Today I lost my patience with a sped student, but then my cooperating teacher lost patience with me.
she was not able to write and do the writing thing
not able to do the math thing
nothing
just nothing
i said how much did the temperature go up
i handed her a calculator
nothing
just nothing
i said
now how do we find out how much difference between the temperatures? we need to subtract to get the difference...
nothing
i asked if she wanted to leave or if she was going to stay and finish the work
she stayed so...
ten minutes later and she's still sitting there so we tell her to leave and detached a page from the packet of work she'd been given.
then another student walks in and asks about the same problem. i showed her that she has her formula, she does not have one of the constants defined so i gave it to her freebie "specific heat of water is always 4148
but ...
nope.
the the teacher wanted to physically jump between us i could tell
she said "don't tell her that!" and i realized she wanted the kids to find this info on their own. like go to the book chapter. like read the whole chapter on their own.
why can't certain groups of kids be given the constant though? in a sci-math problem where there is this huge term "specific heat of water" <<<
just give them the definitions they need.
so i'm seeing all these weaknesses in the kids
in myself
in her teaching
in the system
today.
Where is that line between lazy and just unable? I have to know this as a teacher. i have to determine this and be on the watch all the time. Learned behaviors that i am supposed to snap to attention when i hear them and get those darn kids back to work. Sometimes maybe they should be allowed to be lazy. I don't know. Should I still yell at them?
Unfortunately this year my position isn't certified so I do not get to see kids' test scores or know their parents. I'm the paraprofessional and the professional is here giving me on-the-job tasks to do.
There are limits to the type of support to provide for each student. I also see holes in the instruction. I don't know if I'm supposed to be making them read or what but they do surprisingly little reading throughout the day. Even in the Language Arts class they can mostly opt out of physically translateing the text into language using their eyeballs and brains by just listening. what skills are being cultivated? what is the underlying curriculum here, implicit or not.
Asking them to take notes is a nightmare. They do not understand notes. I think they should be using Cornell Notes but again the teachers will just complain that they do not know how to take notes and then show them what to write. the modifications are not delivered at the level i feel they should be. the scaffolding is not happening as it should, it isn't built into the lessons (granted when i was a teacher in my own classroom it was difficult for me to differentiate the lessons. every child has different ways of doing an assignment no matter how flexible you are, sometimes they just are not ready for it. its still much the same. )
My next classroom I will differentiate the assignments and group the kids more. reduce my own suffering. i am a writing teacher first and foremost above being a reading teacher. i love literature though so it is fun for me to share texts with students but again, this snails pace of reading sucks all the fun out of books. kids need to have good experiences with books and not shitty drawn out assignments and debates and dissection of themes and symbolism.
