"Can't you just give us the answer like our teacher always does?"
Today, not so much fun. 8th grade science the subject. Teacher was there for the first few minutes.
First warning sign: "Oh, I didn't really have a lesson plan for you."
Second warning sign: "We're just going through this study guide that comes with the textbook. I like to pause for a few seconds to see if someone knows the answer, then I'll, well, not so much give them the answer, more agree with them."
[Elliot's thought: "uh-oh."]
But I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole I was going this particular morning.
I was about halfway through the first class, asking the questions and expecting the kids to come up with an answer or, if they didn't remember, review it in the book, when it occured to me I had to ask the following question:
"You guys have read these chapters, right?"
Nope. Not at all. In fact, filling out the study guide was the teacher's only way of conveying information. They've been doing this throughout the entire year. The kids have no idea what the answers to the questions are, so they just stay silent or guess until the teacher tells them!
I mean it, my friends, when I say that these 13-year-olds knew no science. Even the honors kids. The honors kids didn't know what "absorbtion" meant! They told me that they "did pretty badly on the 8th-grade-wide unit tests when the other science teachers made them up," but "everyone was passing," because "their teacher graded really easily," and they had "devised a sophisicated system for copying off each other during labs."
It was and is honestly offensive to me how negligent this teacher was. There was no learning occuring. None. Not even that most basic, fact memorization-and-recall! These kids would have been better off just reading all period -- at least there would have been some modicum of mental stimulation!
There would be times when I would have a student read the paragraph with the answer, read the paragraph with the answer myself, then ask the question which directly referenced the paragraph with the answer, and be met by a classful of blank stares. Usually followed by the delightful incantation:
"This is whack! Can't you just give us the answer like our teacher always does?"
I'm distressed, I'm disappointed, and I'm angry. I've never experienced educational deprivation like that, never dreamed it could possibly exist to that degree in this day and age. You want to talk about accountability? Any accountability system which doesn't instantly peg this classroom as deficient isn't worth its weight in mud. Yet I have a desparately sad idea that when all is said and done, the school will find some way to herd the kids through the SOLs, or else the state will find some way to hide them away.
I have every reason to believe that this one classroom is not an isolated case.
No one -- no one -- can tell me our educational system isn't broken.
First warning sign: "Oh, I didn't really have a lesson plan for you."
Second warning sign: "We're just going through this study guide that comes with the textbook. I like to pause for a few seconds to see if someone knows the answer, then I'll, well, not so much give them the answer, more agree with them."
[Elliot's thought: "uh-oh."]
But I had no idea how far down the rabbit hole I was going this particular morning.
I was about halfway through the first class, asking the questions and expecting the kids to come up with an answer or, if they didn't remember, review it in the book, when it occured to me I had to ask the following question:
"You guys have read these chapters, right?"
Nope. Not at all. In fact, filling out the study guide was the teacher's only way of conveying information. They've been doing this throughout the entire year. The kids have no idea what the answers to the questions are, so they just stay silent or guess until the teacher tells them!
I mean it, my friends, when I say that these 13-year-olds knew no science. Even the honors kids. The honors kids didn't know what "absorbtion" meant! They told me that they "did pretty badly on the 8th-grade-wide unit tests when the other science teachers made them up," but "everyone was passing," because "their teacher graded really easily," and they had "devised a sophisicated system for copying off each other during labs."
It was and is honestly offensive to me how negligent this teacher was. There was no learning occuring. None. Not even that most basic, fact memorization-and-recall! These kids would have been better off just reading all period -- at least there would have been some modicum of mental stimulation!
There would be times when I would have a student read the paragraph with the answer, read the paragraph with the answer myself, then ask the question which directly referenced the paragraph with the answer, and be met by a classful of blank stares. Usually followed by the delightful incantation:
"This is whack! Can't you just give us the answer like our teacher always does?"
I'm distressed, I'm disappointed, and I'm angry. I've never experienced educational deprivation like that, never dreamed it could possibly exist to that degree in this day and age. You want to talk about accountability? Any accountability system which doesn't instantly peg this classroom as deficient isn't worth its weight in mud. Yet I have a desparately sad idea that when all is said and done, the school will find some way to herd the kids through the SOLs, or else the state will find some way to hide them away.
I have every reason to believe that this one classroom is not an isolated case.
No one -- no one -- can tell me our educational system isn't broken.
This entry was posted
on Tuesday, March 21, 2006 at 1:09 PM.
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