Out of touch 2

I wrote about feeling out of touch earlier this school year.

I walked into a room this week to talk with a teacher I rarely see. It was the end of the day and another teacher was talking about one of her students. Apparently the student lives with his father and father's girlfriend. And father's ex-girlfriend lives there also because she cannot afford to move out. And the night before the ex-girlfriend was in a fight with the dad, throwing and breaking things.

The first teacher said "How can we expect kids to learn under these circumstance? They live in chaos, they don't eat right. They get no parental support." And the second teacher comment that her description sounded like second teacher's homelife growing up. She said she didn't do well in school or care at that point.

And I feel out of touch.

I think education is a key to open the door to escape your circumstances.

I grew up comfortably middle class. I started working at 16 and haven't stopped but I was raised with that as an expectation - as well as that I would get an education and keep learning.

I work hard to break down the math into bite-size pieces. I link it to what they are supposed to have learned before. I reteach what they are supposed to have already learned. I ask that they 1) not talk while I am teaching and 2) practice the math in class. I give up on assigning homework - very few do it and it is just another fight.
I am teaching Algebra 2 and Precalculus. How do you learn this without doing something?

Instead they gripe that I don't teach, I have to give them something to raise their grade (the grade they earned because they work the problems for the first time on a test).

Okay - they have a lousy homelife. Their parents belittle them, kick them out, set bad examples and give no structure. So, you pack my classes to the brim with people who have already failed the course, set it on block (so we do 2 hours a day for a semester instead of 1 hour a day for a year), give me no resources except what I can find for myself, do not give me common planning so we can share the load, expect me to teach to a test that by law I cannot see and yet counts for a quarter of their grade - and then wonder why this is a struggle every day.

Maybe I am not the one out of touch.

Note: I just looked in the gradebook for something else and noticed a student I hadn't seen all week is marked as transferred. I have lost 19 kids in 2 classes and 2 others have announced they are dropping out - they just haven't yet. I am not liking this year.

Out of touch

A student was talking about a highly respected teacher at our school. I know the kids really like this teacher - but I don't see that she adds to the profession. By that. I mean I do not see her offering information that helps people new to the profession or even new to the school.

This sounds petty - and I really don't mean it that way. She is in another department and in the 10 years we have worked in the same school, we have had little contact. We haven't had the same duty, we don't work on the same committees, we haven't had the same planning periods. We have shared the same lunch, but she is loud and I prefer quieter conversation.

I have heard rumors from special ed teachers and other teachers who work in that department, just an undercurrent that things aren't perceived the same way by adults that I respect as they are by the teenagers in her class.

A student was talking today (thinking it was riotously funny) that she requires a password to return from the bathroom. The password this year is Dripping Anus. Ok, it something else, equally classy.

I am not appalled. But I would not be "thrilled" to have a child in her room. It seems so completely unprofessional. When you add that in the twelve years of her teaching AP classes she has never had anything above a 2.

Results speak. I think she is fun - that doesn't translate as a GOOD teacher. And the teenagers in the school will probably never see that.

In another conversation this week, another math teacher was lamenting that her students (seniors) cannot skips steps in their head. If you are doing the Pythagorean theorem. a squared plus b squared equals c squared. So you know a = 6 and b = 8, you get c = 10. Her students screamed at her "You can't skip the steps. a squared is 36, b squared is 64. 36 + 64 = 100. The square root of 100 is 10."

And the teacher's comment was to shake her head and say the kids have no idea how behind they really are.

We are a needs improvement school. The culture needs to change. When you have teachers like the first one - a teacher held up as a paragon, how do you fix it?

Yeah, I am out of touch. (Thank you, I take it as a complement.) I would not have a child I love in this class - and yet I know I am working to change things.