Now, first, let me say that I was blessed to grow up in an
area with exceptional public schools. I
have a lot of teacher friends and relatives, and I am pro-teacher. They are really good at what they do, and so
I don't want to get any feedback on this post stating that I must hate
education and do not understand how hard some teachers work. In fact, I love education, probably more than
most, and I do, indeed, understand that there are some (maybe a whole lot) of
excellent teachers out there. There are
certainly teachers who made a big enough impact on my life that I bothered to
look them up and connect with them some 15-20 years later. This is not a rant about lousy teachers (I
did have some of those, growing up, too, though...)
Here's the thing.
This school year I decided to substitute teach. A long time ago, I wanted to be a teacher
when I "grew up," and quite frankly after graduating with a business
management degree this past summer, I was having difficulty finding any
interesting job opportunities in my field.
The state of Indiana actually offers a "transition to
teaching" program that can be completed in around 16 months, and a part of
me started questioning whether I should opt for this route to earn a state
educator's license. I had been throwing
the idea around in my head for some time, and still not being fully able to
commit; I decided to sub. for awhile... just to see if I thought I really
wanted to pursue teaching after all. I
decided not to sub. in our current district, because I know a lot of the kids
in this town personally and thought it might be awkward.
The district I am subbing in has some unique challenges
(don't they all)... I would venture to
say that close to half of the students speak English as a second language. I cannot imagine how difficult it must be for
educators to plan their lessons around this in such a way that all of the
children are learning at a level that is appropriate for their age group, skill
level, and language. I am quite certain
that these teachers are facing obstacles on a regular basis that I would not
want to tackle. But here's what happened
today...
I taught a second grade class.
Now, I am the first to admit that I would prefer to teach
high school, but jobs are limited and money is tight, so I'm going with what I
can get. I walked into the class today
thinking of my Caleb (3rd grade this year, but close enough). I prayed that God would help me to be a
blessing to these kids today. I arrived
early to go over the lesson plans and felt that everything was laid out in an
orderly manner and that I could handle the twenty-one little people entrusted
to me on this day. They were rough and tumble,
but I do rough and tumble well.
The kids were not the problem (unless you want to count that
one moment after lunch when some of the boys flooded the bathroom and the
janitor almost killed me...)
The teacher assistant... or paraprofessional... or whatever
she was... That was the problem.
About once an hour, she came into the room and started
yelling at random kids and moving their desks around, I guess as a form of
punishment. But they weren't really out
of control. And in case anyone is
wondering, I certainly wasn't out of
control. I have a big fence philosophy with
children. You give them a lot of room to
be kids, but at some point there is a boundary.
They are free to live... and be... and learn... and play within the
"big fence". Most kids I have
met don't even want to cross the
line. But if they do... Oh, they know it. I have rules, and they are not for
breaking! Only a few of these kids were
even coming close to pushing my boundaries, and when they did; I told
them. And they stopped.
But apparently the
teacher assistant had a small cage philosophy?
I don't know. All I really know
is that the vast majority of the kids were getting all of their work done, I
felt like they were grasping the concepts, and we were having a good time. I spent some extra time with a couple of the
children who seemed to be struggling to grasp the language. One of them even shared something he'd
written, today, in front of the entire class... to much applause! The word I used to describe this class on the
note I left was, "delightful"!
The word I used to describe the teacher assistant was,
"harsh".
At the end of the day she came in yelling, told all of the
students how disappointed their teacher would be, and proceeded to get in the
faces of several children. One was
clearly learning disabled in some way, and the other spoke broken English, at
best. And I stood there for the final
six minutes before dismissal, completely silent and with my mouth hanging open,
because I couldn't figure out, for the life of me, how talking to these
children like this was going to help them to love school, desire to learn, or
succeed. Raising your voice so someone
with a language barrier can understand better is equivalent to screaming at the
deaf! Not effective...
The kids left that class on a negative note. I highly doubt they are going to remember the
work that did get done or the applause.
I hope that when their regular teacher returns she will realize that
they legitimately didn't have a terrible day and that they should be commended
for adjusting to a brand new substitute teacher as opposed to punished for not
being perfect... for not acting like adults...
And my heart was just breaking, because I thought,
"I'll bet the parents of these children had no idea how ridiculed they
would be when they put them on the bus this morning". If someone treated any of my children that
way, whether they deserved it or not, they wouldn't want to mess with this Mama... Discipline is fine and good. What I experienced today was not.
But wait... there's
more...
These children had no history or social studies lessons, and
their exposure to science was limited to a writing prompt about their favorite
weather. I checked the assignments for
the rest of the week, assuming that they must cover different subjects areas on
different days. Nope. My own kids are currently enrolled in a
virtual public school, and they are required to pass 80% of their Math and
Language Arts assignments with a score of 80% or better to move on. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure
out that this means they only have to "master" 64% of the subject matter. They have Science, History, and Social Studies
assignments, but they are not required.
How irresponsible is this?
We are asking teachers (and home educators using public
school curriculum) to teach to the test... exclusively. In the process, we are graduating kids, in
droves, who might be able to read enough to "get by" and who might not
have even a basic, working knowledge of history, geography, or government,
because... hey... it's not on the test!
And how about just one more rant...
My class today had library as an elective. I marched twenty-one children down the
hallway with one book each. The
librarian was a little late getting back from lunch, so I took the time to
painstakingly explain to them the importance of being quiet in a library (which
seemed foreign to them). By the time the
librarian arrived, they were all seated quietly, making sure that even while
whispering it was difficult for the person next to them to hear what they were
saying. I left them for the next hour,
patting myself on the back on the way out the door... thinking of how I loved
library time when I was in elementary school and imagining all of the children
spread out on the floor, absorbed in the world of imagination that only books
can offer.
Fast forward one hour...
When I arrived to pick the children up I found that they had
each chosen one new book for the week, that apparently they are not allowed to
take home? And they were all seated at
computers, playing games! To make
matters worse, when the librarian noticed that I had arrived, she shouted across the room for the kids to
set up the computers for the incoming Kindergarten class, and when they did not
do this quickly enough she continued to yell
at them... THE LIBRARIAN! And now I'm
yelling... oh, brother...
I arrived home to an overactive Kindergartener who was near
furious with me for doing two days of schoolwork with him yesterday and
refusing to break out tomorrow's work; a third grader, finished with his
schoolwork for the day and playing with "the baby" in her room; two
pre-teens finishing up their own schoolwork and helping Daddy out; and a house
that was pretty much spotlessly cleaned, with dinner in the oven. Yeah...
Phil is pretty cool... Thinking
back on my day though, I said to him, "I don't want to do this," at
which point he looked around the house and said, "I don't want to do this!" And then we both laughed... Life is so strange right now.
L.
