good on paper. Nice balance of ethnicities. Too bad the classes aren't mixed. What a joke.
My school is mainly Hispanic, mainly no homework ethic, no respect, no kindness, no teamwork--unless it's a teamwork to gang up on someone else. Some days it makes me very sad, and makes me feel helpless. It makes me wonder if all of my platitudes and all of my declarations of "I know how to teach these kids" are full of stercus. All I have to do is look at the quality of homework and know that I'm really not reaching these kids. Not many of them. Not well. ... oh I don't know....
I did an emergency review today (or so it felt) going back over subject/verb agreement, and basic sentence structure (nom + acc + v) in preparation for the next test. I realized that I really need to rewrite the Stage 5 test (too easy, no complete the sentence) because it was too easy, focusing only on the sing vs pl noms. Stage 4 test was too hard, with too many culture questions. And I need to realign these to go with the 4th edition books. But when when when??? Perhaps now instead of writing in this blog site.
But for those reading this blog and thinking that I must be some incredible teacher, the reality is that I'm not. I've very passionate about my teaching philosopy--about reading, oral work, metaphrasing, etc--but I really do fall short elsewhere.
I was asked today to be part of a presentation on note taking and graphic organizers. I begged off because I do little in the way of note taking. I learned early on that I shouldn't bother with notes because the kids never kept them and if they wrote something down it usually just went in through the eyes and out through the fingertips. I would like to think that I focus more on direct application and trying to get it straight into the head. hahahahaha.
But it got me thinking. These kids, these poor, low-level kids I have this year... they'd probably benefit from *something*. And those first couple of days back from Christmas would be a good time to review and organize. Or something. I have a "manipulative" in mind. I little booklet sort of organizer that I think would work well. I was also thinking this summer about some sort of interactive set of pages, like the science interactive notebooks my son used last year--notes copied on the left, put in the child's own words on the right. I like that. I think it would help to internalize information. But when? WHEN do I give up days to do that when today HALF MY CLASSES were GONE on a stupid "reward" trip to the movie theater that took most of the day? LIKE THAT MAKES SENSE? Couldn't we reward them for good grades and not getting little stamps?? Instead, my strugglers managed to round up enough stamps to go... so the end result, no doubt, is that they will probably FAIL my test on Tuesday, even with the computer review on Monday.
Fail. Because they've gone to see a movie on school time for no damn good reason.
And then the band is out and the choir is out for Christmas stuff. And they were gone for the gem and mineral show.....
So I'm discouraged because I lose days right and left already. And taking time to make a "cool" note organizer might just end up being a waste of time.
But maybe not.
Ideal teaching and reality seldom match up. And if you are in an inner city school with a school district that refuses to realign boundaries, you will have nothing but students who can understand only what they have grown up with--a cut throat, dog-eat-dog world. The girls are awful these year; the boys are big into the gangs. God knows what their neighborhoods are like or whether many of these kids will survive to graduate high school.
But the schools are becoming segregated again, although this time it's not really about ethnicity. It's only about poverty. So, will my school be closed? End of this year? Next year? Isn't that the only way to make it go away? Because no one wants to bus kids; that's much too controversial. Better to create a magnet school and then declare the school mixed when it's nothing more than a school within a school, like my son's school. The magnet kids are predominantly white with only 20% minority, and then there's the rest of the school which is almost entirely dirt poor Afr Am. But I bet their numbers look good on paper. Nice balance of ethnicities. Too bad the classes aren't mixed. What a joke.
My school is mainly Hispanic, mainly no homework ethic, no respect, no kindness, no teamwork--unless it's a teamwork to gang up on someone else. Some days it makes me very sad, and makes me feel helpless. It makes me wonder if all of my platitudes and all of my declarations of "I know how to teach these kids" are full of stercus. All I have to do is look at the quality of homework and know that I'm really not reaching these kids. Not many of them. Not well. ... oh I don't know....
I did an emergency review today (or so it felt) going back over subject/verb agreement, and basic sentence structure (nom + acc + v) in preparation for the next test. I realized that I really need to rewrite the Stage 5 test (too easy, no complete the sentence) because it was too easy, focusing only on the sing vs pl noms. Stage 4 test was too hard, with too many culture questions. And I need to realign these to go with the 4th edition books. But when when when??? Perhaps now instead of writing in this blog site.
But for those reading this blog and thinking that I must be some incredible teacher, the reality is that I'm not. I've very passionate about my teaching philosopy--about reading, oral work, metaphrasing, etc--but I really do fall short elsewhere.
I was asked today to be part of a presentation on note taking and graphic organizers. I begged off because I do little in the way of note taking. I learned early on that I shouldn't bother with notes because the kids never kept them and if they wrote something down it usually just went in through the eyes and out through the fingertips. I would like to think that I focus more on direct application and trying to get it straight into the head. hahahahaha.
But it got me thinking. These kids, these poor, low-level kids I have this year... they'd probably benefit from *something*. And those first couple of days back from Christmas would be a good time to review and organize. Or something. I have a "manipulative" in mind. I little booklet sort of organizer that I think would work well. I was also thinking this summer about some sort of interactive set of pages, like the science interactive notebooks my son used last year--notes copied on the left, put in the child's own words on the right. I like that. I think it would help to internalize information. But when? WHEN do I give up days to do that when today HALF MY CLASSES were GONE on a stupid "reward" trip to the movie theater that took most of the day? LIKE THAT MAKES SENSE? Couldn't we reward them for good grades and not getting little stamps?? Instead, my strugglers managed to round up enough stamps to go... so the end result, no doubt, is that they will probably FAIL my test on Tuesday, even with the computer review on Monday.
Fail. Because they've gone to see a movie on school time for no damn good reason.
And then the band is out and the choir is out for Christmas stuff. And they were gone for the gem and mineral show.....
So I'm discouraged because I lose days right and left already. And taking time to make a "cool" note organizer might just end up being a waste of time.
But maybe not.
