The Teacher Thread - Page 18

Thanks. this is essentially what I do. They choose the book, as long as the genre is historical fiction, history non-fiction, or about a current social issue kids face in their lives (just about every book in our classroom libraries is one of these). I call it a journal for lack of a better term, their response has no mandated structure to it. It can be notes, a response, pictures, and doesn't need to be done in a book. As far as how I assess it, they know (I told them) that I will never judge how they responded, as long as they did. I encourage them to try different things, act out skits, create ads, etc...and the only thing I grade is that they 1) have a book to read at all times, and 2) have some kind of response attempted. I don't know how much more choice I can give. Re; the group work, my whole class centers on it, and this is one of the few activities that thay do that are truly independent (plus maybe one class activity a week and their HW). Maybe I'll just ask them what they'd rather be doing and have them do it, but part of me is hanging on to that old school teacher mentality of "Jesus, I'm giving you a choice of a thousand things, and you're not doing any of them, now you're gonna have to do what I tell you." And will all this talk about choice and differentiation that we're hearing, we're forgetting the learners who need to be told what to do.

I think standardized testing in general isn't very helpful as conditions that students live in vary greatly from place to place. I do think they have value as there does need to be some sort of assessing how students can achieve and if anything, advanced tests like the Regents exams can do that, but they essentially eliminate many students who happen to be less fortunate. However, putting that fact aside, it does kind of become a good standardized test for "those who can".

Those of you who do teach in levels below HS, how do you deal with your co-workers?

As a man in an "elementary" setting, I get so frustrated with many of them. I feel they are very weak minded, don't question ANYTHING, and then bitch about the circumstances they find themselves in. Then you have the opposite, those who are so strong minded that they don't care what anyone tells them, they do what they feel is best, get reemed out when things don't work out, and then bitch about the circumstances they find themselves in. Even the men I work with. I wind up spending most of my time alone preparing instead of collaborating with these people because they drive me up a fucking wall. Its like there is no middle ground for them. There's also such underlying cut throat competition at staff meetings where if a teachers makes a suggestion that administration likes, that teacher is ostracized by his or her peers. There's also a sense of "my job is harder/more important than yours" where I work as well, which I know is due to the standardized testing and promotional criteria (have to pass Math and ELA) and in my school the two lead teachers in those subjects (and the entire grade's ELA staff) are not even certified in those areas. Is this something that is just in my school (I've worked in only one school for ten years - aside from summer school) or is it throughout?

Sorry, just needed to blow off a little steam and hopefully hear some useful tips on how to deal with it.