Time Article - What Teachers Hate about Parents (x-posted)

On Tue, 01 Mar 2005 05:01:05 GMT, Rowley
wrote:

toto wrote:

On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 12:02:46 GMT, Rowley
wrote:

While probably not on grade level - a teacher could read from
the book "Phantom Tollbooth", by Norton Juster. (one of my
favorite books)

http://www.eduplace.com/tview/pages/...on_Juster.html

Martin

That was the ONLY fiction book my ds loved.

Did he ever read the "A Wrinkle in Time" series, by Madeleine
L'Engle?

No. He really hated to read anything fiction and still does.

I'm one of those people who find it odd that other people don't
like to read.

I was talking to him the other night about this. Note: he was born in
1971 and I was not knowledgeable back then about learning problems.
He was taught to read using phonics. He still reads extremely slowly
he says because he has to sound out each word in his head even now.
He thinks that in his case, it would have been better to learn by
using sight-words and learning entire words although that would have
meant using more memory to read. I am thinking that perhaps he had
some undiagnosed problem that could have been addressed, but I
don't know if they would address this with adults if he wanted to look
into something to help him read better now.

Note here that he never had bad grades and always managed to do
the required work and no one ever caught on that his dislike had to
do with struggling with reading.

Martin


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

In article ,
Chookie wrote:

There is at least one education guru (can't remember who) who recommends
not teaching kids to read until they are 10. He maintains that MOST
kids will pick it up organically if they are read to and exposed to the
written language a lot -- that they will learn written language the same
way they learned spoken language

Bah! Humbug! This implies that reading is an innate skill, like walking or
talking. It isn't; it's no more innate than driving a car is.

As a corollary I offer the suggestion that dyslexia might actually be a
normal
variation in human ability, just like my own lack of coordination.

-- but that the few who don't aren't
ready for the formalized type of "teaching reading" until they are that
age.

I'd agree that for those who find reading difficult, it might be put off for
a
few years without ill effect (apart from the adjustments required to other
parts of the curriculum). OTOH if a child is teachign himself to read
earlier, I don't see any reason to withhold that skill from him.


Actually, that's the point: not that children should be *withheld* from
reading, but that they should be allowed to learn to read organically.
That is, that if children are simply exposed to the written language,
and if you follow their lead in answering questions, most WILL 'teach
themselves' to read at their own pace: some when they are 3, others
when they are 8 or 9. There is absolutely NO intent to prevent children
from reading as soon as they are ready. His position is that it is
something that should be "taught" as a required subject only when kids
do not learn on their own by the age of 10. Think of it like speech
therapy. There are children who learn to talk well before they are 1.
There are others who don't learn to talk until they are 3. Those who
aren't talking well (or meeting certain guidlines) by a specific age are
recommended for speech therapy. However, those who are at the later
side of "normal" do NOT need therapy. By the same token, this guy says,
kids who aren't yet reading by having just picked it up by the time they
are 5 or 6 don't need "reading therapy" (ie, teaching) any more than a 1
year old who isn't speaking well needs speech therapy.

I've had friends who used this approach in their home schooling, and it
has amazed me how well it works: some of their kids are reading at 5,
others at 7, some not until close to 10. The only one I knew who needed
to be "taught" to read was a boy who turned out to be severely dyslexic,
so the formal teaching really IS a sort of "reading therapy", giving him
tools to overcome his particular limitation.
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:

dragonlady wrote:

In article ,
Rosalie B. wrote:

In my
case I have a spell checker on my news reader, but it checks at the
end and not while I'm typing. The spell checkers on word processors
drive me crazy.

On most of the word processing programs I've used, you can turn that
feature off, so it doesn't check spelling as you go along. Instead, you
hit a button at the end to tell it to check the spelling.

What WP program are you using?

It depends on what computer I'm on. Yes I know I can turn the feature
off, but I'm not always on my own computer, and I hesitate to change
someone else's program. Sometimes they underline stuff just because
there's an extra space or something, and you don't know whether it's
that or something more important.

Ah, yes -- the back and forth with machines that aren't always yours to
manipulate. I, too, dislike the grammer checker that keeps underlining
for the incorrect number of spaces -- especially since I was taught to
use double spaces in some places the computer wants single spaces.

My other big problem was going back and forth between Mac's and PC's as
a touch typist: PC's have the raised dots on the "F" and "J", and the
Mac's used to have them on the "D" and "K". (Mac's seem to have
changed that to be compatable with PC's.) I'd type half a page, not
looking at the screen (because I was looking at the copy), and suddenly
realize I'd typed half a page of gibberish because my fingers had been
on the wrong home keys!

WP programs are almost all alike now anyway - not like in the old days
where you had control codes to learn. Now it's all click and drag. I
used to do temp WP work and they'd send me out to all the jobs where
they had non-standard programs because I'd beat the computer into
submission until it did what I wanted or it broke. I once got the
cursor attached to the tab/margin bar. They had to turn the computer
off to undo it.

That's impressive!

I, too, used to temp, and got sent out on jobs with non-standard stuff.
I couldn't always make it work -- but I wasn't afraid of the computers,
and would keep beating at them.

grandma Rosalie
--
Children won't care how much you know until they know how much you care

"toto" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 21:00:39 -0800, Rick Fey
wrote:

I'll get slammed for this, but I don't believe that content is that
critical at the elementary level, despite the trend to beef up academics
in kindergarten. I don't want to turn elementary schools into
departmentalized Junior Middle Schools, but that's the way it's going.

I agree with this to an extent.

I would like to see the specialists come to each classroom rather
than having the children move from room to room. This is somewhat
harder for the teachers, but *if* each classroom is equipped with
all the *things* that each teacher needs, then it can be done. When
I was in elementary school, our music teachers moved from class
to class, we did not go to the music room until 4th grade when we
might be taking an instrument. We did go to art or gym because
the classroom was specially equipped. This might also be good
for science if there was a specially equipped math-science room
though with all of the manipulatives and lab equipment.

Going room to room as a music teacher is the best way I know of to assure
that music is taught on a trivial level. You simply can't teach a good,
developmentally appropriate music program without room for movement and more
instruments than will fit on a cart. I have about $25,000 of equipment
specific to general music K-6 in my orff classroom.


It's hard to determine what works best. I think integrated curriculum
does work well, but only in the hands of someone who really teaches
the math in the context of the other lessons. It seems that most of
the time, writing and reading *are* integrated across the curriculum,
but math and science are not.


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits

Penny Gaines wrote:

Depressinly, one of my kid's newly published books talks about how
"when you are grown up there will be people living in space". It
sounded just like the books I read when I was growing up. And they
were wrong :-(.


Truly a bummer. I recall the excitement round the first moon landing.
If someone had told me then that as far as manned expeditions went, we
would get very little further than that...I'd not have believed them.

But then again, if someone had told me I'd have this computer in front
of me and be connected to the WWW, I wouldn't have believed that
either. Win some, lose some.

Rupa

"shinypenny" wrote in message
oups.com...

Seveigny wrote:
They work for me but I taught my youngest daughter a different
method--mind
maps or webs.
~cate

Please tell.
Gladly. Mind maps work nicely for those who are not strictly linear
thinkers. It promotes brainstorming and late additions don't mess up the
neat structure of an outline. The topic or main idea goes in a "bubble"
(circle) in the center of the paper. For example, the 1932 U.S.
presidential election. Branching off from the center, are the various
candidates (Hoover and Roosevelt). Branching off each candidate are the
issues--unemployment, homelessness, business failures, farm prices.
Branching off the issues are the philosophy of each candidate, then
branching off of that are the solutions offered by the candidates.
~Cate

"toto" wrote in message
...
On 28 Feb 2005 21:16:42 -0800, "shinypenny"
wrote:


Seveigny wrote:
They work for me but I taught my youngest daughter a different
method--mind
maps or webs.
~cate

Please tell.

jen

Here's a pdf file explaining topic webs

http://www.heckgrammar.kirklees.sch..../topicwebs.pdf

Note that there are other ways of organizing these.
I used them not for writing papers so much but for brainstorming
subthemes and ideas to use for the themes in teaching in a
preschool classroom. In that case, you can put the major topic
in the middle and simply branch out to different subtopics to
see where it will take you. With my preschool kids, we could
brainstorm and then decide what area the *kids* liked best
and might enjoy focussing on. Most themes are so broad
that narrowing them down is really helpful.
Thanks Dorothy. I use them for reading notes as well. During the first
quarter of the year all students in my classes have to create mind maps
(they call them bubbles). At the start of the 2nd quarter I give them a
choice of using traditional outlines or mind maps.
~Cate

"Nan" wrote in message
...
On Mon, 28 Feb 2005 18:27:17 -0800, "Seveigny"
scribbled:

An even lazier solution is to double the tax.
~Cate

That would only be 12% in Indiana.
Ah yes, I see the problem. Here in sunny California, the sales tax is at
least 8%.
~Cate

"Julnar" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 03:16:35 -0600, "Donna Metler"
wrote:

"Greegor" wrote in message
oups.com...
When is Time Magazine asking parents for their
answer to this belly aching from teachers?

"What PARENTS hate about TEACHERS?"

Uh, right now, teachers get blasted in almost any media outlet. You see,
when students don't perform at grade level on tests, regardless of how
they
were performing when they come into the room or school, the teacher is
blamed. And it's equal opportunity bellyaching. It gets very frustrating
to
hear how you're failing when you teach in a school (as I do), where a lot
of
kids have parents who have the mentality that "Welfare was good enough for
me" and have no interest in or support for their child's education. When
you
have a parent who locks her child out of the house after school until past
11:00 at night, every night in 6th grade, the problem isn't the teacher.


Read almost any article on www.susanohanian.org (all from other media
sources and archived). Or just spend a day or two volunteering in an inner
city school-then compare what you see to what the media says about that
school and it's teachers.

I agree with you that there is a lot of buck passing and that, FTMP,
the public blames the teachers for the widespread school crisis we are
said to be having. But I think it bears noting that education has
become so politicized, from the national level down to the individual
classroom, that teachers have effectively lost the power to grade
students strictly upon what they know.

Interesting choice of words "the crisis we are said to be having" While
there a problems in public education, I wonder about the whole crisis
mentality. However, I disagree with your contention- 90% of my student's
grades are based on what they know and are able to do. I do give points for
attendance but that is only 10% of their final grade.

Parents treat grades as an evaluation of how hard the teacher works
and/or how much the child is liked, and/or how the child behaves in
class. The public treats grades as a teacher performance evaluation.
As long as this bent of mind persists, I honestly don't see how or why
schools would or could change for the better. It suggests what I have
always suspected-- the public does not really want reform, and they
especially do not want to invest any power at all in PS teachers.

Your perspective and experience is different than mine. When parents
criticize my grading practices (which happens infrequently) they do not
speak of how hard I work, whether or not I like their child or how their
child behaves in class. Their criticism goes to the weighting of tests
(40%) or my refusal to accept late work. In my community, some of the folks
grade my performance based on how well my students do on the state tests.
This bothers me in so far that at least a third of my students refuse/fail
to do homework and about a fourth of them don't pay attention in class.
I think the public really does want reform but they believe there are simple
answers to complex problems. It's a wonderful aspect about Americans--they
are so optimistic that problems can be solved but they expect the solutions
to be easy. They don't want to invest power in anyone when it comes to
their children's education--they want to keep control. Those who don't have
children don't understand why they should care or contribute money.
~Cate

"Julnar" wrote in message
news
On Sat, 26 Feb 2005 22:55:41 GMT, Broken wrote:

If you present them in an educated adult's language, and
they lack the background knowledge to interpret them, though, you may
have problems with misunderstandings. So no, I don't think you "must"
remain neutral except perhaps when you are teaching a topic, & that
naturally involves teaching both sides of something.

My statement concerning nuetrality was intended to point out that some
teachers will offer up heavy criticism to a political party they might
disagree with, and pass that criticism onto students who might also
disagree or who might have an entirely different viewpoint.

I missed the original post. I can only tell you that criticizing a
political party based on one's own political beliefs is foolhardy. I'm a
dyed in the wool Democrat and a left leaning liberal. Every semester, three
or four students ask me about my political affiliations. It's pretty
funny--I've got a Rosy the Riveter poster, a series of posters celebrating
the accomplishments of immigrants, a poster listing the universal human
rights (as defined by the United Nations) yet students ask me if I'm a
Republican. (If they were critical thinkers, they should be able to work
this out. ) I never answer their questions. Sometimes I ask them why they
want to know, sometimes I tell them to come talk to me during the lunch
period.

I can remember only one teacher who ever did such a thing, and she was
a fool. Also I really don't know of anyone around me who does such
things.

Granted, the vast majority won't do this...however, for some teachers I
would suspect the temptation would be too great.

No, the temptation is not too great. I'm not at school to teach my students
about my political philosophy. I'm at school to teach my students U.S
History and Psychology. I''m at school to teach my students how to think.
I don't want them to think as I do, I want them to think.

You must not be a teacher, then. If you can bite your tongue and not
tell a kid he's an ambulatory hemorrhoid, believe me-- you can resist
telling some 12 year olds why you didn't vote for GW.
Julnar, that's just plain rude.
~Cate