Ok, I just want to pont out a few things I highlighted in this chapter that I pose questions to:
1. "Having a good teacher versus having a poor teacher, particulary in the early years, can determine whether a young student is put in an honors track or a remedial track." I teach 7th, 9th, and 11th grade English this year (again, private school is different). This is my first year at this school, and I notice in all grades that they do not have a solid base in English. So my question is, How can we build on a foundation that is shaky at best? If a student has the 'poor' teacher basically all the way through elementary and middle grades, how can we expect them to come into 9th grade ready for Shakespeare? How do we keep our kids out of the "burger joint"?
2. "Lousy classic"....hmmmm, I don't know if this truly IS an oxymoron. I can appreciate the value in classics....but I don't spend my time reading them often. I know they wouldn't become a classic without significant value, but really? If I don't want to spend my time wresting with an archaic book, why would my students? Shouldn't we as teacher be looking for the NEW classics? Surely a book written in modern times contains value.
3. This chapter gives us what not to do----don't underteach and don't overteach.....find this elusive "sweet spot". Well, how about some ways to actually impliment this? Before doing the large chunk/small chunk thing, we have to get them excited about reading. Most of my kids would rather have a tooth pulled. And what if you are dealing with the 'lowest' kids in the grade? They feel stupid when confronted with text they don't get....I guess our job is make sure they get it:)
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2 comments:
I love your first point - why do we expect our kids to come to us and pass when they've had the stinky teacher all along? I mean, really - I feel your pain everyday in my class. How can we teach our students at the level I'm supposed to when, in fact, the level they need is from six years ago? When you find this answer - let me know! I need it as well. :0)
Good points. I'm teaching Title I students without most of the academic support private school students have. I had a student last year who sat in my class a whole semester, but he tested at a 3rd grade math level. I could reach him or do a thing with him. He couldn't read well either. I often wonder if it is bad teachers or a bad system? Once a kid realizes they can do nothing and still pass, they do nothing from then on. By the time we get them in high school they are so far behind it seems impossible to correct. I always wonder why they are there, when we have testing every year that they fail and class grades every year that they barely pass if they do. How do they make it? Yeah bad teachers hurt, but a bad system hurts every year. Even your good kids start to wonder why they should do more than the minimum, because everyone passes. It's human nature. We need to fix the system.
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