A while back I came across an interesting article that a good friend in Bay City, Michigan posted on his Facebook page. I'll call my friend CGfromBC to be consistent with not using real names and causing anyone any issues. The article was about teaching and the amount of time a scholar spends in a classroom. I'm not sure what the length of a school year is in Bay City so I recalculated the numbers based on the length of the Indiana school year. For those outside the state of Indiana our school year lasts 180 days or 4,320 hours. Of those 4,320 hours, a scholar sits in our classroom for 810 hours with Gnu and spends 3,510 hours at home with their parental unit. As I thought about these numbers what struck me as most interesting is that Gnu only has 810 hours to prepare a scholar to advance academically to the next grade level.
Before I go any farther I have to remind you of something. I do not have a teaching degree or license, I am not a member of a teachers union, I am certainly not a pointy headed intellectual, and I can tell you with no uncertainty that I am not one of the lowest life forms, a politician. What I am is an almost sixty six year old guy that has spent the past three school years with a view from the back of a classroom and I continue to be concerned about what I see and hear.
This is what I see. A dedicated teacher that only has 810 hours to advance the academic level of a scholar. I also see this. Our school year is broken up into four quarters and at the end of each quarter Gnu prepares the report cards. I don't have any input in the grading process but I do get to see the report cards before she hands them out. I suppose if I saw something unusual I could question it but so far that hasn't happened. Alright, time to play a little game. As a reminder, the number of scholars in my classroom had a low of four and a high of eight during the school year. Knowing this, how many times do you think a parental unit expressed an interest in their scholar's report card? While you are thinking I'm going to play the Jeopardy song that you hear during the final Jeopardy question. That will give you thirty seconds to make your best educated guess. Times up, and your final Jeopardy answer is......
Once! During one grading period Yo!'s parental unit wanted to know why his grades were so low. Gnu's response was pretty simple, he doesn't do any work. Throughout the year, as soon as an academic period would begin, he'd start whining and complaining that the work is too hard. There were even incidents where he would get up and walk out of the classroom rather than do the work. Although the official answer to the Jeopardy question is once, Uh-Uh-Uh's parental unit once asked why her scholar didn't receive any academic awards. Again, Gnu's response was simple, because she missed too much school. After Uh-Uh-Uh's parental unit asked this question I checked our attendance records. Counting excused and unexcused absences plus being tardy Uh-Uh-Uh was either absent or tardy for thirty four percent of the school days completed at the time I did the analysis. So many of our scholars are products of P.P.P. that I don't defend their parental units very often but I will for just a little bit. For some reason our scholars don't like showing their parental units their report cards. It's fairly common that our scholars will cram their report card into the back of their desk, in the back of their cubby (locker), or down in the bottom of their back pack. Why they do this is an unknown because they all do the academics and their grades, with the exception of Yo!'s, are decent. So why do the parental units show so little interest in their scholars grades? I guess God only knows and that is frustrating because sitting down and reviewing a scholar's report card is the best time to get an understanding of where your scholar is succeeding or failing in the classroom and then put a plan in place to build on their successes and address their failures. Sadly, that doesn't happen. Even sadder, this lack of parental unit involvement can negatively impact the future of a lot of fine educators when their scholar fails academically.
This is what I hear. The state of Indiana is ranked somewhere between fortieth and fiftieth nationally when it comes to education and this is the result of teachers who are failing to perform at an acceptable level. Like all teachers Gnu will go through an evaluation process as we approach the end of the year. Given the solid academic year that we've had I can't image there will be any "needs improvement" boxes checked on her evaluation. If there are then the person doing the evaluation needs to spend a little bit more time in our classroom during the observation period. Even though Gnu, in my opinion, excelled this year there is still a concern about how she will be evaluated by my school corporation and other pointy headed intellections who have never stepped foot into our classroom. You see, our scholars did poorly on the state mandated IRead3 and ISTEP tests and when that happens eyebrows are raised and their is the potential that someone will questions Gnu's abilities. Yes, that's absurd but that is also the reality of being a school teacher.
This is what I'd really like to hear. On the local, state and national level, elections are slowly approaching. As the elections approach politicians and the pointy headed intellections that spoon feed them the information that they think the populace wants to hear will at some point address Indiana's dismal education record. When they start doing that, sitting right square in the middle of the bulls eye will be the classroom teacher and probably the public school system. When this starts to happen I wish some citizen or better yet several thousand citizens will stand up and say, "Mr. Politician, the scholars in our state only spend nine percent of an entire calendar year in a classroom so why do you solely blame the teachers and schools for their academic failure?"
I'm once again sitting on the screened in porch on the back of my house. Their are a pair of mourning doves in my backyard that built a nest in a blue spruce. They are steadily flying to and from the nest feeding their young. Sitting in a pine tree about fifteen to twenty feet from me is a sharped shinned hawk eyeing lunch. I'm about to interrupt his lunch plans. Thanks for continuing to ready my blog. I'm out.
PS - In case you forgot, P.P.P. means piss poor parenting.
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