Talking with some more experienced co-workers today, one of them an occupational therapist, and the conversation mainly was centered around immigrant and refugee children, the lives they may have led before coming to Canada, or the lives their parents may have lead. One of the older workers commened that her son's biggest problem was a 'broken iPod', and how Kids These Days don't really know what hardship is.
But part of our jobs is to help ensure that a broken iPod is the biggest tragedy that our immigrant children ever have to deal with. I can sure see where the argument about our generation and generations after being 'soft', but I think I'd really, really rather my kids be soft, rather than 14 years old and unable to read or write at a 1st grade level cause they grew up in a refugee camp.
Giant Robots think that a newly arrived immigrant to Canada would think 'counter-culture' anti-materialists were stone-cold crazy.
Wednesday, November 22, 2006
Saturday, November 11, 2006
Lest we Forget...
Yes, it's another sentimental Rememberance Day post.
It's always been a very special day to me. My father was military, my grandfather was military, even I was military for a little while, back in the day. It's always been a very important day in our household, and to me it's always been the 2nd most important holiday of the year.
But for whatever reason, because it's falling on a Saturday this year, the EPSB has decided (unlike most other school boards in the province) not to give a day in lieu on Monday. Which means that, unlike most of you, I'll be back into work at 8 AM, teaching your kids just like any other day.
And yes, I grumped a bit about it. So did a lot of my fellow teachers. Cause it does suck a little bit. But then, just like in some cliched movie, something different happened, and I stopped complaining.
In my class are a significant number of children who are from countries at war. Most of them have no personal memories of the conflicts, but they've relatives that they'll never meet, relatives who never made it out of their countries, who died in the war. Some of them DO remember. They're young and innocent, they don't really understand, nor were they old enough to really remember the siblings they lost. But hearing a young girl tell you matter-of-factly about her little sister who died with a bullet in her heart...it brings it back to reality.
Be thankful. Remember those who weren't so lucky as us. I don't ever want to hear a story like that again.
It's always been a very special day to me. My father was military, my grandfather was military, even I was military for a little while, back in the day. It's always been a very important day in our household, and to me it's always been the 2nd most important holiday of the year.
But for whatever reason, because it's falling on a Saturday this year, the EPSB has decided (unlike most other school boards in the province) not to give a day in lieu on Monday. Which means that, unlike most of you, I'll be back into work at 8 AM, teaching your kids just like any other day.
And yes, I grumped a bit about it. So did a lot of my fellow teachers. Cause it does suck a little bit. But then, just like in some cliched movie, something different happened, and I stopped complaining.
In my class are a significant number of children who are from countries at war. Most of them have no personal memories of the conflicts, but they've relatives that they'll never meet, relatives who never made it out of their countries, who died in the war. Some of them DO remember. They're young and innocent, they don't really understand, nor were they old enough to really remember the siblings they lost. But hearing a young girl tell you matter-of-factly about her little sister who died with a bullet in her heart...it brings it back to reality.
Be thankful. Remember those who weren't so lucky as us. I don't ever want to hear a story like that again.
Wednesday, November 01, 2006
The state of education
You wanna know why your kids can't read? Cause their teachers don't have fucking TIME to teach them to.
Consider this classroom: 26 kids, grade 3. Big class, sure, but manageable. I've had bigger, I've had older, I've had more active. But let's look deeper, shall we?
1 of those kids is Opportunity...meaning they have an IQ of less than 70. No outside placement for that poor kid, they just have to struggle along in the main schedule. And no, we don't get money for an aide either.
1 kid who might be in a similar place...but they've never had testing, so we don't know. No extra money there either, BTW.
1 kid who we just DON'T KNOW what's going on there, cause noone in three years seems to have done any sort of testing. This despite the fact that they don't speak, hardly interact, and wear a diaper because they can't control/haven't learned how to use the toilet for bowel movements.
11 kids (not including any of the above) who are ESL of wildly varying degrees...anywhere from very minimally (speak native language with parents/guardians, but English everywhere else) to VERY second (or third or fourth or fifth) language.
Reading levels in the class vary anywhere between kindergarden and high Grade 3. Yet all of them are expected to be reading the same things. Ha!
And _then_ you start thinking about things like ADHD, FASD, or any of the other alphabet soup ideas. And that's not even considering the students who can't see the fucking whiteboard cause they've never had their eyes tested.
And then the myriad 'other' duties a teacher has somehow acquired in the course of time. Probably a good 30% of the teachers day is NOT direct or indirect instruction. And that's a day that starts at 7:30 and ends at 4:30 on a good day. (the kids are there for 2 hours less than that, minus another hour and a half for lunch and recess).
So why can't your kid read? Cause there aren't enough minutes in the day to deal with all the other shit you drop of at school along with them.
Giant Robots love kids, but hate the system.
Consider this classroom: 26 kids, grade 3. Big class, sure, but manageable. I've had bigger, I've had older, I've had more active. But let's look deeper, shall we?
1 of those kids is Opportunity...meaning they have an IQ of less than 70. No outside placement for that poor kid, they just have to struggle along in the main schedule. And no, we don't get money for an aide either.
1 kid who might be in a similar place...but they've never had testing, so we don't know. No extra money there either, BTW.
1 kid who we just DON'T KNOW what's going on there, cause noone in three years seems to have done any sort of testing. This despite the fact that they don't speak, hardly interact, and wear a diaper because they can't control/haven't learned how to use the toilet for bowel movements.
11 kids (not including any of the above) who are ESL of wildly varying degrees...anywhere from very minimally (speak native language with parents/guardians, but English everywhere else) to VERY second (or third or fourth or fifth) language.
Reading levels in the class vary anywhere between kindergarden and high Grade 3. Yet all of them are expected to be reading the same things. Ha!
And _then_ you start thinking about things like ADHD, FASD, or any of the other alphabet soup ideas. And that's not even considering the students who can't see the fucking whiteboard cause they've never had their eyes tested.
And then the myriad 'other' duties a teacher has somehow acquired in the course of time. Probably a good 30% of the teachers day is NOT direct or indirect instruction. And that's a day that starts at 7:30 and ends at 4:30 on a good day. (the kids are there for 2 hours less than that, minus another hour and a half for lunch and recess).
So why can't your kid read? Cause there aren't enough minutes in the day to deal with all the other shit you drop of at school along with them.
Giant Robots love kids, but hate the system.
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