Question for all board members/moderators

[NeverWanderer]

I get exactly what you're saying. I'm currently reading a book called [U]Write Beside Them.[U] It's all about not only assigning writing to your students buy showing them that I'm a writer as well. It promotes going through the entire writing process with the students and there are a ton of different techniques--quick writes, story boards, diagrams, comics, poems... all stuff to build and turn into great pieces of writing. I'm really pumped for next year.

My favorite thing to do with students is read poetry. We'll read the poem silently and then someone will read it out loud. We talk about what we liked and didn't like about it. Things always get personal, which is good, because the kids and create our interpretations and they always deal with personal experience. It's great learning, unfortunately the 5 minute activity can easily go into 20.

See, if there were more open discussions like that in my English classes, I would have probably taken to poetry a lot sooner.

Is there a specific curiculum from the board of ed. that you HAVE to abide by and shape your lesson plan around? Key points that you have to touch on before the end of the year? Or do they just let you have free reign and trust you to know what your doing and not ask a bunch of comic geeks on a message board what to do?

Spoiler:

(I KEED! I KEED! )

[costello]

See, if there were more open discussions like that in my English classes, I would have probably taken to poetry a lot sooner.

Is there a specific curiculum from the board of ed. that you HAVE to abide by and shape your lesson plan around? Key points that you have to touch on before the end of the year? Or do they just let you have free reign and trust you to know what your doing and not ask a bunch of comic geeks on a message board what to do?

That's a loaded question. We have Grade Level Expectations handed down by the New Hampshire Board of Education. These are essentially state standards (those that'll be tested at a state level) and local standards (those the state trusts you to test yourself). As far as curriculum goes, I call all of the shots. It's great now, but trust me, six years ago I was shitting bricks. Waaay too much freedom for a newbie with no mentor.

Now the Language Arts teacher I'm taking the place of is being moved down to sixth grade. All I'll say is she presents herself very convincingly and in doing so has a great deal of power when it comes to getting her way. I'd love to say more but I'll leave it at that. So the problems I see arising are when she finds out what I'm teaching (I'm not going to get into how) and she doesn't approve of my methods. We're like worlds apart, but I already have my 7th / 8th grade team backing me, I'm not only writing lesson plans with goals, objectives, and assessments, but I'm also demonstrating how each unit I create focuses on the GLEs. So I plan to fight her tooth and nail if she tries to get in my way. She only has one year of experience more than me, but she's a very forceful, convincing person.

[SgtPepper]

That's a loaded question. We have Grade Level Expectations handed down by the New Hampshire Board of Education. These are essentially state standards (those that'll be tested at a state level) and local standards (those the state trusts you to test yourself). As far as curriculum goes, I call all of the shots. It's great now, but trust me, six years ago I was shitting bricks. Waaay too much freedom for a newbie with no mentor.

Now the Language Arts teacher I'm taking the place of is being moved down to sixth grade. All I'll say is she presents herself very convincingly and in doing so has a great deal of power when it comes to getting her way. I'd love to say more but I'll leave it at that. So the problems I see arising are when she finds out what I'm teaching (I'm not going to get into how) and she doesn't approve of my methods. We're like worlds apart, but I already have my 7th / 8th grade team backing me, I'm not only writing lesson plans with goals, objectives, and assessments, but I'm also demonstrating how each unit I create focuses on the GLEs. So I plan to fight her tooth and nail if she tries to get in my way. She only has one year of experience more than me, but she's a very forceful, convincing person.

How has No Child Left Behind affected the school you teach at?

In most cases I've found that it creates a Catch-22, since the lack of funding makes it harder for them to meet the standards.

Bad for them, but makes teaching Joseph Heller easier.

[costello]

How has No Child Left Behind affected the school you teach at?

In most cases I've found that it creates a Catch-22, since the lack of funding makes it harder for them to meet the standards.

Bad for them, but makes teaching Joseph Heller easier.

Our school is currently in need of improvement, but I have a theory. President Bush, or Bush II, Jr., whatever, was hawking a school voucher system when he was running for office. Basically you could take your taxpayer money and use it towards the school of your choice and send your child there to learn. The idea was you could send your child to the school of your choice regardless of where you live.

This never passed, but with the end result of No Child Left Behind it will, except schools get penalized in the process. See, a school needs to not pass a state exam in a certain area two years in a row to be in need of improvement. This is basically measured by the percentage of children who pass the test. Three years ago, when the kids took the test, a benchmark was made. I think I was at 86% for 7th / 8th grade reading. So now, the following year, 87% of my students had to pass the test in order to show growth in my teaching ability. Doesn't make sense, does it? We should be looking at the improvement of individual growth, not this. This is just silly. Anyway I think 93% of my students passed. Now, that year with 93% was a good year. Great kids. Great parents. Last year not so much. The kids were unmotivated and the parents didn't care. I don't remember the percentage. I think it was back down in the 80s. All I knew was there was no way I could compare the two groups of students. Now if the school remains in need of improvement for too long, parents get the vouchers and can send their children elsewhere. So he gets what he wanted.

But legislation is changing and the government wants to look at the individual students, not the... whatever the hell they're looking at now. So that's good, but the damage has already been done.