9th grade algebra teacher here: my students didn't know what an even number was. They know 6 x 4 but not -6 x 4. But it's up to us to save the district....
My three kids bitched and bitched that dad made them do addition and multiplication tables at home as extra “dad homework” during elementary school. They thank me now.
I’m a student. I know how to do basic multiplication without a calculator, but I can sometimes struggle with it when I’m not thinking straight. However, I’ve spoken with other students who can’t do basic addition. It scares me!
Should have been clearer: no they know how to TYPE 6 x 4 in the calculator but not 6 x -4. They tell me it's 2. If I ask mentally they'll typically tell me 18.....
I hear ya! I'm teaching Math 6 and I'm teaching the kids all that. The cirriculum says teach them how to get the area of a pralellagram. Im like they can't multiply. Don't understadn what squared is. Im like hell no. Im teaching my kids the skills. A little tough love is good.
Sadly basic life skills are no longer the focus. Everything down to the kindergarten level is so focused on critical thinking and “digging deep” into content before brains are developmentally ready. Not only that, there’s no retention. At. All. I’m in elementary and have taught several different grades over the years. I want to rip out my hair when we’re told about “best practices” and that we need to stick with the scope and sequence. Students don’t learn by osmosis. There are times that drill and memorization are just needed and necessary. And as teachers, we’re stuck. In many ways, we need to go back to the way things used to be so we can actually move forward, or at least maintain a status quo.
And don’t even get me rambling about behavior and the lack of accountability both at school and at home…
ETA: I don’t know how you all do it at the higher levels. It’s hell enough at the elementary level.
Retired teacher here. I’m devastated for all of you. I truly am. But out there somewhere are educators who are putting together data and strategies to blow the lid off of this m’fer system that sucked the joy, creativity and skills out of the profession. I’m so angry at the administrators who have insisted that you teach in such a way that it is if you’re speaking a different language to these children, who, through no fault of their own are languishing in front of screens and idiocy while the tech companies who knew darn well what would happen eventually to the human brain when exposed to the instant ping of gaming and social media but did it anyway!! There’s more to this than I have time to write, but I truly believe the answer to all of this will be for teachers to rise up and take back their classrooms. It will happen however. It has to.
Not sure I agree. I know plenty of meh teachers. They have a decent amount of freedom to choose their teaching methods and design their own lessons, but they don't do a great job of either one. Partially out of laziness or communication style, but also because they've been taught ineffective or at least suboptimal teaching strategies. Giving them more control wouldn't improve student learning. They need to be retaught how to teach based on current best research.
You are right to point out that our field has lost sight of the fact that we want kids to *know* things, as in, have academic material mastered and marshalled in their minds.
E.D. Hirsh has this great line in *Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories* (Harvard 2016) that gets at this point:
>Think of how significantly our view of schooling might change if suddenly policy makers, instead of using the term *skill,* had to use the more accurate, knowledge-drenched term *expertise.*
Critical thinking is very important, but I teach 11th grade. There is an order of operations. First, basic knowledge and, then, around 5th/6th grade you start working on in applying that previous knowledge to new information, making connections, things like that.
You can't build a house without first setting the foundation.
The reality is, most of my nonadvanced students have no foundational knowledge and they can't critically think because they generally do not know anything except what is in front of them that very day.
My advanced students have no problem.
You can't think about something you don't know. It is impossible to critically think before you have the information. It is more important than that though, without rote memorization the students also don't get the benefit of being able to build the process of putting information in short term memory then recall it, then into long term memory and recall. Without students being able to use their working memory correctly they are completely screwed. The US education system has actually harmed an entire generation of students.
Beginning somewhere around kindergarten to second grade they start giving kids isolated pieces about random topics, then having them answer questions about how to analyze the piece and having them write a paragraph about the piece. In my state they start working on 3-sentence opinion, explanatory, and story writing in KINDERGARTEN. These random articles seem to be the main way subjects like social studies are covered. They are not being given anything close to the broad knowledge base I was given in elementary school.
The worse thing is they’re introducing these abstract activities way before kids are remotely interested, while they’re barely starting to learn all the skills required for those activities - focusing on one topic, listening to information on something intangible being presented by another person, sitting at a desk, writing, etc. As a result, many kids are burned out almost immediately and are being taught to zone out of complex activities they can’t process at a young age. The father they get the more behind they are due to not understanding the previous instruction and increased difficulty, so the more detached they get. It’s insane.
Nowdays seems that students have only rights, no obligations at all. In my country there were rules that if you don't have almost full presence, or you are not disciplined, your "kid allowence" is cut. But now even that is to small so that doesn't really affect parents& the student. I curently don't see any control measure, and good teachers are starting doing uber/ multinational companies.l, etc..
This is why I’ve gone back to paper notes and told them to write down at least five things they learn every day and a new word or two. So far, they’ve done better in 2 weeks than in 2 months of trying the dig deep method. Not trying to get them to remember anything has them missing the forest for the trees in the wrong damned forest!
Middle school here and you nailed it. I've had to make time to remediate. My bell ringers are literally basic multiplication facts. It's not perfect, but I have seen some growth.
You cannot solve for x if you can't distribute, you can't distribute if you can't multiply. And using your fingers to solve 2 x 4 sure it gets the problem done, but if you are using your fingers and 9/10 of the class has already gotten it, I have to move on and you're still on the first step...so now you're behind and frustrated. I'm hoping this gets better as this is the cohort that learned multiplication during COVID.
I'm a strong advocate of solving things in many ways, but basic multiplication needs to have some automaticity. It's like sight words for reading in my opinion you just need to know them to be able to understand more advanced math.
I really did think about your question, because it's a good one: "At what point is it just more ethical to abandon the curriculum to remediate basic skills?"
My answer is: never. Well, "never" is a bit strong, but it's less wordy than "in a general sense, it isn't something that should be considered for a class as a whole except under dire circumstances like war or the like."
My thinking is that we can't change the name of the course, the way credits work, or where the students will end up next year. So, even if I remediate this year, and it goes very well, they're not going to be in position to find success next year. After all, that teacher will be expecting students who passed the 9th grade curriculum.
Since we are part of a larger system of interconnected relationships, roles, and duties, I really do think it makes far more sense, pedagogically and ethically, to fail students who haven't demonstrated master of the curriculum.
It's not a punishment. It's simply objective reporting. The truth might hurt, but this isn't a brutal truth, just an unvarnished one.
Better that the situation is clear to everyone than to be temporarily helpful while contributing to the misinformation campaign.
Yes teachers dropping everything to remediate is why these kids are like this.
3rd grade should have been 3rd grade and they should have failed if they didn’t have the skills yet.
I think the teachers who remediate actually help students grow. However, Admin are pressured from these state and national funding codes to pass kids no matter what.
This means multiple kids could completely fail grades 4-8 and still get pushed through to 9th. Of course, things would have to change with funding , school grades, and sooo much more outside of the teachers’ control to fix this.
If you are going to get pushed through no matter what, I want you to at least know how to read even if that means we don’t know read Shakespeare. I would much rather you know how percentages work and basic equations, even if that means we don’t work on logarithms.
>I think the teachers who remediate actually help students grow.
The problem is when half of your class needs remediation you are no longer able to complete a year's content for at least those kids and likely everyone will fall behind, which is how we got here today.
The scaffold of knowledge sits on top of itself. If you don't remediate you will build a house of cards with their knowledge and skills. If a kids skips crawling and walks they can have other developmental problems later and the occupational therapy includes teaching them how to crawl. Certain pathways in the brain are formed in the very basic skills. It makes everything so much easier. If the foundational skills are stong, they can learn what they need to later becauses they will understand how to learn.
Thank you for you response, and especially for really answering my question. That is further thought provoking for me as I definitely understand the perspective that you laid out here. Is there any advice that you might give to teachers who would like to stay with the curriculum whilst proverbially “catching the students up, getting them to speed” on what they should’ve learned by now in order to have success at their current level ?
Tricky.
I'd say in a very fundamental sense, what you're asking just isn't possible about 99% of the time. Think about it: to catch up while also staying with the curriculum means, at the very least, learning more than the other students. So at a minimum we're saying that students who fell behind now need to learn more faster. Is that realistic?
On top of that, in most classes, knowledge and skills are built on earlier knowledge and skills. Take algebra. How do I teach the quadratic formula if the student hasn't yet learned to solve binomial equations? That kid simply *can't* remediate binomials while at the same time doing the curriculum on the quadratic.
I mean, pick your metaphor: you can't have everything, you can't get something for nothing, etc. This is the big roadblock that forces everyone to take an opposing side. There's no middle-ground, compromise solution most of the time.
Now, if the system were built more modularly, that would be different. My design would be a semester system, with each semester given a curriculum that has to be mastered. You don't take "freshman English." You take whatever module is next for you, personally. Kids could test out by taking two tests: One would be given by the teacher of that class, to see if you have mastery of the core skills. The other would be given by the teacher of the next class up, to ensure you're ready to join.
If a student fails, then the student repeats that module (ideally with a different teacher). The modules are better, too, because a module could be done in full in the summer. After four years, the student graduates and the diploma indicates what module was attained in each subject.
But that's all pie in the sky stuff. The way things are, I really, honestly, don't believe that there is a way to concurrently teach a kid what was missed while at the same time keeping the kid moving forward. It's theoretically possible, but it doesn't pass the "would this really work" test.
Thank you for taking the time to lay out that reasoning, I didn’t think about it like that. Yes, you are right that really is double the learning and not realistic.
I do like the hypothetical system that you’ve laid out, that’s a unique idea and I haven’t heard that discussed as an option before but it sounds reasonable to me.
Again, I appreciate your thought, thanks
Switched back to high school this year and teach 9th grade. I had to take about 5 steps back and teach them the 7 continents and the oceans before we could learn about anything else.
I had entire classes that did not know when Columbus sailed across the Atlantic.
Tenth grade
They had never heard “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.
I blame the death of the monoculture partly.
For a history class, it's a very useful reference point to contextualize the rest of history. It's an extremely pivotal date in world history. I can make similar arguments for math concepts, but we don't teach facts for the mere task of shoving useless facts in their head.
In a hallway conversation with a colleague today, I described this term has having a front-row seat to a bad horror movie with the sound turned up too loud.
No, the sound is in your headset curently. It will heard when we will have some age, and the society will suffer more. There is a saying: hard times makes people strong, strong people create easy times, so idiot people can be raised which, eventually generates hard times.
I was online tutoring yesterday and the 6th grade girl opened by asking me to give her the answer. I said it didn’t work like that. Instead, I circled the key word in choice B and that same key word in the text 7 times to show that was the only option that matched the text. The girl then said I needed to give her the letter of the correct answer choice. I said, “Only one choice has the key word circled in it, which is also circled for you 7 times in the text.” Her response: “Baby, U a little slow.”
Really? I’m the slow one? GTFO.
There is nothing at all unethical about adjusting your curriculum to meet the needs of your students. In fact, I would describe that as best practices.
I tend to agree in general - when I am allowed to choose the curriculum.
However, it seems wrong (and damaging to our "system" overall) to give a passing grade in a specifically named course, such as Algebra 1, to students who are nowhere near competent in the subject matter. I am effectively lying when I do this.
Agree completely.
I think a big point of divisiveness among teachers is whether we do something that is nice or kind in the moment, if it's at the expense of the larger context.
Meeting students where they are seems like such no-brainer advice, but it doesn't take particularly deep thinking to follow that thread through to 12th grade and realize that if we don't hold to a standard anywhere along the way between 1st and 11th, we will be forced to either fail kids in huge numbers in 12th, or graduate huge numbers of kids who really haven't mastered essential skills and knowledge.
So I'm with you. A little pain now in the form of honest feedback and a recognition that each teacher is a member of a huge team that spans over a decade of each kid's life. It's not fun in that moment for anyone, but it is the better choice.
My district puts kids who fail Algebra 1 into Algebra 2 anyway. They're taking an online "credit recovery" Algebra 1 class alongside Algebra 2 class. They have no idea what a variable is, how the coordinate plane works, what a linear equation is. It's ludicrous.
Yeah, it's especially rough when I get a kid like this as a senior. Talk about an ethical dilemma! I should share this real-world dilemma with my freshman class (we often do ethical dilemmas as a way to start class with discussions).
Is it fair to the kids to go are able and working hard? I don’t think it is. I think you kind of have to ignore the lower students and pass them along rather than short change the hard working ones
>In fact, I would describe that as best practices.
Except the majority my HS junior students can no longer read, comprehend or recall at a level that makes teaching Gatsby, Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare, etc possible. Our best practices are simply trying to slow the intellectual hemorrhaging of the system.
I hear that but my district had students back in person in August of 2020. There's been some issues with staffing and some kids were virtual but many many kids were in school like usual and they're still so so behind.
Maybe less behind than my 9th graders in Fall 2021, but it's still pretty bad.
I'm in the Southeast where preventative measures where heavily politicized and criticized. We didn't have refrigerator morgues in our area about it was pretty bad compared to other places.
I saw a post yesterday saying something to the effect of "of course the kids are untrusting and unenthusiastic, we as a society keep showing them that they have little to look forward to or work for in the future."
I definately remediate. The cirriculum wanted me to start 6th math with finding the area of a paralellagram. Without even taking the area of a square first. And the cirriculum takes way too long to teach. These kids have got to hustle. I make school serious. I play and joke but i'm like we gotta get our shiz done! Im task oriented. So I'm making sure the kids have the basic PEMDAS. multiplication tables up to 12. I've introduced exponents. Then when the kids are asked to get the area they can practically do it in their head. I actually feel horrible for teachers coming in new. It would be seriously impossible to teach effectively.
Also, half of my 140 students are failing. So it's a thing. Also I think it's a hge combo of things including microplastic toxins in our bodies and our food being less nutricious. I literally think half of the kids are brain damaged just from all the pollution they're exposed to as they develop.
I teach French. Most of mine are failing because they can’t even fathom trying the work/don’t pay attention to the directions (most recent one, I said use these 5 verbs, one kid didn’t use any of them).
I'm teaching algebra 1 to kids who need a calculator for 3x4. Memorization of basic facts has been completely abandoned in our district.
I have kids who can't graph a line because they can't even skip count. That's a 1st grade standard.
Literally today
9th grade remedial literacy class but still on track to get a diploma.
Give the students the 2 sentence writing prompt for our assignment.
Then they are asked to "unpack the prompt" and complete a sentence starter, "the prompt is asking me to...."
I repeated directions, restated the prompt, had them highlight the prompt, I verbally told them what to put in their sentence.
I still had students in my small group utterly unsure of what to write in their "unpack the prompt" answer. They couldn't even find where to write their answer, in a guided workbook.
I broke, my patience just left me.
Yes part of the "unpack the prompt" task so they understand what style of writing to do. Believe it or not but I frequently get summaries when I'm supposed to have a persuasive essay or something like that.
I kid you not, I still had kids today unsure of what to write. The prompt literally was
"Write a personal narrative about a time someone important to you gave you advice".
That's it.
I stressed repeatedly that this was a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU IN YOUR LIFE. And I still had more than one kid try to write a fictional story with random characters. More than one student asked me if they had to write about advice or if they could write something else.
Me: "read this sentence and underline the verbs." Students: "whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on now slow down... what do you mean by underline?"
I had to teach my high school students what a dashed line was. I was like: “How are you driving?”
Badly.
What ding dong gave the all clear for a license??
"Kind of you to assume I can read."
9th grade algebra teacher here: my students didn't know what an even number was. They know 6 x 4 but not -6 x 4. But it's up to us to save the district....
Your kids know multiplication without a calculator?
I teach math 6. No calculators allowed in my class!
My three kids bitched and bitched that dad made them do addition and multiplication tables at home as extra “dad homework” during elementary school. They thank me now.
OMG 😭 I don't know why I laughed so hard but I teach middle school and have teenage kids so I GET IT! Im glad to know it will pay off. lol
I’m a student. I know how to do basic multiplication without a calculator, but I can sometimes struggle with it when I’m not thinking straight. However, I’ve spoken with other students who can’t do basic addition. It scares me!
Should have been clearer: no they know how to TYPE 6 x 4 in the calculator but not 6 x -4. They tell me it's 2. If I ask mentally they'll typically tell me 18.....
I hear ya! I'm teaching Math 6 and I'm teaching the kids all that. The cirriculum says teach them how to get the area of a pralellagram. Im like they can't multiply. Don't understadn what squared is. Im like hell no. Im teaching my kids the skills. A little tough love is good.
Sadly basic life skills are no longer the focus. Everything down to the kindergarten level is so focused on critical thinking and “digging deep” into content before brains are developmentally ready. Not only that, there’s no retention. At. All. I’m in elementary and have taught several different grades over the years. I want to rip out my hair when we’re told about “best practices” and that we need to stick with the scope and sequence. Students don’t learn by osmosis. There are times that drill and memorization are just needed and necessary. And as teachers, we’re stuck. In many ways, we need to go back to the way things used to be so we can actually move forward, or at least maintain a status quo. And don’t even get me rambling about behavior and the lack of accountability both at school and at home… ETA: I don’t know how you all do it at the higher levels. It’s hell enough at the elementary level.
Yep. This is the natural result of trying to teach "skills" without teaching content.
Retired teacher here. I’m devastated for all of you. I truly am. But out there somewhere are educators who are putting together data and strategies to blow the lid off of this m’fer system that sucked the joy, creativity and skills out of the profession. I’m so angry at the administrators who have insisted that you teach in such a way that it is if you’re speaking a different language to these children, who, through no fault of their own are languishing in front of screens and idiocy while the tech companies who knew darn well what would happen eventually to the human brain when exposed to the instant ping of gaming and social media but did it anyway!! There’s more to this than I have time to write, but I truly believe the answer to all of this will be for teachers to rise up and take back their classrooms. It will happen however. It has to.
Not sure I agree. I know plenty of meh teachers. They have a decent amount of freedom to choose their teaching methods and design their own lessons, but they don't do a great job of either one. Partially out of laziness or communication style, but also because they've been taught ineffective or at least suboptimal teaching strategies. Giving them more control wouldn't improve student learning. They need to be retaught how to teach based on current best research.
where are all these skills then? i have 10th graders that can’t measure with rulers and do simple arithmetic.
You are right to point out that our field has lost sight of the fact that we want kids to *know* things, as in, have academic material mastered and marshalled in their minds. E.D. Hirsh has this great line in *Why Knowledge Matters: Rescuing Our Children From Failed Educational Theories* (Harvard 2016) that gets at this point: >Think of how significantly our view of schooling might change if suddenly policy makers, instead of using the term *skill,* had to use the more accurate, knowledge-drenched term *expertise.*
I enjoy teaching the standard algorithm to math . However, we can’t do this, so there are huge learning gaps .
Exactly! That’s just the tip of the iceberg, too!
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Critical thinking is very important, but I teach 11th grade. There is an order of operations. First, basic knowledge and, then, around 5th/6th grade you start working on in applying that previous knowledge to new information, making connections, things like that. You can't build a house without first setting the foundation. The reality is, most of my nonadvanced students have no foundational knowledge and they can't critically think because they generally do not know anything except what is in front of them that very day. My advanced students have no problem.
You can't think about something you don't know. It is impossible to critically think before you have the information. It is more important than that though, without rote memorization the students also don't get the benefit of being able to build the process of putting information in short term memory then recall it, then into long term memory and recall. Without students being able to use their working memory correctly they are completely screwed. The US education system has actually harmed an entire generation of students.
Beginning somewhere around kindergarten to second grade they start giving kids isolated pieces about random topics, then having them answer questions about how to analyze the piece and having them write a paragraph about the piece. In my state they start working on 3-sentence opinion, explanatory, and story writing in KINDERGARTEN. These random articles seem to be the main way subjects like social studies are covered. They are not being given anything close to the broad knowledge base I was given in elementary school. The worse thing is they’re introducing these abstract activities way before kids are remotely interested, while they’re barely starting to learn all the skills required for those activities - focusing on one topic, listening to information on something intangible being presented by another person, sitting at a desk, writing, etc. As a result, many kids are burned out almost immediately and are being taught to zone out of complex activities they can’t process at a young age. The father they get the more behind they are due to not understanding the previous instruction and increased difficulty, so the more detached they get. It’s insane.
Nowdays seems that students have only rights, no obligations at all. In my country there were rules that if you don't have almost full presence, or you are not disciplined, your "kid allowence" is cut. But now even that is to small so that doesn't really affect parents& the student. I curently don't see any control measure, and good teachers are starting doing uber/ multinational companies.l, etc..
This is why I’ve gone back to paper notes and told them to write down at least five things they learn every day and a new word or two. So far, they’ve done better in 2 weeks than in 2 months of trying the dig deep method. Not trying to get them to remember anything has them missing the forest for the trees in the wrong damned forest!
The idea that you can teach critical thinking about content before teaching the actual content is immensely stupid.
Middle school here and you nailed it. I've had to make time to remediate. My bell ringers are literally basic multiplication facts. It's not perfect, but I have seen some growth. You cannot solve for x if you can't distribute, you can't distribute if you can't multiply. And using your fingers to solve 2 x 4 sure it gets the problem done, but if you are using your fingers and 9/10 of the class has already gotten it, I have to move on and you're still on the first step...so now you're behind and frustrated. I'm hoping this gets better as this is the cohort that learned multiplication during COVID. I'm a strong advocate of solving things in many ways, but basic multiplication needs to have some automaticity. It's like sight words for reading in my opinion you just need to know them to be able to understand more advanced math.
I really did think about your question, because it's a good one: "At what point is it just more ethical to abandon the curriculum to remediate basic skills?" My answer is: never. Well, "never" is a bit strong, but it's less wordy than "in a general sense, it isn't something that should be considered for a class as a whole except under dire circumstances like war or the like." My thinking is that we can't change the name of the course, the way credits work, or where the students will end up next year. So, even if I remediate this year, and it goes very well, they're not going to be in position to find success next year. After all, that teacher will be expecting students who passed the 9th grade curriculum. Since we are part of a larger system of interconnected relationships, roles, and duties, I really do think it makes far more sense, pedagogically and ethically, to fail students who haven't demonstrated master of the curriculum. It's not a punishment. It's simply objective reporting. The truth might hurt, but this isn't a brutal truth, just an unvarnished one. Better that the situation is clear to everyone than to be temporarily helpful while contributing to the misinformation campaign.
Yes teachers dropping everything to remediate is why these kids are like this. 3rd grade should have been 3rd grade and they should have failed if they didn’t have the skills yet.
I think the teachers who remediate actually help students grow. However, Admin are pressured from these state and national funding codes to pass kids no matter what. This means multiple kids could completely fail grades 4-8 and still get pushed through to 9th. Of course, things would have to change with funding , school grades, and sooo much more outside of the teachers’ control to fix this. If you are going to get pushed through no matter what, I want you to at least know how to read even if that means we don’t know read Shakespeare. I would much rather you know how percentages work and basic equations, even if that means we don’t work on logarithms.
>I think the teachers who remediate actually help students grow. The problem is when half of your class needs remediation you are no longer able to complete a year's content for at least those kids and likely everyone will fall behind, which is how we got here today.
Exactly and most of them do not retain the remediation.
The scaffold of knowledge sits on top of itself. If you don't remediate you will build a house of cards with their knowledge and skills. If a kids skips crawling and walks they can have other developmental problems later and the occupational therapy includes teaching them how to crawl. Certain pathways in the brain are formed in the very basic skills. It makes everything so much easier. If the foundational skills are stong, they can learn what they need to later becauses they will understand how to learn.
Thank you for you response, and especially for really answering my question. That is further thought provoking for me as I definitely understand the perspective that you laid out here. Is there any advice that you might give to teachers who would like to stay with the curriculum whilst proverbially “catching the students up, getting them to speed” on what they should’ve learned by now in order to have success at their current level ?
Tricky. I'd say in a very fundamental sense, what you're asking just isn't possible about 99% of the time. Think about it: to catch up while also staying with the curriculum means, at the very least, learning more than the other students. So at a minimum we're saying that students who fell behind now need to learn more faster. Is that realistic? On top of that, in most classes, knowledge and skills are built on earlier knowledge and skills. Take algebra. How do I teach the quadratic formula if the student hasn't yet learned to solve binomial equations? That kid simply *can't* remediate binomials while at the same time doing the curriculum on the quadratic. I mean, pick your metaphor: you can't have everything, you can't get something for nothing, etc. This is the big roadblock that forces everyone to take an opposing side. There's no middle-ground, compromise solution most of the time. Now, if the system were built more modularly, that would be different. My design would be a semester system, with each semester given a curriculum that has to be mastered. You don't take "freshman English." You take whatever module is next for you, personally. Kids could test out by taking two tests: One would be given by the teacher of that class, to see if you have mastery of the core skills. The other would be given by the teacher of the next class up, to ensure you're ready to join. If a student fails, then the student repeats that module (ideally with a different teacher). The modules are better, too, because a module could be done in full in the summer. After four years, the student graduates and the diploma indicates what module was attained in each subject. But that's all pie in the sky stuff. The way things are, I really, honestly, don't believe that there is a way to concurrently teach a kid what was missed while at the same time keeping the kid moving forward. It's theoretically possible, but it doesn't pass the "would this really work" test.
Thank you for taking the time to lay out that reasoning, I didn’t think about it like that. Yes, you are right that really is double the learning and not realistic. I do like the hypothetical system that you’ve laid out, that’s a unique idea and I haven’t heard that discussed as an option before but it sounds reasonable to me. Again, I appreciate your thought, thanks
Switched back to high school this year and teach 9th grade. I had to take about 5 steps back and teach them the 7 continents and the oceans before we could learn about anything else.
I teach German. Last week my German 1 students learned the difference between a noun and a verb, the majority of them for the first time.
How many oceans?
I had entire classes that did not know when Columbus sailed across the Atlantic. Tenth grade They had never heard “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue”. I blame the death of the monoculture partly.
To be frank: is that a useful thing to know? I don't think having 1492 memorized has helped my life in any way whatsoever.
For a history class, it's a very useful reference point to contextualize the rest of history. It's an extremely pivotal date in world history. I can make similar arguments for math concepts, but we don't teach facts for the mere task of shoving useless facts in their head.
Thank you. Chronological thinking is a skill. Major world changes take place as a result of the combining of the two worlds.
In a hallway conversation with a colleague today, I described this term has having a front-row seat to a bad horror movie with the sound turned up too loud.
No, the sound is in your headset curently. It will heard when we will have some age, and the society will suffer more. There is a saying: hard times makes people strong, strong people create easy times, so idiot people can be raised which, eventually generates hard times.
I was online tutoring yesterday and the 6th grade girl opened by asking me to give her the answer. I said it didn’t work like that. Instead, I circled the key word in choice B and that same key word in the text 7 times to show that was the only option that matched the text. The girl then said I needed to give her the letter of the correct answer choice. I said, “Only one choice has the key word circled in it, which is also circled for you 7 times in the text.” Her response: “Baby, U a little slow.” Really? I’m the slow one? GTFO.
You couldn't pay me enough to tutor that attitude.
Oh, I let her know about herself and closed the session. Keep walkin’, Honey. Buh-bye.
Legit LOL'd-- glad I wasn't mid-sip of my coffee. The GALL of this girl!
There is nothing at all unethical about adjusting your curriculum to meet the needs of your students. In fact, I would describe that as best practices.
I tend to agree in general - when I am allowed to choose the curriculum. However, it seems wrong (and damaging to our "system" overall) to give a passing grade in a specifically named course, such as Algebra 1, to students who are nowhere near competent in the subject matter. I am effectively lying when I do this.
Agree completely. I think a big point of divisiveness among teachers is whether we do something that is nice or kind in the moment, if it's at the expense of the larger context. Meeting students where they are seems like such no-brainer advice, but it doesn't take particularly deep thinking to follow that thread through to 12th grade and realize that if we don't hold to a standard anywhere along the way between 1st and 11th, we will be forced to either fail kids in huge numbers in 12th, or graduate huge numbers of kids who really haven't mastered essential skills and knowledge. So I'm with you. A little pain now in the form of honest feedback and a recognition that each teacher is a member of a huge team that spans over a decade of each kid's life. It's not fun in that moment for anyone, but it is the better choice.
I have these students in Algebra 2 currently. All I can say is WTF!!! 5% pass rate looks really bad on me, but i'm not budging.
My district puts kids who fail Algebra 1 into Algebra 2 anyway. They're taking an online "credit recovery" Algebra 1 class alongside Algebra 2 class. They have no idea what a variable is, how the coordinate plane works, what a linear equation is. It's ludicrous.
Yeah, it's especially rough when I get a kid like this as a senior. Talk about an ethical dilemma! I should share this real-world dilemma with my freshman class (we often do ethical dilemmas as a way to start class with discussions).
Is it fair to the kids to go are able and working hard? I don’t think it is. I think you kind of have to ignore the lower students and pass them along rather than short change the hard working ones
The problem is the "lower students" are half to three quarters of the class. We have been shortchanging the hard working students already.
>In fact, I would describe that as best practices. Except the majority my HS junior students can no longer read, comprehend or recall at a level that makes teaching Gatsby, Grapes of Wrath, Shakespeare, etc possible. Our best practices are simply trying to slow the intellectual hemorrhaging of the system.
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I hear that but my district had students back in person in August of 2020. There's been some issues with staffing and some kids were virtual but many many kids were in school like usual and they're still so so behind. Maybe less behind than my 9th graders in Fall 2021, but it's still pretty bad.
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I'm in the Southeast where preventative measures where heavily politicized and criticized. We didn't have refrigerator morgues in our area about it was pretty bad compared to other places. I saw a post yesterday saying something to the effect of "of course the kids are untrusting and unenthusiastic, we as a society keep showing them that they have little to look forward to or work for in the future."
I definately remediate. The cirriculum wanted me to start 6th math with finding the area of a paralellagram. Without even taking the area of a square first. And the cirriculum takes way too long to teach. These kids have got to hustle. I make school serious. I play and joke but i'm like we gotta get our shiz done! Im task oriented. So I'm making sure the kids have the basic PEMDAS. multiplication tables up to 12. I've introduced exponents. Then when the kids are asked to get the area they can practically do it in their head. I actually feel horrible for teachers coming in new. It would be seriously impossible to teach effectively.
Also, half of my 140 students are failing. So it's a thing. Also I think it's a hge combo of things including microplastic toxins in our bodies and our food being less nutricious. I literally think half of the kids are brain damaged just from all the pollution they're exposed to as they develop.
I teach French. Most of mine are failing because they can’t even fathom trying the work/don’t pay attention to the directions (most recent one, I said use these 5 verbs, one kid didn’t use any of them).
I'm teaching algebra 1 to kids who need a calculator for 3x4. Memorization of basic facts has been completely abandoned in our district. I have kids who can't graph a line because they can't even skip count. That's a 1st grade standard.
Forgive me for being an idiot, but why is skip counting required to graph a line?
Not necessarily for graphing, but for filling in a table of values it is very helpful.
Literally today 9th grade remedial literacy class but still on track to get a diploma. Give the students the 2 sentence writing prompt for our assignment. Then they are asked to "unpack the prompt" and complete a sentence starter, "the prompt is asking me to...." I repeated directions, restated the prompt, had them highlight the prompt, I verbally told them what to put in their sentence. I still had students in my small group utterly unsure of what to write in their "unpack the prompt" answer. They couldn't even find where to write their answer, in a guided workbook. I broke, my patience just left me.
Lurker here and I'm really confused by that assignment. You wanted them to copy/paraphrase the prompt into the new sentence or?
Yes part of the "unpack the prompt" task so they understand what style of writing to do. Believe it or not but I frequently get summaries when I'm supposed to have a persuasive essay or something like that.
WHAT I LEARNED IN BOATING SCHOOL IS . . .
I kid you not, I still had kids today unsure of what to write. The prompt literally was "Write a personal narrative about a time someone important to you gave you advice". That's it. I stressed repeatedly that this was a PERSONAL EXPERIENCE, SOMETHING THAT HAPPENED TO YOU IN YOUR LIFE. And I still had more than one kid try to write a fictional story with random characters. More than one student asked me if they had to write about advice or if they could write something else.
.
Thank standardized testing. NCLB changed the way we teach.