Sounds sadly familiar

Maria Niles — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 11:30:07 -0500

During my elementary school years I ended up for a variety of quirky and pedestrian reasons changing schools nearly every year so I experienced many of the educational experiments of the 70's.

In the fourth grade we had open classrooms (self directed learning) so on the first day of class I tested out of reading and math for the year and other than a few weeks of science and social studies I spent the school year keeping a study journal and going to the library every day, checking out a book, reading it, returning it and repeating the process. I possibly learned more by all that reading but it was truly a heroic effort by my teacher to handle her classroom within such a ridiculous curriculum structure.

At a new school in fifth grade classes were structured with poorer testing students in upper grades paired with higher testing students from lower grades with the idea, at least in part, that the presence of higher testing kids would help the other students pull their scores up. But as Kalyn notes that difference can span far more than a single grade. My teacher and the aide had their hands full with teaching the below grade level sixth graders and just couldn't focus on the fifth graders who had reading and math skills at the junior high to high school level. We were pretty much on our own in a divided not collaborative classroom. I did get to make an awesome paper mache platypus though since we were all equal when it came to learning geography via the location of exotic animals.

I think Miguel's point is well taken - technology isn't make things better if the fundamental approach doesn't change.

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Great Post

Kalyn Denny — Sun, 16 Sep 2007 09:56:50 -0500

Great post. I can't speak for upper levels, but in K-6 education it's truly sad how the economic and political realities force us into teaching methods we know are not ideal. I teach third grade in Utah, with a class of 28. (Remember, they are 8 years old if you think that doesn't sound too bad.) I have four students who entered my class with a score of .5 on their last years reading CRT (No Child Left Behind testing.) That means their reading skills are below first grade level. I have other students who read at a junior high level. Even if I had a reasonable number of students, I couldn't possibly structure my classroom so it meets the needs of these two very diverse groups.

I will refrain from going into a full-on rant about how I can't possibly let the students direct their own learning (even the ones who are capable) because there will be some little obscure bits of information that are on the NCLB tests that they won't learn and my school will fail to make AYP (adequate yearly progress, which means in most states that the school must improve their scores 2% per year, no matter what the previous year's score was.) Sufficeth to say that the entire NCLB law is based on flawed logic and makes it a lot harder for us to provide a meaningful experience for the students.

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Sounds sadly familiar

Great Post