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Leveling the playing field?
Combined with "F" being redefined year by year, differing ideas of passing going in and out of fashion, listening to administrators desperately discussing ways to finagle the test scores and what were they going to do with "so-and-so" so" so they don't ruin their test scores for the school, watching public shaming sessions of teachers who don't meet the scores, yet watching those same teachers being told repeatedly that they can't use any of their own methods prior to that - they have to use the school approved methods and watching great teachers turned into robots for the newest "research-based" method only to have it tossed out the next year due to disaster, or just to get new books at half the cost to the district - this after teachers spent most of the year aligning the new materials to the standards and curriculum, often resulting in teachers having to teach well-designed textbooks out of order in ways that leave them hunting for resources no one anticipated or have abandoning entire threads of lessons for artificial decisions by people who are paying only cursory attention to the possible consequences...
...and if it seems I don't know what a run-on sentence is it is because this is exactly how it feels to be a school teacher in the public schools.
I hate to say it, but my most productive years, EVER, were in a private school with an administrator which was owned by a corporation that lacked ethics and just saw the bottom line. I got thrown into the classroom and told, "Keep the parents happy."
Virtually no resources, kids running the gamut from unable to read or do math in second grade, to the boy who acted like a chicken (literally, all day, no talking), and more.
WE had the BEST two years. I taught that boy to read. He was getting 90s on high school spelling lists. He was reading above grade level. The boy with the chicken schtick became a class leader, with an imagination that wouldn't quit.
There is nothing we can't fix with our kids. But the teachers, the TRUE innovators and creators of new methods have been stifled into silence and obedience, or left. What we could do with a bit of freedom even with open observation of our methods. I'll take a full observation and recording of my teaching time in exchange for leaving judgment (anger/emotional games) OUT of it and the freedom to teach the way I know how.
When Galt's Gulch opens a school - I'm ready to advise. Pay me what you think it's worth. The public schools won't know what hit them.
It was SUCH a relief to be out of what has become one of the WORST jobs in the world to have (despite the joys of dealing with the kids and often joyful chance to work with parents (I liked the parents - most teachers weren't so comfortable with them). It was also happy because I became my daughter's sole teacher. She now reads at high-school level, with full expression and comprehension (at age 8) and is at least one grade level higher with everything else.
And we did it without pressure, emotional or otherwise. Our daughter always has the option of returning to public school.
I miss all the kids.
I love being able to teach my daughter everything, especially formal logic, thinking skills (high school level as well), reading the Harvard Five-Foot Shelf of Books one week and Charlie and the Chocolate Factory the next (though she's usually read all the children's books in the house and is sitting reading one of the history books).
Keep your eyes out. There is SO much more we can do with kids, especially those from prenatally to age 5. That period is a wasteland for developmental purposes. We virtually toss our children to the wolves.
Also, I said if I make a mistake, let me know about it; don't let me continue on and make a complete fool of myself..
You wouldn't believe how well and how fast they learned from then on. And learned to trust their own choices.
The goal never was to educate, rather to indoctrinate. Kids must believe global warming, they must learn property rights are not sustainable, that population control starts early and with them. Academic, oh well, who needs that! We were already 25th in the world, the goal is to level the field internationally, so we need to drop more. Just think how wasted your tuition money will be for colleges, which will have to dumb down accordingly, so everyone can go and learn nothing.
By the end of the year, they were outracing each other to put problems on the board.
To be continued...
Jan
Until that happens, its all propaganda.
America is a good country with good people.
The leaders (political and business looters) of the United States are corrupt traitors and deserve impalement.