Just remembered this incident today.
I was walking with 4 or 5 of my little kids (some in strollers) down Chew St. in Germantown (Philadelphia). We stopped at a red light at a side street – heard noise in the street – when a car stopped for the red light, a pile of windows/sashes – about 6-7 – came loose from where they were tied on the top of a car – flew forward over the windshield, and smashed into the intersection. Everyone just stopped, stunned, with our mouths dropped open. A middle-aged man got out of the car and surveyed the damage. A couple of people slowly walked into the intersection and started carefully picking up a few of the bigger pieces. Everyone seemed to be waiting for the man’s reaction. Finally, a woman called to him, “Go ahead and swear – I know you want to!” Pause. All he said was (something like) “Eight hundred and twenty-five dollars,” and shook his head.
I got to be an English teacher today! Yay! Mostly the instructional aide was running the show and I just helped keep kids on task, but I did get to help some of them one-on-one to write a persuasive essay. I also (computer whiz that I am – cough! cough!) showed the Aide and quite a few of the kids how to use Ctrl-C, Ctrl-V, Ctrl-X, and Ctrl-A. They all thought it was really cool! I encouraged some of the kids to learn to type properly so that they can be fast, more marketable, and do their homework faster. 🙂 It was nice to actually get to help them work on essays.
The teacher made her room a “no gum chewing” room and they were all writing essays either in support or against her rule. Out of 3 classes of 18-22 kids, I only noticed one or two supporting her decision. Most of the kids, including the 10 or so that I helped, were all promoting the wonderfulness of gum-chewing.
I think I’d like to teach high school more often. These were very respectful kids. I don’t love starting at 7:15, but I do love finishing at 2:30!
I chatted with a teacher during lunch. He talked about teaching a class of 40 where 2/3 of them don’t speak English. I shared my thought that kids immigrating here should have to take a whole semester of intense English immersion and study – and math – and that’s ALL – and then get mainstreamed in. He said the schools would never go for it because the kids would get too far behind in earning their credits for graduation. Hmmm. I said that this is FAKE education if kids are attending classes and do not know English, then they are NOT learning the material anyway. So what if they have to go to high school for one semester longer! He talked about how the 200 seniors ALL applied to at least one college. It made the news – yay for their district. Well – not so sure the story related that it was a requirement for them to apply to one college, nor that they had to give the kids rewards and incentives just to get them to do it. Also, it doesn’t mean that they are all going to go, or that they will all make it when they do! Looking at how kids do 4-5 years later would be a better test.
And then again – why is the ONLY litmus test of whether a high school does well the percentage of students who go to college? Seriously, this focus has got to change. Trades workers are needed, and for many people college is a waste of money.
I want to mention that the first grade teacher I subbed for yesterday had some really nice “holders” on the tables. They were about 15 inches long, and resembled the tray on a white board – kids can keep a few pencils in them, and there’s a slot for a stand-up name tag. This is GREAT for subs, because they are quite visible so we can call the kids by name instead of just “you in the pink shirt……please come here.”
Finally subdued
quiet classroom
becomes a blank canvas
upon which
his loud words
spray every nook.
Sharon Bratcher
April 2, 2017
Convincing people to kill their own children is the worst propaganda ever foisted on a society.
–Sharon Bratcher
“Love is an act of will accompanied by emotion that leads to action on behalf of it’s object.” – Voddie Baucham
The teacher left plans for the 3rd-4th grade kids to write a paper on the animal of their choice. Fine. Except that:
- Only about 5 of the kids in the class are capable of following directions and gathering the info and writing a very, very short paper about an animal of their choice.
- Most of the kids can’t figure out where to find information, can’t figure out how to choose the important facts, can’t spell, can barely read, and can’t manage to write more than a few sentences. Therefore – they are still at the level where they should have done a paper ALL TOGETHER with the teacher so as to learn the procedure step by step.
- There were no books. No lovely volumes with pictures of their animal and descriptions of how fast, sleek, hungry, or ferocious it was. Nope. This is the age of the internet, so chrome books were brought to the room and the kids were supposed to search for the info. I helped them, and believe me, it’s nearly IMPOSSIBLE to help about 25 kids all working on different subjects work on their papers in the same time frame. We went to Discovery Kids. We went to Britannica Kids. We went to National Geographic Kids. Mostly what we found were cool videos (which required borrowing headphones from the technology lab) and attractive very short bits of prose about each animal. Eventually I discovered that if they just typed in a question like “How big is a dolphin?” they would get a pat answer that they could use in their report (of course, since most can’t spell and NONE of them have been taught how to type – personal pet peeve here – typing in a sentence is a long or impossible process for them.
- Another teacher walks her kids to the public library every couple of weeks – this one hasn’t. It may be because a few of the kids are so poorly behaved that they can’t be trusted to walk 3 blocks away with 2 adults – I don’t know. Or maybe this teacher thinks that it will take up too much of the class time and then they won’t meet their goals.
Like – they are meeting them now?
Some of the education seems to be done bass-ackwards.
Yesterday I subbed in THE tidiest classroom I have ever seen in nearly 3 years of being a substitute teacher. Mr. B (no relation) had tall resin shelving with neatly label bins in two corners of his room. All of the work I needed for the day was in neat piles on a very long counter that was otherwise empty (except for when students sat up there to work together later) and I was able to work from his actual lesson planner on the desk. Everything I needed was easy to find. The kids said that he is OCD and that if someone moves a bin over an inch or two, he will move it back. All of the posters were hung in a pleasant manner. Not only was I more able to do my job well, I felt peaceful just being in the room because it wasn’t all cluttered with tons of papers and junk. Even the insides of the cupboards were neat (I looked). 🙂 I would think that this atmosphere affects the behavior of the students, and certainly affects the level of neatness that he expects from them.
Another classroom I was in last week had all the kids’ desks facing inward – so that they could not use the opening to store anything. Instead, the teacher keeps all their folders and such on a counter and hands them out, collects them, hands them out again. Apparently she grew tired of kids making disastrous messes of them, or as an aide said to me, “We looked in one student’s desk and found stuff from 3 months earlier!” Here’s a clue: kids do not automatically know how to keep their area neat, nor will they do it if not persuaded. WHY did they wait 3 months to look inside the desks? I think that teaching a student HOW EXACTLY to keep his stuff in order is critical to lifelong learning, and just yelling at him to do it isn’t sufficient – there has to be a plan, a checking point, and a reward or a lack of reward.
I’m noticing that the teachers feel that there is SO much they are required to cover each year that they cannot gear the curriculum to where their actual students are at. THIS is not learning. THIS is fake learning.
(Putting on my sarcasm hat)
Congratulations to the people who promote women’s liberation in clothing. Wear what you want! Express yourself! If you’ve got it, flaunt it! Every 12-13 year old in the middle school wears leggings like thick tights, and most of them only wear waist-length shirts. With the lighter colors, one can see the pattern on the underwear beneath.
I can’t get past thinking I’m in a girls’ locker room or my daughter’s bedroom helping her to put on and button her Sunday dress.
At least it solves the problem presented when a student has long hair and I’m not sure if it’s a boy or a girl (yes, even at age 12) – the boys don’t wear leggings.
Does no one see this as distracting for the middle school boys or the teachers? Do no parents see this as immodest? Or do we go back to the “it’s entirely the guy’s problem” side of the debate. Yes, it’s his problem. But leggings without a long shirt/dress over them are immodest.
I’ve been searching for a job for the past couple of months. Between this round and the rounds I’ve had previously in the past decade, there have been times when as I drive home I think about the entire conversation, and think that I probably said something stupid that will prevent me from getting the job. 😦 One can be fully qualified and ready, and then in the nervousness of the moment – or in my case, after the interviewer makes me feel at ease and I get “too” non-professional in my responses – it’s always so disappointing to ruin it in those few precious moments.
So – I started writing this song on my way home from an interview recently –
hope you enjoy it!
sharoncopydotcom 