There is not enough time in the day to do everything that is asked of you. I have all these great intentions to call the parents of those students who have been absent for a week now without any explanation, to email the parents of those students who reported that they weren't reading at all (which is my only homework!) to encourage more reading and responsibility from home, to create and send out newsletters to let the parents know about what's going on in class.
I'm telling you, they're good intentions. I really do intend to do it.... :(
I still don't understand how some teachers can walk out of here at 3:30 and go home to the place where they are not constantly thinking about their students, their lesson plans, and their grading.
I've found myself over the past week falling onto the conveyor belt mentality of teaching - which is somewhat logical since the education system itself is uniquely modeled after the Industrial Revolution. Students = parts or products of the assembly line. Teacher = worker in charge of a specific duty of assembly. Then student moves down the conveyor belt and out into the world as a marketable product. Hmmm.... If only it worked that way.
But there's one student in my class that just won't move down the belt. He's taken out of my class every Tuesday for the entire period for speech instruction (gah), and it's almost like he doesn't understand me at all. I've been hypersensitive to him and his needs over the past few days because he has done NOTHING for my class. Nothing. Not even in class. I could be standing right next to him, giving him instructions, and he just looks at me blankly like, "I'm sorry, I'm not understanding what language you are speaking," which is obviously a legitimate concern.
So, I wait. After about 20 seconds, he may or may not answer my question after looking all around the room.
So, I emailed his IEP case manager. He needs extended time for assignments. Check. He needs directions read aloud. Check. He needs limited distractions. Check.
So what more can I do? So many of these students just need some individualized instruction but - oh wait, I'm sorry, do I have 160+ other students who need my attention? oh yeah.
How do teachers do it? Cause this conveyor belt of mine just keeps chugging along.
So I'm pulling the emergency brake. I'm sorry friends, my lesson plans are going to look extremely similar to the day before and the day before. We're going to be doing some of the same kinds of strategies over and over and over again with different texts, as a whole class, as groups, as individuals, and then we'll do it all over again. So that day by day plan I had for my unit is taking a vacation in what-on-earth-was-i-thinking land and I'm going to see that all of these students get some individual instruction.
Plus, who are we kidding? Since when do those "smart" students not benefit from review? They all do.
Right now, we're spending our days with Dr. Dean's "Says/Does" chart. I've told the students it's the key to thinking like a reader and a writer at the same time! I told them we were going to be genre investigators! I just didn't tell them we were going to do it for the next little - okay, long - while. Don't worry, one class of seventh graders applauded the idea. My eighth graders? Rolled their eyes. One day I'll master the difference between the two.
Here's to getting off the conveyor belt!
(The funny thing is that I've realized that college was definitely a conveyor belt. If students weren't getting it or if they fell in a rut and didn't turn in assignments, most of them failed. Period. No questions asked. They had to take the class again. So, how do you change the entire system? Or, better yet, how do you coexist? Am I not preparing them for college? Goodness...this is hard.)
You bring up so many issues and this comment box allows for so few characters. Sigh. I'll give a quick shot at a few of them though.
ReplyDeleteIt's difficult when certain students, often those allowed many accommodations, make it difficult to discern when they are really struggling and when they just don't want to do the work. I wish I could give you a fail proof approach to figuring this out, but unfortunately this is one of those "know your students" issues. You might get some mileage out of a call home on that one though. Sometimes parents willing to see can give the teachers pointers on their kid's poor behavior/real struggles.
Second, don't worry about repeating strategies. That's the way kids learn--through repetition. We all learn that way, in fact. Sometimes we think we have to do something novel and clever ever lesson (at least I think that), but really it's important to help kids learn patterns, routines, and strategies they can implement on their own. Don't be too hard on yourself about this one.
You are right on the money about the Industrial Revolution and teaching. The sad thing is that I don't know that I really became a critical thinker until I started thinking or even began graduate school. Why do we want people to only want people to start thinking when it's too late to learn things? There's a lot of folks who would say a lot of political things about this, but really your question is a sound one: how do we get everybody off the conveyor belt?
Finally, once you figure out the difference between 7th and 8th graders, I think you've found the subject of your first book:) The teaching world will be dying to know because they've all thought it, but it's difficult to articulate!