Life in an Urban District Part III
Oct 02 '08
The Bottom Line Hire me to teach but then don't allow me to do so.....
Teaching in an urban district is really interesting. Especially some of the silliness from the district. My school has not made AYP for four years. That means that we've got more students failing state assessments than passing.
We've finally finished the testing and paperwork for the ESL department so I get to be in the classroom in the afternoon and teach writing, balanced literacy (read aloud with questions to make students think) and math. Math is probably the most upsetting. We use a program called TERC Math Investigations. We are supposed to use it as is without supplementing it. (You can read some reviews of it here: http://www.nychold.com/terc.html)
It is a discovery system. We aren't supposed to teach math at all. The kids are supposed to figure it out by themselves. But certain things aren't allowed. Take 38-29= as an example.
We are not allowed in any grade (K-5) to go
38
-29
-------
and go and regroup or borrow from the thirty to make it 18 and go 18-9=9, 2 -2 equals 0 so the answer is 9
What the students are allowed to do are
1) Draw 38 circles. Cross out 29 of the circles. Count how many are left
2. Do the following
38-29=
30+8-20-9
20+10+8-20-9
20-20+10-9+8
0+1+8
9
(Remember this is second grade)
3. Draw a number line.
I can go from 38 to 37 so that's 1
I can go from 37 to 36 so that's 1
I can go from 36 to 35 so that's 1
I can go from 35 to 30 so that's 5
I can go from 30 to 29 so that's 1
1+1+1+5+1=9
4. I can put 38 in my brain. I count backwards to 29 using my fingers to keep track of how many it takes me to get there.
Today I had a little boy tell me that 9+9=18 off the top of his head. I couldn't accept memorized facts. I had to make him draw nine circles and nine more circles and count them.
They have been doing it this way for seven years. According to one study I found kids who go through this curriculum are at least 2 years behind by fifth grade. By the way, Monkey Girl is doing things like learning all the factors of numbers 1 to 144. She's staying after school for Math Club and this week was doing things like 7(5!)*4(2!)... It's so sad.
We are supposed to only do this program and not supplement. Often the students have only one problem to do in 90 minutes class because they have so much work. I am working with the four lowest kids. I have one who counts 13, 14, 16, 18, 19..... I'm not supposed to go back and work on holes they have. Right now I'm hiding in the closet and teaching the idea of place value (34 is the same as three tens and four ones) so they might be able to do procedure 2 above. That is bad. They are supposed to figure it out on their own by discovery.
Monkey Girl has listened to me whine about this and the low reading levels. She has come to the conclusion that there are no jobs my kids will be able to get when they get older. Even to work at McDonalds you need to count out money. Her opinion: "When your kids grow up, there are going to be a lot of highway trash picker uppers because that is the only job they'll be able to get. Every other job requires reading and math."
Now we aren't trusted to do anything different than what we have to do with math. However for reading we have no curriculum. We spend 2 1/2 hours a day on reading. I have to create everything. I've got kids who can't do an ABC's dot to dot. The first day of each book we spend 40 minutes looking at pictures of things in the book and then we do "shared writing" where we take the sentence pattern from the book and each kid gets to write the sentences on the board . We are supposed to stretch out each word - even words kids know like "is". My kids are reading books with great sentences like "Look at the monkey. Look at the face. Look at the hands." or "This is my house. Here is my kitchen. This is my house. Here is my front door. This is my house. Here is my bedroom."
Oh, and today after school today one of my second graders were "jumped" by a fourth grader and a fifth grader. When he left school, he had said "I need to go quickly. Those boys are waiting for me." Silly me and other teacher heard " I need to go quickly because my friends are out there." not "I need to run home because I'm about to be beaten up." Guess I'll have to ask for clarification next time.
The amount of students with disrespectful attitudes are rather high. The SIT process seems to be designed to keep the kids out of special education. We meet on kids about 15 minutes once every six weeks to decide what they need. Once the kid's lunch balance equals zero, they don't get fed at school. I've got a stash of food to give hungry kids.
Oh, funny note. To go from my 2 year license to a five year license I have to go through a mentoring program this year. My mentor is the head ESL teacher who is the wife of my ESL professor. So I guess all I'll know about education is going to be from one family.
Don't get me wrong. I like my students. I like my co-workers. It's the red tape I hate and having my hands tied.
Bridgette
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