Wednesday, August 8, 2007

I Can't Make This Funny Anymore

Another day at school, another kid cries. It's just ridiculous. The girl was home schooled. The mom said that when the kid didn't want to do something - like read or write - she didn't make the kid do it. The kid did art and listened to music. That was her home schooling. So now, she's in class and can't do the math, can't even keep up in writing...I mean copying notes, and when she does, she can't spell simple words. She's probably at a 3rd grade writing level. So in the middle of class, she starts crying. And there's Uncle Dave to take her into the hall and calm her down.

After school, I was talking with the other teachers and we figured out what's going on here:

When parents were told about the new program they were told that this is to be a rigorous program that focused on advanced math and science to get kids ready for college. What they heard was, your kid sucks at math and science so we will focus on that a lot to get them back up to speed. So the parents jumped at the chance to get their kids into the program, even though it's not right for their kid.

So now we have...uh...I'll be conservative (for a change) and say 80% of the students in our program who are not equipped to do what this program is supposed to be doing. I sure do hope the Governor doesn't figure this out on Saturday. Doh!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sounds a bit like NTID... there's plenty of students who can barely crack a 6th-grade text, yet they insist on being in a bachelor's program and expect that the advisors/support team will simplify anything they don't understand... like fractions or run-on sentences.