I know everyone is posting about the readings, but honestly, i have yet to even get to them because i was home at a wedding this weekend. Anyway, my post is more about my experience in school last thursday...
Two things that majorly irritated me. Number one: Reynolds had school on Thursday during the flooding. Now yes, it does stink that we had to go in when everyone else had off, but that's not what bothered me. What bothered me was that the superintendent didn't close school and think of the safety of not only his students, but more so his teaching staff. Half of the teaching staff was not able to come to school on Thursday or show up on time because they had commutes. Many of them had to put up with closed routes, multiple different detours, and harrowing trips. What's the point of having a school day when you don't have ample teaching staff? Secondly, we had students slipping and falling all over the halls and outside in the puddles. I and my co-op were just very irritated.
Secondly: My students were supposed to work on laptops on Thursday because my co-op didnt have time in the morning to make her copies for the day (because she was late to school). We have a cart of thirty laptops in our classroom. Only about half of them would turn on...and then only about half of those actually connected to the internet or didn't shut down as soon as they started up. Our honors section is supposed to start research papers this week. How can they work on them if they don't even have proper equipment? Not to mention that these laptops seem older than my kids, and have numerous buttons missing on each one. My co-op also informed me that there's only ONE tech support person...for the entire district. That absolutely blew my mind that there was no one there who we could call to help us and get our class back on track.
I understand that urban schools are generally more poor and don't have as many resources as other schools...but it just really annoys me that these kids can't even have general access to technology that is now a standard part of every day life and should be standard in the classroom.
I feel your pain. We are handicapped to bring our students into the 21st century and to provide exciting, innovative tech based learning and exploring. And multiple genre research projects? As I said on my blog, the money being made in the testing arena should be used to buy technology for schools that cannot afford it. It's criminal to make huge profits off of stressing the system with standardized testing and not at least bring them up to speed with suburban schools. Couple this issue with our reading in "Subversive" and I'm ready to make picket signs and engage in civil disobedience!
ReplyDelete