Tell It Like It Is
Lately I've been having a very hard time finding the time (or the motivation) to blog. I don't know what my problem is. It's not like I don't still come up with things that I can write about and God knows I don't know when to shut up.
But sometimes I come home at the end of a day and I just want to chill out. Blogging takes energy. How I managed to once do it on nearly a daily basis baffles me now. Not only did I blog fairly regularly, I did it while being a new teacher. Now I've been teaching longer and I'm more into a groove, and yet my energy is zapped all the more. I guess I'm just getting old.:(
So I decided to try and take Rix's advice, at least for this week, and simply write a "what's been going on" type of post instead of the themed nuggets of wit you've come to love AOGB for. I hope you'll oblige me while I try a post like this and see where it takes me. What better place to start than at the heart of my daily life, what's going on in my classroom this year.
As some of you may remember from my post a few weeks ago, for the first time this year I have a student teacher. I am happy to say that it is going well. I have heard horror stories about lazy or unprepared student teachers and I'm glad to report that that is not the case. In fact, my student teacher and I get along really well. So well in fact that I am going to definitely be sad when she leaves in December.
One of the biggest reasons it is so great that I have a student teacher is because I currently have 24 students in my classroom. Depending on where you teach and what you teach that might not seem like a lot to you, but when you have a batch of needy and/or lazy third graders, any extra help is appreciated. In its truest form, a student teacher is supposed to take over responsibility of the class completely, but since my class this year needs so much redirection and motivation, we often take more of a team teaching approach to get the job done, so to speak.
The bigger problem driving this year is the fact that I have eight, count 'em eight retentions in my class that I know of. Yes, you read that right. Those of you who were paying attention above will recall that just a moment ago I said I had 24 students. That means that one-third of my class has been retained previously. I said that I know of because this year has been the year of CSI type investigating. You didn't know teachers had to solve mysteries too did you? Well, they do. The past few weeks have been living proof of that.
I've had to do some digging and be quite resourceful in order to determine who has been retained before. The information that comes to me in the beginning of the year is hardly ever complete, or accurate. Now I know better and luckily this is the first year where having the extra help has provided me with the opportunity to dig deeper into the backgrounds of some of my students. This is crucial considering the big picture. Since No Child Left Behind, any child is no longer meant to be retained more than once in his life. It's called social promotion. Without knowing who has been retained before and who hasn't though, you run the risk of letting one slip through the cracks in more ways than one, among other things.
Now although one-third of my class has been retained before, that doesn't include the other two thirds. Another third I could easily make a case to retain tomorrow, which leaves the remaining third of the kids to pick up the slack for the rest. Scary, right? I think so.
Don't get me wrong. As anyone who has been reading my blog the past three years knows, my classes have never been top notch. Part of it is not their fault. I teach in a poor, urban area where in many cases, English is a second language. You simply cannot hold the children to the same standards as you would that of the privileged, suburban youth of surrounding areas. That doesn't mean though that I go easier on my students because of this. If anything, it's quite the contrary considering I am trying hard every day to break the cycle of poverty and low level jobs with the next generation. Empowering these children to aim higher, even this early, I believe is essential. Letting them off easy because of their backgrounds is not only disservicing the kids, but our country as well.
The other day we had a grade level meeting about motivation. We've talked about this regarding classes in the past but the song remains the same. We aren't doing anything wrong in terms of motivation, the kids just aren't motivated by the right things, period. If you give them lunch detention, they barely blink. If they fail a test, they stuff it in their folders. And where do they learn that these things are ok? I almost always can trace it right back to the parents. Chances are the more absentee they are, the more likely you are to have other things "missing" such as homework, h honesty and a sense of responsibility.
The scariest piece of the puzzle is that the passing average for standardized tests scores raises each year. It would be one thing if you were constantly working on improving the scores of the same kids and held accountable for that number. But each year is supposed to be higher, even though it is a brand new group you are assessing.
It is too soon to tell what this year's results are going to bring, but if I could look for a moment into my crystal ball I'd have to say the outlook isn't so good.
But sometimes I come home at the end of a day and I just want to chill out. Blogging takes energy. How I managed to once do it on nearly a daily basis baffles me now. Not only did I blog fairly regularly, I did it while being a new teacher. Now I've been teaching longer and I'm more into a groove, and yet my energy is zapped all the more. I guess I'm just getting old.:(
So I decided to try and take Rix's advice, at least for this week, and simply write a "what's been going on" type of post instead of the themed nuggets of wit you've come to love AOGB for. I hope you'll oblige me while I try a post like this and see where it takes me. What better place to start than at the heart of my daily life, what's going on in my classroom this year.
As some of you may remember from my post a few weeks ago, for the first time this year I have a student teacher. I am happy to say that it is going well. I have heard horror stories about lazy or unprepared student teachers and I'm glad to report that that is not the case. In fact, my student teacher and I get along really well. So well in fact that I am going to definitely be sad when she leaves in December.
One of the biggest reasons it is so great that I have a student teacher is because I currently have 24 students in my classroom. Depending on where you teach and what you teach that might not seem like a lot to you, but when you have a batch of needy and/or lazy third graders, any extra help is appreciated. In its truest form, a student teacher is supposed to take over responsibility of the class completely, but since my class this year needs so much redirection and motivation, we often take more of a team teaching approach to get the job done, so to speak.
The bigger problem driving this year is the fact that I have eight, count 'em eight retentions in my class that I know of. Yes, you read that right. Those of you who were paying attention above will recall that just a moment ago I said I had 24 students. That means that one-third of my class has been retained previously. I said that I know of because this year has been the year of CSI type investigating. You didn't know teachers had to solve mysteries too did you? Well, they do. The past few weeks have been living proof of that.
I've had to do some digging and be quite resourceful in order to determine who has been retained before. The information that comes to me in the beginning of the year is hardly ever complete, or accurate. Now I know better and luckily this is the first year where having the extra help has provided me with the opportunity to dig deeper into the backgrounds of some of my students. This is crucial considering the big picture. Since No Child Left Behind, any child is no longer meant to be retained more than once in his life. It's called social promotion. Without knowing who has been retained before and who hasn't though, you run the risk of letting one slip through the cracks in more ways than one, among other things.
Now although one-third of my class has been retained before, that doesn't include the other two thirds. Another third I could easily make a case to retain tomorrow, which leaves the remaining third of the kids to pick up the slack for the rest. Scary, right? I think so.
Don't get me wrong. As anyone who has been reading my blog the past three years knows, my classes have never been top notch. Part of it is not their fault. I teach in a poor, urban area where in many cases, English is a second language. You simply cannot hold the children to the same standards as you would that of the privileged, suburban youth of surrounding areas. That doesn't mean though that I go easier on my students because of this. If anything, it's quite the contrary considering I am trying hard every day to break the cycle of poverty and low level jobs with the next generation. Empowering these children to aim higher, even this early, I believe is essential. Letting them off easy because of their backgrounds is not only disservicing the kids, but our country as well.
The other day we had a grade level meeting about motivation. We've talked about this regarding classes in the past but the song remains the same. We aren't doing anything wrong in terms of motivation, the kids just aren't motivated by the right things, period. If you give them lunch detention, they barely blink. If they fail a test, they stuff it in their folders. And where do they learn that these things are ok? I almost always can trace it right back to the parents. Chances are the more absentee they are, the more likely you are to have other things "missing" such as homework, h honesty and a sense of responsibility.
The scariest piece of the puzzle is that the passing average for standardized tests scores raises each year. It would be one thing if you were constantly working on improving the scores of the same kids and held accountable for that number. But each year is supposed to be higher, even though it is a brand new group you are assessing.
It is too soon to tell what this year's results are going to bring, but if I could look for a moment into my crystal ball I'd have to say the outlook isn't so good.
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