Some days here are bad days – stuff just goes wrong. In the fall when these days happened I would have a sick, sinking feeling in my heart, a short fuse, tears of frustration welling up, and when I got home and nice loud venting session. I have realized this semester that I have finally become able to distance myself emotionally from the problems that happen at school. I don't mean that I don't act on the problems or that I don't care – but I no longer get depressed or overly upset by this situations. This has been very good because Lord knows you aren't a better teacher when depressed and frustrated.
So this Monday in my first two periods of the day my students' Animal Reports were due. We had been working on these reports for two weeks solid in the library. I gave them a rubric, worksheets with prompts for research, and example report, and a sheet detailing EXACTLY what they needed to do to get an A. And did I mention that it only had to be two pages and have a drawing?
That may sound like I am not having them work hard, but please remember that the majority of my students (except 2 freakishly advanced students) read at about a 6th grade level, and write at maybe a 4th grade level. I'm not joking. So this report was at their level.
Most of them had all the research done, as well as their picture and all they had to do was take the information from their research outline into an essay format over the weekend, and then turn it in.
I got 11 out of 39 reports on time.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!
Thank God that I have become more stoic, because if this had been the fall I would have cried, thrown something at the kids, and probably quit. It is pretty upsetting to see just how apathetic these kids are to learning… anything… This semester I am more at peace with this reality, especially as it is the norm all over our school and the other high schools in the area. Instead of quitting I let them hand in the reports all week, just reminding them that they lost points every day and beating in the fact that I would fail them for the semester if they didn't give me something by the end of the week. For a bunch of my kids, something was what they did in class the week before, and couldn't even be bothered to attempt to write an essay. Forget that I said all week that they could come in at lunch and I would help them write it.
Luckily I am able to keep going without smashing my head against the wall, but my God these poor kids… This is why all of the WorldTeachers have some resentment towards the powers that be. Whatever the schools here are doing, in many cases it doesn't seem to be teaching. How can half the kids in on an island with a US Federally funded DOE get to senior year and not be able to write above 4th grade level? Where is the money going? What the hell are they doing in Elementary schools?
Oh yeah. According to friends in the elementary schools, not much.
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