“Have a classroom full of 20 nine year olds who come from poor families, parents who dont have time to work with them (or just don’t work with them at home), and can barely read. And you take them from that and getting them to pass state standards and bring them up to a 4th grade level at the end of the year. Then after you do that, tell me if it was easy or if you had to put a whole hell of a lot of work into it!”
Why did the students come to your third grade barely able to read? They’ve already had two years of school, and maybe Head Start or kindergarten before that.
I’m not criticizing the teaching profession. Many teachers in my family, but I do believe many unsound approaches are being used in some states or school systems, and a fair amount of time wasted teaching feel good PC nonsense that does little to actually educate children and teach them to think and solve problems.
Yes I agree, there must be bad approaches. Furthermore, to hold the student back, you have to have parents agree to it. They would rather pass the student on and have them behind. (in elementary grades) Which makes it very hard when they get to 3rd grade and everything we do consists of reading!
Luckily this year I only have one student that is very below average and four that are just slightly behind. My first year teaching I had a student who could not read a word! He was in special education, but when he was in my classroom... its very hard!
I also agree that some teachers take too much time with good feeling stuff. Teach the facts. What students are going to need for life! Real-world problems. How to count back change (thats a head-ache day teaching that in my classroom). How to write a complete sentence. History.