G P Advocate (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} gpadvocate) wrote,@ 2007-09-29 11:34:00 |
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Detrimental Changes in Today's Classrooms.
11/08/2006 4:34PM
I retired in June at the earliest possible moment because as an educator locked into an Urban Reading First school I could no longer stand to look into the bored, sad faces of my 7 year old students. I was always considered by all to be a caring, considerate, highly creative teacher. I was very good at presenting and guiding my students through the curriculum with consideration for their individual needs and learning styles in age-appropriate ways. In short, my kids learned, enjoyed coming to our class and were actively engaged in their own education.
Beginning in 2002 that was no longer was true. We are forced to teach under the flawed "research" of the National Reading Panel. This as you may know involves strictly scheduled reading periods of 2 1/2 hrs, no creative personal writing, mandated materials that are not interesting to the kids, weekly testing in fluency ( as tested- speed reading.)
The tension many of the kids exhibit as they hear names being called is palpable. Some kids are "slow talkers" (thanx to Jerry Seinfeld) and they simply cannot read 90 wpm at the age of 7. Their comprehension is fine but it doesn't matter, no questions were tested. They have not made the cut. They are defeated.
They ask questions about the world they live in but I cannot teach them about it or answer their questions because it isn't in the schedule. The people with the clipboards who "check" on the teachers to be sure they are on task come in often, every day to be sure. We have been told NOT to read literature of our choice to children anymore because it is not a research based practice. We have NO say in what we teach, when we teach it, or how we teach it.
School has become a highly stressful, robotic exercise for both teachers AND students. We are actually not teachers in the classic sense that we were. We are the program delivery component of systematized, scripted, canned lessons. We are now making widgets not educated, engaged children who will someday be expected to function successfully in an increasingly complicated world.
When, for the first time in my career, kids were saying to me "I'm bored", "this is boring", " I don't like this" Why can't we learn about______? I knew it was time to go. I was so sad to leave in such a negative way. I always thought my last year would be my best year. There are many things that need to be changed in our profession but this absolutely is not the way.
The Republican money laundering scheme that is Reading First is a travesty for children. It now extends into the pre-k's. Many districts AND the Charter schools are following the program basics without the grant out of fear of not providing the same skewed scores and being unable to make AYP as defined by NCLB. In all this bureaucracy, and political correctness,
the natural light of learning within our children is being lost and in others it is never even being lit.
As an aside, I now volunteer in a Waldorf school to reaffirm my belief in education. There are happy challenged children there. Education is a messy business. It can't be scripted. Children are not widgets. When the light in the teacher is extinguished, there is no hope of lighting up the student's soul.
These days, you have to either become resigned or resign or retire...the new 3 R's.
Response From: First-Second Teacher
11/08/2006 11:04PM
I read the essay with great interest, as a former student, current mother and teacher. I am so saddened by RetroEd's comments, because they are becoming common in schools across the country. I am sickened to think that schools are allowing the "clipboards" to dictate how and when and what we are "allowed" to teach. My school was told to implement Reading First without any agreement from the teachers.
We are a small school and are attempting to be creative with how we can break the rules. But It is heart-breaking to me to even consider that I am causing the wounds of school because some guy in Washington DC thinks he can tell me how to teach. I want to be that teacher they never forget, not the one who tested them all the time and showed them how "below benchmark" they were!
Response From: RetroEd
11/09/2006 12:30AM
Unfortunately, First-Second Teacher, they check everything. You will have visitors from State Ed-"walk-throughs"-to check everything; your plans, groups, scores. centers (all activities must align to the core-no cross subjects or extensions or heaven forbid, science, social studies or math extensions.) The principal and the coach will be in your room regularly. Some of us tried to sabotage as much as possible but little by little, they eliminated all our "faux pas".
Response From: Don/Science Education Consultant/former Science Coordinator
11/09/2006 4:50PM
The Wounds of Schooling scar the practitoners as well. I just left a major urban school district in June and will probably never return to the school system (after 23 years). If you have a lot of passion along with vision, schools rarely have ways of accommodating those kinds of individuals.
I have always been appalled at the lack of real intellectual thinking and professionalism that characterizes the teaching profession. We are driven by belief systems, and rarely allow ourselves to confront personal beliefs that may in fact hinder child development. The "conversation" around math instruction typifies the culture within schools.
Even though we have 30 years of strong cognitive scientific research that shows children learn best in context, must confront prior understandings in order to learn "conceptually", need to become aware of their own thinking, these ideas are dismissed in public forums and board of education meetings by ideological educators or petty politicians and their misinformed community members as fuzzy ( fuzzy math) or "new age."
Even though there are committed educators who are truly risk takers and deeply introspective about their practice, they rarely speak up (or fear repercussions). Why would any young person, who might fit into the category of best and brightest, ever want to go into the educational system?
Response From: Recently Retired
11/10/2006 7:44AM
Perhaps more than any other recently-adopted program, Reading First is guilty of exactly the problems this essay describes. Although educators have had differentiated instruction drilled into them at all levels, Reading First programs refuse to allow gifted students to attend the very programs for which they qualify and require them to lock-step their way through the non-challenging instruction and daily assessment of skills they mastered long ago.
Please, someone, tell us how to undo this Nazi control of our young students' education! Schools are desperate for the funding and are willing to accept this dreadful program because it is the only source of federal funds that are needed just to keep public schools afloat.
Response From: Cheryl/Radar Engineer/Math teacher/Parent
11/10/2006 9:20AM
Maria,
Your closing comment about parental powerlessness hits home, hard. I didn't teach long enough to feel the disillusionment that I'm reading here from career teachers, but your essays are affecting me powerfully. We put our kids in private school because we were displeased with our local K - 2 school, but our original intention was to send our kids to the public school in third grade. After what I'm reading here, NO WAY. How is this allowed to continue???
Comments from the on-line discussion about the "wounds of schooling" at www.edweek.org
11/08/2006 4:34PM
I retired in June at the earliest possible moment because as an educator locked into an Urban Reading First school I could no longer stand to look into the bored, sad faces of my 7 year old students. I was always considered by all to be a caring, considerate, highly creative teacher. I was very good at presenting and guiding my students through the curriculum with consideration for their individual needs and learning styles in age-appropriate ways. In short, my kids learned, enjoyed coming to our class and were actively engaged in their own education.
Beginning in 2002 that was no longer was true. We are forced to teach under the flawed "research" of the National Reading Panel. This as you may know involves strictly scheduled reading periods of 2 1/2 hrs, no creative personal writing, mandated materials that are not interesting to the kids, weekly testing in fluency ( as tested- speed reading.)
The tension many of the kids exhibit as they hear names being called is palpable. Some kids are "slow talkers" (thanx to Jerry Seinfeld) and they simply cannot read 90 wpm at the age of 7. Their comprehension is fine but it doesn't matter, no questions were tested. They have not made the cut. They are defeated.
They ask questions about the world they live in but I cannot teach them about it or answer their questions because it isn't in the schedule. The people with the clipboards who "check" on the teachers to be sure they are on task come in often, every day to be sure. We have been told NOT to read literature of our choice to children anymore because it is not a research based practice. We have NO say in what we teach, when we teach it, or how we teach it.
School has become a highly stressful, robotic exercise for both teachers AND students. We are actually not teachers in the classic sense that we were. We are the program delivery component of systematized, scripted, canned lessons. We are now making widgets not educated, engaged children who will someday be expected to function successfully in an increasingly complicated world.
When, for the first time in my career, kids were saying to me "I'm bored", "this is boring", " I don't like this" Why can't we learn about______? I knew it was time to go. I was so sad to leave in such a negative way. I always thought my last year would be my best year. There are many things that need to be changed in our profession but this absolutely is not the way.
The Republican money laundering scheme that is Reading First is a travesty for children. It now extends into the pre-k's. Many districts AND the Charter schools are following the program basics without the grant out of fear of not providing the same skewed scores and being unable to make AYP as defined by NCLB. In all this bureaucracy, and political correctness,
the natural light of learning within our children is being lost and in others it is never even being lit.
As an aside, I now volunteer in a Waldorf school to reaffirm my belief in education. There are happy challenged children there. Education is a messy business. It can't be scripted. Children are not widgets. When the light in the teacher is extinguished, there is no hope of lighting up the student's soul.
These days, you have to either become resigned or resign or retire...the new 3 R's.
Response From: First-Second Teacher
11/08/2006 11:04PM
I read the essay with great interest, as a former student, current mother and teacher. I am so saddened by RetroEd's comments, because they are becoming common in schools across the country. I am sickened to think that schools are allowing the "clipboards" to dictate how and when and what we are "allowed" to teach. My school was told to implement Reading First without any agreement from the teachers.
We are a small school and are attempting to be creative with how we can break the rules. But It is heart-breaking to me to even consider that I am causing the wounds of school because some guy in Washington DC thinks he can tell me how to teach. I want to be that teacher they never forget, not the one who tested them all the time and showed them how "below benchmark" they were!
Response From: RetroEd
11/09/2006 12:30AM
Unfortunately, First-Second Teacher, they check everything. You will have visitors from State Ed-"walk-throughs"-to check everything; your plans, groups, scores. centers (all activities must align to the core-no cross subjects or extensions or heaven forbid, science, social studies or math extensions.) The principal and the coach will be in your room regularly. Some of us tried to sabotage as much as possible but little by little, they eliminated all our "faux pas".
Response From: Don/Science Education Consultant/former Science Coordinator
11/09/2006 4:50PM
The Wounds of Schooling scar the practitoners as well. I just left a major urban school district in June and will probably never return to the school system (after 23 years). If you have a lot of passion along with vision, schools rarely have ways of accommodating those kinds of individuals.
I have always been appalled at the lack of real intellectual thinking and professionalism that characterizes the teaching profession. We are driven by belief systems, and rarely allow ourselves to confront personal beliefs that may in fact hinder child development. The "conversation" around math instruction typifies the culture within schools.
Even though we have 30 years of strong cognitive scientific research that shows children learn best in context, must confront prior understandings in order to learn "conceptually", need to become aware of their own thinking, these ideas are dismissed in public forums and board of education meetings by ideological educators or petty politicians and their misinformed community members as fuzzy ( fuzzy math) or "new age."
Even though there are committed educators who are truly risk takers and deeply introspective about their practice, they rarely speak up (or fear repercussions). Why would any young person, who might fit into the category of best and brightest, ever want to go into the educational system?
Response From: Recently Retired
11/10/2006 7:44AM
Perhaps more than any other recently-adopted program, Reading First is guilty of exactly the problems this essay describes. Although educators have had differentiated instruction drilled into them at all levels, Reading First programs refuse to allow gifted students to attend the very programs for which they qualify and require them to lock-step their way through the non-challenging instruction and daily assessment of skills they mastered long ago.
Please, someone, tell us how to undo this Nazi control of our young students' education! Schools are desperate for the funding and are willing to accept this dreadful program because it is the only source of federal funds that are needed just to keep public schools afloat.
11/10/2006 7:50AM
Perhaps another topic of exploration is how parents are wounded by their feelings of powerlessness when their children have to endure hurtful and negative schooling experience, when these experiences cut to the core of their child's self-image of themselves as learners and wonderful human beings.
Perhaps another topic of exploration is how parents are wounded by their feelings of powerlessness when their children have to endure hurtful and negative schooling experience, when these experiences cut to the core of their child's self-image of themselves as learners and wonderful human beings.
Response From: Cheryl/Radar Engineer/Math teacher/Parent
11/10/2006 9:20AM
Maria,
Your closing comment about parental powerlessness hits home, hard. I didn't teach long enough to feel the disillusionment that I'm reading here from career teachers, but your essays are affecting me powerfully. We put our kids in private school because we were displeased with our local K - 2 school, but our original intention was to send our kids to the public school in third grade. After what I'm reading here, NO WAY. How is this allowed to continue???
It strikes me as ironic that many teachers place the desire for parents to be more involved in their childrens' education at the top of their wish list, yet those of us who want to do so are shut out (more so by administrators or policy than by teachers). I would like to see a discussion of parental powerlessness on this forum.
