Don't Stop Telling My Story

Sunday, October 6, 2010

The scholars were in specials (art or gym) and with the exception of two adults, the classroom was empty.  "I can't get started on the blog.  Although I didn't believe you at the start of the school year when you told me this year would be worse than last year you were right, it is.  If I started writing the blog again it would be mostly negative so I stopped writing."  "Old man," she said to me, "don't stop telling my story."

In no particular order as it has been a while since my last blog post, here we go.

* M - male.  F - female

T4 has the scholars doing a writing assignment to start the day.  I can't recall the topic but the assignment included listing ten items using complete sentences.  I'm sitting at the hexagon (picnic table) in the middle of the classroom when I hear,  "Mr. Schultz, can you help me?"  "Sure," I say, "Have a seat."  "How can I help you?"  "I need help writing."  I looked at T4-M's paper and said, "You haven't written anything."  "I don't know what to write." "The teacher just told you less than five minutes ago what to write about" so I offered a suggestion to get him started.  The scholar starts writing.  He wrote, "Wen I."  "Stop, what is that word you just wrote?  "When, Mr. Schultz."  I corrected the spelling and the scholar continued.  Slowly T4-M progressed to sentence number eight when he ran out of time.  During this writing assignment I'm confident in saying that I had to correct T4-M's spelling on ninety percent of the words he wrote.  As I sat at the hexagon thinking about this scholar I started to get a little emotional.  This scholar was probably socially promoted dating back to PreK, he is on a path to academic failure, and I'm not sure what I can do to help get him off this path because he is so far behind.   

Changing T4-M's.  A timed math test is under way.  You have six minutes to answer either fifty-two (addition) or seventy-two (multiplication/division) problems.  In this case the scholar, T4-M, only has to answer fifty-two problems as he is doing the addition test.  When T4-M finished the test he walked over to me and handed me his test.  "Mr. Schultz, I've finished the test."  "How did you do?"  "I think I got them all correct."  I start checking his test, fifty-two addition problems that are at a first grade or maybe a second grade math level, and he answered all correctly.  Despite knowing this fourth grade scholar just successfully completed a first or second grade math test I made a big deal of it.  I stood up, told him he got them all correct, did I high five with him, he was all smiles, and I sat back down.

It is now a timed fifty-two problem subtraction test and it is the same T4-M as I mentioned above.  The timer rings as the six minutes are up.  The scholar placed his test on the hexagon, when everyone was finished with the test I picked them up, walked out into the hallway, and sat down at the half round table to grade them.  When I got to T4-M's first or second grade level subtraction test I see that he only managed to complete half of the problems and about a fourth of the ones the scholar answered were incorrect.  Simple, single digit subtraction problems, and this fourth grade scholar did not answer all of the problems and a fourth of what he answered were incorrect.  

T4 has been giving the scholars a timed multiplication/division test twice a week for over a month now.  They have to successfully multiply/divide numbers that include; zero, one, two, five, nine, and ten.  With the exception of a couple scholars the results are not good.  "Schultz, I need to change directions on multiplication/division as these scholars are not making any progress.  Take these new multiplication tests, make twenty-five copies of each and bring them back to me."  A few minutes later the copies are made, I'm back in the classroom, T4 takes the tests, finds the one she wants, and passes them out to the scholars.  She sets the timer for one minute and the scholars begin.  The timer rings, T4 collects the tests, hands them to me so I can grade them, and out into the hallway I go.  When I looked at the test I saw that the scholars were only doing multiplication problems that contain the number one.  It can't get much easier than that.  Three of the twenty-three scholar failed to complete the test.  One didn't even make it halfway threw the test. Several of the answers to a MULTIPLICATION problem were wrong because the scholars were ADDING not MULTIPLYING.  

Enough with the academic issues.  If I continued with academics I could write a book.  Let's switch to behavior issues.

This one will be short.  A former scholar, that I worked with from second through fourth grade,      T6-M, went into an anger release outburst and said the following, "I'm going home to get my AK-47 and come back to school and shoot this place up."  

T4, when doing academics, has options as to where she can sit while doing a lesson.  All of those options are off limits to the scholars unless they get her permission.  On this day a T4-M scholar decides that he is not going to do his assignment at his desk like everyone else.  He got up, walked across the room, and sat down in chair that is reserved for T4.  T4 sees him sitting at her chair and states, "Get out of my chair and sit at your desk."  The scholar totally ignores her.  "Get out of my chair."  Again, she is ignored.  Getting a little animated, "Get out of my chair and sit at your desk."  For the third time the scholar does not move and I'm now up.  "Get out of that chair."  The scholar gets up and starts moving but not to his desk.  He takes a seat on another chair that is reserved to T4.  

Occasionally T4 lets the scholars play some games during our math block.  Although the scholars think they are just games, these are games that are designed to improve critical thinking skills.  One of the games is Legos where you look at a picture and then, using the Legos, created what is on the picture.  One day, one of our fine T4-M scholars decided it was more important for him to stop doing what he was supposed to be doing, got up from his desk, walked over to where the Legos were stored and start playing with them.  T-4 sees him and says, "Put the Legos down and go back to your desk."  She is ignored.  "Put the Legos down."  Ignored.  "Put the Legos down right now and go back to your desk."  Three times she is ignored and guess who is now up and moving toward the scholar.

At what point did it become normal practice for a scholar to just totally ignore a teacher.  Who decided that there are no consequences for this completely defiant behavior.  I can guarantee you it was not a classroom teacher.  I'll bet money that is was someone who is in a leadership position, who sits in an office somewhere, doesn't have to put up with this crap, and when this matter is discussed with school leadership the response a teacher gets is you need to do a better job of classroom management.  This is not a classroom management problem.  This is a school corporation leadership problem created by individuals who think any corrective discipline opens the pipeline that leads to prison.  Let's get this straight.  The real pipeline to prison is social promotion and behavior issues and not discipline.  Until someone figures that out of the only pipeline that will open is teachers abandoning their profession because they didn't go into debt to didn't earn an undergraduate degree or a masters degree to put up with all of this behavior BS.

It's all negative, I'm getting agitated just writing about it and this is what is so frustrating about this school year.  I could easily quadruple the number of behavior issues above what I just talked about.  No teacher should have to put up with this crap especially the one that I've worked with for almost two years now.

Okay, a new subject.  Guess what?  We have a new scholar from Central America.  Any one care to venture a guess as to what challenges this new scholar will present to T4.  Surely this is a no brainer.  The scholar doesn't speak English.  According to OtherT-4, a language arts teacher, he knows about forty words of English.  Any one care to venture a guess as to how often someone in an overhead position will walk into the classroom to support T4 when it comes to teaching math to someone who doesn't speak English?  After approximately two weeks in the classroom, no one.

A final thought.  I wonder how much trouble I'd get in if I quietly started video streaming what goes on in this classroom so people will realize that I don't make this stuff up.