Off Topic Post About Education

Very interesting that you posted this...I'm a teacher myself, in the Detroit area actually!! I don't teach in Detroit itself, but in one of the suburbs around it. The dropout rate is so depressing..kids come to school in Kindergarten so excited and love to learn and less than 12 years later, they are ready to drop out.

As a music teacher, I do everything I can to make my class fun to come to. I remember when I taught high school, I literally had kids tell me that choir was the only reason they came to school! What can we do to keep these kids interested in learning??

In my district, they have some ESL (English as a Second Language) specialists that those types of students go to for remedial help with language problems. Do they have anything like that in your district?

The language barrier can be so frustrating! The sad thing is, most of the kids are probably really smart, but get frustrated because they can't understand and give up. I have a friend who teaches 5th grade and she has 6 different reading groups in her class. She has kids everywhere from Pre-K reading level to 5th grade. She breaks them up into different groups by their reading level and has them work that way. I don't know if there is anything like that you can incorporate into your classroom? Or are there some sort of way you can incorporate a combination of spanish and english assignments?

I don't have a miracle solution for you guys, bu please don't give up guys, you are doing your best with the ressources that are available to you. You are teaching a generation of kids that have their minds kept busy with everything but education. the rise of video games, movies, and main stream entertainment is always rising and fighting for their attention. no wonder english, math and everything else is pure boredom and that is just a fraction of the problem. Your guys are heros to just even try. Your doing the impossible and we are all behind you.

serously, that kind of statistic are just unbelivable, the goverment has to do something with this, but obvisouly its busy putting its money else where.
may

Just so you know, the situation is filtering its way up to college level. When I was teaching college in the states, I had students (at a state university) who were barely able to write a sentence.

I don't know how we stop it. I do know that public education teachers, such as all of you fine people

A. deserve medals

B. deserve higher pay! Helawat, you are teaching the most valuable resource that we have (or you have. . .I'm an ex-pat. . .) as a nation and you started a post about how you can't afford to buy healthy food. Whoa! Outrageous!

Keep the faith guys, I substitute taught in the Toledo public school system for a while. Keep your heads up, and stay out of the teacher's lounge. (this was great advice from an education professor. . .the teacher's lounge is where the negativity lives. The job gives you enough of that already)

This is my 7th year as a high-school science teacher. I've earned an M.Ed and National Board Certification in recent years so I like to think that I know what I'm talking about.

I really think there are two different things going on.:

First, we have a group of students who (historically speaking) would have never made it this far. I am NOT speaking of one ethnic group or another. Poor, rural and urban families of all ethnicities have shown similar patterns of education (or lack of it) throughout history. These children would have dropped out in grade school or certainly by 8th grade and would have gone to work on the farms, in the factories and on the oil fields. We are doing a much better job of tracking these kids now and they are staying in school longer than ever before. As a consequence, they are showing up in the dropout rate. Years ago, these kinds of statistics weren't even being kept.

Second, we have a system that is egalitarian and attempts to provide the same education for all students, regardless of ability or desire. Tracking students is no longer done in most states meaning that classes are mixed ability. We are attempting to provide a college-prep curriculum to students who have little ability and no desire to go to college. We need to stop pretending that all children are equal. As painful as it is to admit, some students simply lack the cognitive ability to be successful in a college-prep curriculum. Those on the borderline, with the right motivation, can learn the organizational skills and the coping strategies to succeed.

What is missing in most areas are trade schools and vocational education programs that prepare students for the working world. Some states and districts do a better job with this than others but most programs I've seen fall far short of the actual need.

The media is fond of reporting that the U.S. is behind this country or that country based on test scores. There are two reasons for this. We allow (or even require, depending on the test) every student to be counted. I recently asked a German foreign exchange student how students are tracked in his country. Students there take a standardized test in THIRD GRADE! The results are used to recommend which program is appropriate. There are three choices. A track that leads to colleges, a track that leads to a skilled, technical positions and a third track that leads to skilled labor positions. If you do well and your parents push, you can move between tracks. Each track has different requirements, different measures of success and different tests. When our students are compared to theirs, ALL of our students are compared to only the college-prep track. No wonder we look like we are behind! In addition, mixed ability classes force us to go slower and teach less depth because "no child should be left behind." The result is that we are not pushing our honors students as high as they are capable of going.

I personally say that some students should be left behind. Some only come to school to buy and sell drugs. They refuse to do any work and only serve to disrupt the learning process and environment. Under NCLB, they are counted as drop-outs even when they get expelled for dangerous, illegal or violent acts. For many students, education is a lifeboat. It's a chance to escape generational poverty and all of the dangers that come with it. What would YOU do if someone in your lifeboat was acting like an *kitten* and endangering the rest of the people on the boat?

/rant

Helawat - I just want to encourage you to keep on what you're doing!!! You are a gift to those students and you have to believe that even though you may not reach them all...you ARE reaching some...and they will always be indebted to you for it!
I teach Kindergarten and it is such fun to have excited and happy to learn kiddos around. AND we get non-english kids, but at age 5 and 6, they pick up the language in a couple months....which is amazing to me! We lower grades are trying to get the kids excited about school...but it's hard with all the mandated testing going on....but I just want to tell you to keep on keepin on!! :flowerforyou: