Blogboard

Mr. AB of From the TFA Trenches finds that October is a long, long month for teachers. There's week upon week without a vacation, culminating in Halloween, which tends to awaken innate witching tendancies in even the best students. So to keep himself going, Mr. AB has been focusing on the progress he's making with his 4th and 5th graders:

Every week we take a timed math facts test, 100 problems in 5 minutes. 4th and 5th graders should be working on multiplication and division, but this year we started on subtraction. Even at that, only 4 students passed the first week. ... As of last week, over 50 students have passed and the vast majority are in range. I take real pride in that because I decided to stop teaching the district’s math curriculum that never would have addressed their incapability. Without out my intervention, and the flexibility I was given to make that intervention, we probably would’ve sent them to middle school with only a tentative grasp of the most basic of arithmetic. ... they are learning something desperately important and they are learning it because of me. Knowing that will get me to Thanksgiving.

And these kids will get to Thanksgiving knowing how to subtract.

Posted by at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Graycie of Today's Homework, still in a state of disbelief, tells how her seniors her were taken out of class for an hour for a presentation by a company that sells class rings and other commemorative trinkets and clothing items:

Now, I know that kids want stuff. And if their parents can afford it, fine. And if they earn the money themselves and choose to spend it on this sort of gewgaws, also fine. But. Don't make time during school class time to pack them into the cafeteria and show them slick catalogs and fancy power-point shows of all the junk they can buy above and beyond what is basic.

I foam at the mouth when I talk about things like the peer pressure involved when several hundred teenagers are packed into the cafeteria and bombarded with consumer ads. Or the appropriateness of allowing a company to use class time to market their stuff.

Well, we'll assume that everything in the state's standards had already been covered. ...

Posted by at 1:09 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

After an exercise on verb tenses in which a number of her students wrote (among other things) that the past participle of freeze is "froozen," Jules the Crazy of Mildly Melancholy finds herself becoming increasingly frustrated with her class—and herself:

FINE, none of them are actually stupid or dumb. Gah, I know I can't say that and that I'm going to hell for even thinking it. I don't really believe they're idiots. Senseless goofs, some of them, yes. LOTS of them are really low level and that makes me very nervous, because I really don't know if anything I do helps.

She has to remind herself that "I'm not a bitter commie monster (ooh, great name for a blog!) who hates children or calls names," but instead:

I'm a teacher who CARES about what the students are learning and who wants them to actually LEARN something, which requires them to pay attention, and me to work hard to monitor their progress.

Posted by at 10:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Mei Flower offers a painfully honest reaction to the recent spat of shootings in schools:

Just so you know, I am TERRIFIED about the number of school shootings that have occurred in the last few weeks. Like, I don't even want to go to school, because someone might shoot me.

In her post, she decries a culture that she sees as growing increasingly accepting of the idea of students bringing weapons to schools, and she offers some stern child-raising tips. Among them: “No video games. Of any kind.”

I believe these things have desensitized kids to the point that they truly believe violence is a viable option as a problem-solving process. On a screen, death isn't a real thing; it's just pretend. And for whatever reason, they think that that is going to translate to real life too.

She also recommends that parents "have actual conversations” with their kids.

Just in time for in time for President Bush's conference on school violence.

Posted by at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)