How I got here...
I would like to think that I am the teacher that I needed when I was in school. Right now I don't think that I am there yet, but I think that just by trying to is half the battle.
When I was a forth grade student I was placed in an SLD program because of difficulties I was having in math. At that time in Lake County this meant that I would just be taught only the very basics (1+1=2, 2-1= 1, etc.) at the beginning of each year and expected to be on grade level by the end of the year. Surprise, surprise no one ever accomplished this, so the next year we all would start over from the start. As you can imagine this tended to teach us that no matter how hard we tried we were going to fail. In our minds we were failing because we were not as smart as the other kids. We didn't realize that we were being set up to fail. All we saw was that everyone else got to advance we never would.
One definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes. For me that is exactly what school was, insanity. We were never taught other ways to do the problems, as a matter of fact we were actually not allowed to do things any other way than the standard. The teachers were not allowed to start the students off any were other than at the very basics. The rule was the student would start at the bottom and work through a series of worksheets and drills and once you did that you go to the next series of problems. The sheer volume of the work hampered advancement. The students could not test past any parts, they could not succeed. I had one good SLD teacher in 8th grade that finally told the school that the SLD program at the school was wasting the students time, because the teachers were not allowed to teach the students what they needed. She had all these crazy ideas like if the student knows how to do addition and subtraction but not multiplication then teach them to multiply, not continue to drill them on basic addition. She decided to ignore the curriculum and guidelines given to her and just teach each student as an individual and address their own unique needs allowing every one to progress at their own pace. The controversial idea seemed to be the progressing part. After all who did she think she was, a teacher. Eventually the school fired her for noncompliance. Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
So here I am trying to keep that from happening to any more students. Trying to be half the teacher Ms. Ginann was.
Thanks Ms. Ginann, you were right all along.
When I was a forth grade student I was placed in an SLD program because of difficulties I was having in math. At that time in Lake County this meant that I would just be taught only the very basics (1+1=2, 2-1= 1, etc.) at the beginning of each year and expected to be on grade level by the end of the year. Surprise, surprise no one ever accomplished this, so the next year we all would start over from the start. As you can imagine this tended to teach us that no matter how hard we tried we were going to fail. In our minds we were failing because we were not as smart as the other kids. We didn't realize that we were being set up to fail. All we saw was that everyone else got to advance we never would.
One definition of insanity is when you do the same thing over and over and expecting different outcomes. For me that is exactly what school was, insanity. We were never taught other ways to do the problems, as a matter of fact we were actually not allowed to do things any other way than the standard. The teachers were not allowed to start the students off any were other than at the very basics. The rule was the student would start at the bottom and work through a series of worksheets and drills and once you did that you go to the next series of problems. The sheer volume of the work hampered advancement. The students could not test past any parts, they could not succeed. I had one good SLD teacher in 8th grade that finally told the school that the SLD program at the school was wasting the students time, because the teachers were not allowed to teach the students what they needed. She had all these crazy ideas like if the student knows how to do addition and subtraction but not multiplication then teach them to multiply, not continue to drill them on basic addition. She decided to ignore the curriculum and guidelines given to her and just teach each student as an individual and address their own unique needs allowing every one to progress at their own pace. The controversial idea seemed to be the progressing part. After all who did she think she was, a teacher. Eventually the school fired her for noncompliance. Proof that no good deed goes unpunished.
So here I am trying to keep that from happening to any more students. Trying to be half the teacher Ms. Ginann was.
Thanks Ms. Ginann, you were right all along.
posted by rob @ Thursday, March 23, 2006
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