It's Monday, and only a three-day week, since we take Rodeo break off as a mid-winter vacation. Yet today seemed like forever. My eighth graders do not want to do art - they want to cook. Can't help them there - it's all about scheduling. Trying to do meaningful activities, but I gotta tell ya, giving them compasses with sharp points isn't always a great idea.
My math class has reverted to old behaviors - they just don't want to do anything. I tried breaking the time up in some practice, and turns out none of them can do double digit multiplication - well, let me rephrase that - they have trouble doing single digit multiplication. Now I gotta say, how much is actual missing the concept, actual laziness, and maybe some other educational problem. In seventh grade they should be able to multiply. I should be able to expect that. And when I give them problems to practice, I expect them to take the opportunity to do so.
But no, socializing is so much more important. I finally stopped with about 20 minutes left in the period and started to do other things. I am so tired of trying to fight them. I call home - nothing. I send them out - that's what they want/ I assign detention - they don't show, and no one forces them or makes them accept responsibility.
Things will get really interesting after AIMS is over - then they won't want to work for anything. Forget trying to make meaning - they just don't want to work. And this is the first time I have really confronted this in all my years of teaching.
Then we sat through another interesting meeting (sarcasm intended) on language registers - like I need to understand that the kids drop into casual and intimate ranges when they shouldn't. So upshot of that meeting is we need to "train" our kids on how to speak properly and when to use correct English....like we need more to do - and of course, this would lend itself to making meaning really well. Can you see them yawning now?
Monday, February 18, 2008
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1 comments:
Sadly, that is the tale of public schooling writ small. One thing private schools have that public schools don't is control - control of the parents, control of the kids, control of everything. You paid for the kids to learn, now you're going to stand aside while we do anything and everything to teach them. Until the chains that bind our hands behind our backs is broken, there is no way that public education will become an effective tool for educating children. Public school suffers so much from legislation. Why do you think charter schools and private schools are popping up like daisies on the grave of TUSD?
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