Read Only

Today at the middle school, I had a rude awakening. One of my students is a young man who tended to turn in things late and is not typically very attentive during class. I try to get him involved to little avail. Today, while I was correcting one of his late assignments, I noticed something. He seemed to understand the concept quite well, but he had major problems with one portion of the assignment. The half he did flawlessly on was a bit of writing, putting together 4 sentences for each of the 4 kinds of sentences (interrogative, declarative, exclamatory, and imperative). The half he got almost every one wrong on was an exercise in the book, where he had to just label each sentence as one of the 4 kinds. I couldn't believe that he could do so poorly on that part, considering his obvious knowledge on the subject as shown by his other work. When I asked my cooperating teacher about it, she seemed to know exactly what the issue was: he was a very poor reader. Of course! I felt so blind for not seeing it. I mean, I was glad that I at least took note of it enough to ask, but still, just wow--it was something I hadn't really even thought of. All this time, I thought he wasn't as motivated or something...but most of it is directly or indirectly related to his reading problems.

So now I'm faced with this issue: what can I do for him? He does not qualify for any modifications or anything like that--he has to face the same challenges as the rest of the students, though he does qualify for a little outside help. I want him to succeed and I want him to BE motivated. I don't want English to be a class in which he zones out, cuts off from the class and does just enough to get by. I know I can't do A LOT, but I want to do all I can to make my classroom a place where he feels comfortable enough to try and to get the help that he needs. I would be willing to read assigments over with him, set him up with a tutor, or just ANYTHING to get him where he needs to be. Unfortunately, it IS English class, and he DOES need to be able to read, and he really doesn't qualify for the special treatment of having quizzes or tests read to him. But perhaps I can change some things in my whole teaching strategy, make up more activitities and assignments that use more faculties than reading. It's so easy to just follow what my cooperating teacher has set up, and it really is difficult to do things TOO differently when I need to be at a similar pace with the rest of the classes. If I was taking on all of the classes on my own, it wouldn't be quite so complicated (though it would be admittedly more difficult, knowing I'd have to do ALL the planning on my own). AGGGH! I wish I knew more, knew how I should go about helping him. I'm going to talk with him, and I hope he will be willing to cooperate and get the help that he needs. I really want him to succeed, and get whatever help he needs in reading...the really unfortunate thing is that he needs to be able to read carefully, critically to be able to do well on his state test.

Stupid fucking state tests. (excuse my Latin) I mean, I know the dumbass legislators think they're doing something good for education, but dammit! What about a kid like this? He seems like he's pretty bright and has a personality and such, but he doesn't make the cut for some kind of intervention or real help. He is "Title 1" which is all well and good, if only our "Title 1" program got more funding. Blasted state and federal goverment!!!! What the fuck were you thinking, cutting back on education?! On a totally side note, what I just did there was use an "interrobang"...it's when a sentence is exclamatory AND interrogative (typically using a rhetorical question). It's some relatively knew thing that some people are trying to make into a legitimate form of punctuation. I guess Wingdings and some other fonts actually include it, with the question mark and exclamation point overlapping each other, sort of like the whole $ effect. Just thought you'd like to know that.

Anyway, yeah, I just had to let out some frustration. I know that I can make my lessons more interactive, student based, and a lot cooler...I just have to do some planning and thinking and strategizing. It's not easy with content material like "the predicate." Grammar fucking sucks. I know it's important to know, but it's another thing entirely to be teaching it out of context. I'm trying to put it INTO context, but I know I haven't tried enough. It's just so much easier to follow the leader, just making slight alterations on my coop's plans. She really is a good teacher and does seem to know how the students work and all that. But she IS traditional, and she does seem to be rather attached to the process of "part to whole"....when the academic world of educating teachers is pushing for "whole to part." The whole dang thing drives me nuts. It's like, who do I follow, who do I believe? I know I should go with what I think is right, but it's rather difficult when I know I have very little experience with teaching. I've spent 18 years as a student (including preschool) and only a few weeks here and there actually teaching. My own education included primarily traditional tactics...and I think I learned quite well. But was it because of the lessons? the teachers? my own aptitude? my love of reading? my parents?! I think it is different for all students, since they all learn through different mediums at different paces. And the academically correct notion is to totally buy into EVERY constructivist theory known to educators. I very much DO believe in letting students have the most say, having them lead activities, making teaching a LOT less teacher-led (a lot of this stemming from my own experience of REALLY NOT LIKING standing in front of a room and blabbing on and on about boring shit while students have to take notes or follow along in a boring-ass book or correct boring-ass worksheets). SOME teacher led stuff does seem to have its place--some things take some explaining, and having students doing ALL the correcting takes a dang long time.

Maybe I'm digging myself a hole here. I'm REALLY not trying to sound like some backwards ass future teacher who thinks everything should be taught the way I was taught. That is SO not the way I feel. I'm just trying to say that I think SOME of the old ways CAN work, if done the right way. But for me, personally, it is not the way I PREFER, even though I'm mostly going with the flow here. The thing I really am realizing is that doing it TOO traditionally does not account for student differences, and I do NOT want to alienate the kids that learn better in non-traditional ways. I really do want to be a good teacher, and I think I still can be one while learning from a very good teacher, even if I don't agree with every choice she makes. Student teachers can be in a very awkward position, having to balance their will to make the class "theirs" while being VERY aware that the students are NOT "theirs" for the majority of the school year. ::sigh:: Overall, I really am having a great experience with these 8th graders, and I think I'm actually learning more about myself as a teacher than I would have ever thought. Caring about these kids is giving me motivation to do more than I ever did in class. I may not be coming up with the utmost in creative lesson plans, but I AM trying to listen to the students, understand their minds and motivations, and get the kids thinking and learning, not just about English, but about themselves as users of language. Keep wishing me luck--I'll never run out of need for it.