Daily, or even weekly, deadlines are hard for me. So now I have a daily deadline -- I have to have a lesson plan every single day, along with regular test/quiz-making and grading, etc. -- and in my certification course, a weekly deadline that requires about 2 hours of reading and another couple of hours of writing. I'm not sure how it's getting done, but so far I've stayed just ahead of the oncoming train, so hopefully I can keep it up for another 75 days.
My principal called me "Captain F" in the faculty meeting yesterday -- apparently I have the highest failure rate of anyone in the school (49% of my kids received F's in the second quarter). He called me and 30 other teachers into his office earlier in the week for individual meetings to discuss the high failure rate (it looks bad to his bosses if a lot of kids fail), and I just laughed. I told him what I was doing this quarter to try to help kids do the work they needed to do in order to pass, but that if they're skipping class, coming unprepared, not listening or taking notes, not doing the homework and failing the tests, I wasn't planning to pass them.
Every kid also expects to be able to do something called "grade recovery," which is apparently the following plan: a) blow off all course work, classes, homework and effort for at least 6 of the 9 weeks, b) either don't take or fail miserably all exams during the quarter, c) skip the first few classes of the next quarter, then d) receive a "grade recovery" packet consisting of work they'll have to complete in order to improve their grade from D or F to C. The packet is expected to be short and easy. In the first quarter, I denied all requests for grade recovery, because I told them that grade recovery was for people who tried but for various reasons weren't able to pass the first time, not for people who made no effort but still wanted a good grade. This quarter, I've offered grade recovery to all who want it, largely because half of my students failed, and that's not good either.
But my grade recovery packet consists of every assignment we completed in the quarter, including a project on volume and surface area of polyhedra, and even if they complete that, they still don't get a C unless they pass a make-up end-of-quarter exam. They looked at me as if I had three heads when I explained the process to them. I have one student who had showed up twice this year -- once on the first day of school and once in mid-October -- and SHE wanted grade recovery.
Go re-read some of my early posts regarding the incredible lack of math skills my students have. There are, in my opinion, two reasons for that. The first is that our urban, low-income schools' "standard" class includes about 10 students who would not have been in the same schools as the "standard" kids 15 years ago, much less in the same classes. Are there benefits to reducing the minimum IQ required for mainstreaming and also including kids with "special needs" in standard classrooms? Probably. Certainly for those kids there are some benefits, although there are also ome negatives. But for the education of the rest of the students, it's an enormous drain. The in-class behavior, work ethic and motivation of ESE (Exceptional Student Education*) kids is often terrible, and it's usually contagious. Their inability to grasp concepts quickly means we spend at least 3 times as long on topics as I believe is warranted, which bores my good students and enables my mediocre ones to screw around and still eventually "get it" (contributing to my discipline problem).
The second reason for the incredibly low skill levels is that everyone is under pressure to increase the percentage of kids who graduate, and no one is under pressure to ensure they actually learn anything (except just enough to get a passing grade on the state exam). Middle schools send kids to high school who cannot add two integers together correctly, and are incapable of multiplying one fraction times a whole number, much less two fractions. So high schools dumb down the curriculum and then give passing grades to many, many students who can't even do the dumbed down work. We are encouraged, to the point of having one-on-one meetings with the principal, to improve our pass rate -- and we are never, ever encouraged, graded on or measured in any way with respect to ensuring they understand the course content. So it shouldn't be surprising that we pass kids who don't know anything. I'm appalled at how little the C and D students in my classes know -- the F students had to have been actively attempting to avoid learning anything, or else they would have accidentally picked up enough knowledge to pass the course.
So, while I want very much to get my pass rate up, and I'm really not proud of flunking half of my kids, I'm also not terribly concerned about it, as long as I'm doing the things I'm supposed to with respect to safety nets and second chances. I am. So I laughed when Mr. Principal called me "Captain F." He actually laughed, too, so I think I survived with my "good first year teacher" reputation intact.
All for now.
*This is presumably the outlet for the very gifted as well, but I've yet to see or hear of a gifted student getting any resource allocation from the ESE department.
