SOAP BOX!!!

This week I have become very frustrated with my fellow teachers!! Don't get me wrong. I love my colleagues and even the colleague in particular who is the reason I am on my soap box is also AMAZING in so so so many ways. But I cannot believe some of the bais that she expressed this week. She is dumbing down the material because she assumes that they cannot use the textbook. I find it professionally insulting that she is dumbing down material and I find it personally insulting because she is teaching 8th grade, which means she is teaching my students from last year. Those are my students whom I love and adore. I think they are amazing but I also know that they can read a teacher and know how to get easy work.

First let me say that I teach at a very very unique school. Half of our population come from all over the district for our gifted program. By the time these students are in ninth grade we are teaching them 10th grade English and they are taking AP Science and Social Studies. They are amazing and so much fun in every way. The other half of my school is low socio-economic (they are POOR, lots of free and reduced lunch) and a lot of ESL students and Special Ed students. They are the two extremes in every district and they are in the same school. I am blessed because I get to teach them all and I love them all. The gifted kids are fun because we get to go so much deeper into things and they love to discuss. The boundary kids are so wonderful because once you win them over you can push them to achieve and see so much growth, plus they will ALWAYS love LOVE YOU. You can yell at them and chew them out and 5 minutes later they are talking about how you are their favorite teacher. It is amazing. As a teacher at my school says, the Gifted kids keep you sane but the boundary kids make it worth it. I love my boundary kids and I have the hardest time letting them go because they can be AMAZING!!!! I also know how capable they are and how they are the ones that are used to people going easy on them or thinking that are not as capable, they lose respect for you when you fall for it so it becomes harder to win them over.

So getting to my rant of the week: The most disrespectful thing a teacher can do for the boundary kids is to dumb things down. WE ARE THE TEACHERS!!! It is our job to give them HIGH EXPECTATIONS and HELP them REACH IT!!! Don't just say they cannot read and then give them an easier textbook. They can find context clues, they know how to use the index and when you give them easier material you are not helping them achieve more, you are treating them like they are DUMB!!! They lose respect for you and themselves. THEY CAN DO IT!!!! Yes, they probably cannot just read a chapter from the textbook, but I teach the gifted kids and they cannot even do that. Reading a chapter is boring, don't do it. But they can get important information from the chapters with a worksheet, they can read parts of the textbooks, they can use pictures to find even more information. It also shouldn't be the ONLY thing you use to give them information, because that is just bad teaching to only use the textbook or a worksheet to teach something for the high and low level kids both. You hold their feet to the fire and you make them do it. The worst thing you can do as a teacher is to dumb things down. Also the stuff they will love and make them excited is often the hard stuff but it is what will get them excited. SO SUPPORT THEM and they can do it!!!! I feel really strongly about it. For example, Primary sources are hard but if they like what it is talking about they will do the hard work to understand it. In fact so strongly about it I have been thinking about telling one teacher that I will come teach their class and show them how capable the students are. Stop looking at a test score that most of the teachers don't agree with ( it is a reading level test called the SRI) and start pushing and challenging the students. They will meet the challenge and they will respect you more for them. After all our job is not to survive the year or to make our lives easier our job is to help them be the most successful they can possibly be and to prepare them for the world. They need to be treated like they are capable. Especially our population is so used to the world makes a judgment that they are not capable and will be stuck in the poverty cycle. We, as teachers, need to know that the way to break the cycle is through education and that only works is if we push them to meet higher expectations. I don't know if there is anything else I feel stronger about when it comes to teaching then we need to set the standards high and then help the students reach it.