Somedays, I get it.

[learnteach]

Little lost lambs, straying...what could be stupider than a sheep? A willful High School student. I spend more time on basic discipline than on teaching here, and it's worn me down to where I understand why the Lord would destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, and why you can't find a good man there--"Good" is relative; in the land of the goof off, the one working is the one who gets their stuff stolen or pilfered or stuffed full of paper, and verbally ridiculed, and physically abused.



So, in short, I haven't defeated the prevailing culture of violence and stupidity completely enough. And if you are not part of the problem, you better duck and cover. And...wow.

School should use computers. No, really, we're in Silicon Valley; the students are all carrying machines (cell phones, music players, game systems) that can literally give them all the answers, but the State Requirements (derived from the Federal Requirements) is that they close the books, sit in a room, and pass a test--a form of test used no where else in life, and a set of skills they don't really need.

Education Reform Now! What do we want?

It's Amerika. We want more money.

I don't think modern schooling is serving us well, just as I don't think modern government is serving us well. But I don't really have an answer. Just some up close and personal observations.

The scary thing? According to the population figures, soon the majority of youth in California will be immigrants (more or less.) And they're not doing well in these schools.

Just one set of thoughts...

Comments

Second Set.

[learnteach.livejournal.com]

It's just incredibly tiring to spend so much time fighting. We've thrown out the worst kids...and now I'm on the discipline committee.

It's not unending pain, but the amount of bullshit amazes me. I can earn enough in a year of Sales Engineering to travel a year; here, I make enough to get by. Hmmm.

And....it's daunting, how many hoops they want you to jump through. More every time I look.

And...the standard is SO HIGH. Look around at what is expected of teachers, both in erudition and in behaviour control, and in social justice.

blah blah blah

[judith-s.livejournal.com]

As an immigrant, I'm not sure your last statement is true. The kids in my ESL class (Rogers Middle School in SJ) were mostly bright and motivated kids. Most of us got out of ESL in 6-9 months. Well, I got out in 2, but I had some English knowledge going in. The problem isn't immigrants, it's immigrants from cultures that do not value education. And that is a much harder to fix problem.

[kawgirl.livejournal.com]

So let me get this straight: the students are dumber than sheep? And the system is completely broken? Again, I invite you to see the positive in the kids. No matter what, I know it's there (remember I also worked in a gang infested school district and in a correctional facility). I never met anyone who didn't have any potential. It can be a challenge, but isn't unlocking potential the point of doing what we do? How sad to have given up on that.

As for the system?....Well, yeah. It's F***ed.

[xartle.livejournal.com]

So do you have to hold to some curriculum or do you have any latitude that way? Maybe you can make the standard tests open whatever(book, cellphone, computer, etc). Let them use the things that are going to be actual life skills for them and just make it clear that the state hasn't caught up with real life, so they can't use it on the progress tests?

No idea if that would work or not, but I think I'd be pretty happy with that if I were still a kiddo.

[thelbk.livejournal.com]

Last year, Buggy's English/Social Studies class burned through 5 teachers.
The class room was totally out of control. The kids chased out two of the teachers who resigned saying that they changed their minds about wanting to teach.
30+ six graders brought each of these adults to crisis through their behavior. Buggy was one of the "problem children", I'm sorry to say. At the end of the year, she 'passed" the sixth grade, but at least six others from her class did not.
I told her that, "you may have passed the grade, but you didn't learn what you needed to learn", and I made her repeat the grade. Her social life has taken a hit for it, of course, but she'll live. And she's finally learning to do homework and turn stuff in on time.
With the help of grandparents and what's left of my savings, I was able to pull her out of public school. In exchange for a heavy dose of hell fire & brimstone warnings (which may not be a bad thing right now), she has eleven kids in her class, an energetic teacher that she CAN'T push around and she's getting Bs & As.
Learnteach, you need less kids, you need more supplies, you need BACK UP from the school & the parents.
Most of all, you need to not let those kids learn through you that they have the power to chase away a teacher. I have now idea how; I'm not brave enought to take on what you have. But I saw that, once they had chased out the first teacher last year, the others didn't stand a chance - those kids together were brutal.