I almost fell out of my chair to hear one of Kozol's stories echoed in my classroom, though with a different sort of spin. I'd never heard anyone say "fishy fishy" until I read it in Kozol, but then a few days after reading it, I heard one of my middle school boys saying it, in that tone reserved for something that has a hidden meaning. I was pretty sure it was Not nice, but without having the faintest clue of what it did mean, I just gave the student a little glare and left it at that. I later checked on Urban Dictionary, but that didn't help much, beyond confirming that, in most settings, it's probably not nice.
That was the most startling connection, but hardly the most profound or pedagogical. The classroom that I'm in has been mired in a grammar unit (yes- a whole unit) for all but the first day or so I was in the classroom. Since about day 3 I've been rather inclined to beat my head on the desk. The kids have a packet of worksheets, mostly straight from the book, and we have plodded steadily through them day after day. I know that there is research that shows this context-less instruction to be ineffective at best, and my coop even admitted one day that most of them probably won't remember much of this, but still the classes are subjected to this mind-numbing march of sentence complements. Why? "Because it will improve your writing". No, it won't, not taught like this anyway. One of the lies Kozol despises. one of the days I worked with a sub, a student asked why they need to know this. I let the sub answer, because my answer might have made trouble we didn't need. This is not my classroom. I wanted to say "You don't need to know this. You will never use it (unless you're going to be an English teacher or an editor). It might make you better at revising, but not done this way". I can see where knowing what the sentence complements are and how one can identify them might be useful, but it should be done with mini lessons, using sentences from student work or what they are reading and always with the goal of improving student's writing in mind first- not used as an excuse to teach something that some textbook or curriculum stuck in the 1800's thinks they should do. Most of these 8th graders can use these structures unconsciously to some degree, and these drill and kill worksheets don't make them any more likely to use them. Half-desperate I 'idly' mentioned that there might be Schoolhouse Rock clips to support these (anything's better than worksheets) and my coop agreed that there were, but that one gets tired of them pretty quickly. *headdesk* Even worse- I visited the high school for one day because I'd mentioned that I'd never seen bloc scheduling in action, so my coop arranged for me to visit a friend's class. Every level I saw (excluding the creative writing class) had similar grammar worksheets, the only difference being that they only spent part of each class on them instead of the whole thing.
Another thing I've noticed that bothers me is that the kids don't seem to do much writing. I saw some of their research papers before they were handed back, and there were several that I saw that I would have had the student revise and resubmit again, rather than accept what was given- it's not about the grade it's about getting better at writing, and at least one final draft held the exact mistakes of the earlier draft. Not cool dude, not cool. More troubling though, is that I'm not certain that they'd done any major writing before that, and I'm not sure they will after. Definitely have to include something in the small "Flowers for Algernon" unit I've been given to plan and teach.
The PSSA writing tests were painful to watch, especially as we proctored a group of students with IEPs and the only thing the special ed teacher or any of us could do was read the prompts for the essays. Not all the questions even, just the essay prompts. We weren't even supposed to remind kids to attempt every question if we saw one left blank. No child left behind indeed.
I like my coop, really I do, but there are so many things I politely disagree with- more in my head than out loud- I am a guest. There seems to be precious little support for wiggly and wobbly, though there is some room for it. They do regularly work with partners, which at least gets them moving, but what they do in those pairings is generally worksheets, which seems like a waste. The room is somewhat decorated, and there's a little warmth there, but the selection of free reading books is small and looks untouched, and there are no decorations that are also interactive. We've played a few games, but they seem to support the content only at a low level. Direct instruction followed by practice is pretty much the standard, and while we have co teachers for two of the classes, the norm is for them to occasionally switch off and that's about it. For heavens sake there are three adults in the room those periods while I'm here- I think we could afford to take a few small risks! My coop does give me plenty of opportunity to teach, and good feedback, for which I am grateful, but too often it seem to me that she has settled and gotten stuck in the midst of a curriculum that commits read- and write-icide daily, teaching in a manner that is comfortable rather than effective. It's almost ironic though that the days I feel I've taught best have been the days she's been out sick and I've taught with the subs. It is interesting to see the looks on the middle schooler's faces the first time you actually use a little authority, rather than just being a quiet helper. Or when they say something they shouldn't and only then realize that the person behind them is more teacher than student. I like the middle school kids. They seem to be a little more open and honest than the high schoolers, for all that the high schooler's greater cognitive development makes some discussions possible that might fly over the 8th grader's heads.
I'm beginning to think that the person for whom the classroom should be least comfortable is the teacher.
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