I'll try not to turn the remainder of this blog into a complete bitch-fest, so I'll keep it positive. (We have only 37 days left!!! How's *that* for positive?) Anyway, my friend Joe did, in fact, complete his blog entry about his perception of the school and public education. For your reading pleasure:
Today was interesting.
Maybeth treated me to an inside view of our public education system. In some ways, the classroom antics are the worst I've ever seen. I've never seen so many kids just not care, not try, and take advantage of a genuine teacher. Then again, I've never been in a classroom with ~30 kids that consists of both 4th AND 5th graders. Not to mention the arbitrary change in the year's lesson plans to teaching to a standardized test after the year has already started. Why don't we add the fact that this teacher is in her first year teaching?
Overall I'd say that Mb is doing a great job for being pulled in over 30 directions every day, all day long. Even with more experience, given her situation with the students, less than zero support from the administration, the general government education snafu, teaching to obtuse standardized tests, and general lack of resources I'd be hard pressed to expect more than a Pyrrhic victory, let alone any success whatsoever. The fact that Mb has achieved what she has in this situation so far is impressive to me.
Case in point on support from the administation:
As I write this one of the janitors comes in telling of a vacuum that just broke. The hose into the bag no longer has a latch, so it spontaneously removes itself during operation and spews crap all over. In reporting the situation our janitor friend is turned away with the boilerplate response: "There's no money for it in the budget."
So they're okay with not vacuuming. Interesting. Isn't it a telltale sign in the corporate world that the company is falling apart when they start looking to cut expenses by screwing the janitors? I don't really care how much money they have in the budget, that is the wrong response. Any functional administration, regardless of budget, would find a way to solve the problem for the janitor. In other words, the administration, if it were competent, would support its staff of teachers, janitors, lunch ladies, etc. instead of using some blanket excuse like "it's not in the budget."
On last anecdote. I once worked on a student project. We also had a restrictive budget. And yet somehow we were able to build the world's fastest electric landspeed car ever. The point is that where there is a will, there is a way. If the school needs a new vacuum I am sure you can get one donated, or solicit a local handyman to fix the broken bracket. Duct tape anyone?
Fortunately for me I got to work with a few smaller groups of good students. I tutored 2 in math and 3 in stoichiometry. The kids I worked with genuinely tried hard. Though if I had to make general comments on their performance, they had a hard time knowing where to start when attacking problems and they were very easily distracted.
For instance, when I was helping one girl with a math problem that involved the use of division. Her difficulty with that particular problem stemed from not conceptually understanding multiplication and division as repeated addition and subtraction, and then using the derived results such as multiplication tables in reverse. Hence her frustration started at the beginning of the problem when she didn't understand how to go about solving it. After she had a starting point it was a little difficult keeping her focused. Though, interestingly, after a few minutes of working on problems her attention and focus for the math became better than before.
She also had some trouble with identifying trends in data when presented in a table. For instance, if you had a function that increases by 2 every year she would have trouble identifying what the list of variables meant all together. For this I had her read the tables out to me in proper English sentences, then summarize what's happening in English. I think she was overwhelmed by the information at first, then couldn't remember the data long enough to see trends.
Wow... this has grown to be slightly epic for a blog post. I will finish with one last story.
As I write this it's now 2 days after the incident described above with the janitor. This morning at work I was in a meeting for 2.5 hours, for which I was needed for about 10 minutes. In my extreme boredom during the 2 hours and 20 minutes I wasn't needed, I noticed that what happened in the classroom is the same as what happens in meetings with too many people and a lack of structure. In both cases, people will act on their own initiative to fill the void of leadership, even if what they fill it with is off-topic comments, repeated commentary, or confusing comments. A room full of highly educated engineers acted the same as a room full of 4th/5th graders. In a strange way, I am not surprised. Then again, what does this say about people in general? What are the implications for business? For schools? Where's a social psychologist when I need'em...
