Encourage the teacher...please?

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Disclaimer: I’m upset. This is a rant. It’s a long 'un; bear with me if you can, otherwise move along. :wink:

I’m so frustrated, gang, and I’m so afraid I’m going to burn out. I wanted to be a teacher because I want to make a difference–and because I love children and I love learning. I’ve chosen to focus on English language learners(ELLs is their term; two years ago it was LEP–“Limited English Proficient”) because, well, I have an ear for Spanish and a heart for the disadvantaged. Heck, I’ve spent a month in Romania working with orphans, and several weekends in Mexico doing just the same.

I’m so frustrated right now…so tired, so burned out…because I see where they are, and then where they need to go. They are so far behind, so lost, so painstakingly s-l-o-w…and all I do is push, push, push. Today I gave them a grade level assignment (I have fifth grade, btw)–a challenge to them–and had them first work with partners to try to complete it. After that got too noisy (and too easily off-topic), I had them finish it on their own. I wouldn’t let them turn in the assignment until I had checked it, and no one–no one was so close as a C on these papers. What pissed me off inordinately was seeing kids reading comic books, or drawing, or otherwise disregarding the assignment. “But I’m done,” they’d say. I’d look aat the paper, and not only are their answers wrong, they’re a bit to the left of even making sense. That worksheet took all morning. Too hard for them, yes, but I can’t keep spoon feeding them forever–that’s how they’ve come to be in the mess that they are in now.

So much of my enthusiasm is gone. I dream of reports, science fairs, science experiments, nature walks, history lessons…the beginning of this year I was teaming with a fellow teacher with ELLs: I taught science, she taught social studies. Net result? Despite our innumberable modifications, 22 Ds and Fs in my room–more in hers. Even the simplest concepts are lost on them.

It’s such a desperate feeling–I’m trying to ask them what skills a character in a story had, and then I have to spend five minutes defining skills…another 5 explaining “advice.” They need to be able to write a well-organized, accurately spelled and punctuated 5-paragraph report with correct grammar (their biggest problem)…most can’t write one.

I am constantly trying to come up with new ways to help them bridge their gaps…I don’t want to blame them, I don’t want to sit her and whine about the kids. Yes, they have a large share of responsibility in their learning–but I am ultimately responsible.

What pisses me off beyond words is my school district doesn’t have a fucking grading policy. Hel-LO! We’re a school! You’re a school board! You know, education? School? Teaching? GRADES? My new principal asked the district for a copy of it, and got some hemming, hawing, and rapid retreats (as in, the whoevers she talked to did the equivalent of, “Hey, isn’t that a solar eclipse?” and then fleeing)…it seems no one wants to friggin’ step up to the plate and make a uniform grading policy. Um…report cards are due this week. How do I explain the grades?

And foremost, how do I grade my kids? They aren’t at grade level. If I give them an A, even if the work they’re doing for me is an A, it isn’t fair or equitable to the As the English Only (EOs) students are earning. Those students are on grade level and consistently performing above it; mine are mostly a year or two behind. Yet, I can’t flunk my entire class when they are making progress and are making an effort. Two years ago, I was told to give all ELLs a C–regardless of classroom performance (unless they are completely failing to apply themselves). Now I’m told to give them all a D. All of them. It’s depressing for the kids–and just as much (if not moreso) for me.

Is the D a grading policy? Of course not. We don’t have one. It’s a suggestion. A freakin’ suggestion. I’ve been getting suggestions for two years–I want rules and standards to follow! How do I explain it if my kids are getting Ds, and their siblings Bs? I swear, it feels like the Board is taking advantage of the lack of parent involvement in the district. I know if my kids went here, I’d be raising holy hell about this.

Oh…and there was a flyer in my box today. The Board says maybe–maybe–they’ll have a policy in place at the end of next school year. WHAT the FUCK?!

Yes, I know rants are typically in the Pit. But I’m not interested in continuing the rage–I just need some ears to vent into, and am looking for help (and encouragement :slight_smile: ) in getting past my frustrations, rather than feeding them.

Um…any takers?

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{{{Ruffian}}}

Hang in there. Most teachers teaching a foreign language (which, really, in this case you are) share your frustrations regarding the kids. As for hints, well, I have no clue, but I’m a student myself, and I have no clue as to what works well. :slight_smile:

As for your school district… aren’t people on those positions elected? Can you spread the word about the non-existant grading policy without putting your job on the line?

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What you are doing is important and admirable. And it sounds like you see that it’s not working and that frusterates you. I just tried to come up with advice, something to make you soldier on. The truth is, I don’t think I could do what you’re doing, so I don’t know how to advise you to keep doing it.

If they are trying, give them a B. If they are doing only what is expected of them give them a C. If they are not trying that hard, a D. And if they don’t show up to class, fail em. Why should those grading policies be different for ELL kids? Sure, they’re getting a different course-level, but aren’t grades based on effort and accomplishment?

I don’t know, hon. Watch Stand By Me, Dangerous Minds, and all those other teacher movies, and remember that you are doing easily the hardest job around. Parents expect you to be a babysitter, the kids expect you to entertain, administration expects you to be Mr. Freakin Holland, and you’re trying to get through the day. No wonder you’re stressed. I admire you, and what you’re doing. As the daughter of two teachers, and the sister of someone who starts her high school student teaching in two months, I applaude all of you teachin’ types.

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Watch those movies and read “To Serve Them All My Days” and “Goodbye Mr. Chips” and remember that one young genius, when asked what he would do if he was President, said that he would double every teacher’s salary, because they deserve it. I was an adequate teacher, one child said I was her best teacher, and most of the rest of them did seem to have some joyful moments of learning at my hands, but they deserved greatness, so I left. You have the seeds of greatness, because you have the passion. Don’t give up. Work on the fundamentals without dumbing down the material–sounds easy, but how to do it? if I knew, maybe I’d still be teaching. I only know that I’m glad that you care so much, and I wish every teacher felt the same, and that your work was more highly respected. Take each day as it comes, and give yourself credit for every victory, no matter how small. If Joe or Sally remembers a simple grammar rule from one day to the next–celebrate, it really does matter.

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Ruffian

I think there’s a Chinese saying, “a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step”.

English is one the hardest languages in the world to learn, and you have pointed these children down the yellow brick road, there’s no way you can turn out English majors in one year. Do your best to inspire them and let it go.

I recently took a First Aid/CPR class at work to join the “first response” team and the one thing the instructer drilled into us was “take care of yourself”. You can’t help anyone by driving yourself into a nervous break down.

Learning is a lifelong thing and it can’t be judged by an “a” or a “b” on a report card. Find one small achievement each day and take pride in it.

IMHO, you have given of yourself to these kids over and beyond the call and I would be honored call you a friend.

Keith

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The movie to watch is Stand and Deliver. Keep in mind not everybody can be Mr. Escalante, he has recieved national recognition for his work.

I was taught that all you can do is your best. Now sometimes I know that doesn’t seem like enough, but those are words of wisdom.

Alantus

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“Those that do teach young babes
Do it with gentle means and easy tasks”
–Othello, Act 4, Scene ii

Laura,

Unfortunately, I don’t have much to offer in the way of advice or input. All I have is encouragement and praise: I really admire the job that you do. (Your job and Michi’s spring to mind whenever I admire other dopers for their choice of careers.)

I don’t have to SEE you teach to know that you are a great teacher: I think kids are far shrewder when we adults give them credit for. They recognize sincerity, character and genuine interest in them. They know who really has their interests at heart. And I’m sure they recognize you for who you are! :slight_smile:

Also, in my school, the very best teachers were assigned to the best AND most challenged students–because those students required the cream of the crop. So it’s no surprise to me that you’re right at the forefront here.

I admire you so. However much the system gets to you, I know you’re doing the best job you can. I think that’s admirable–and rarer than you think.

Personal confession: with all due respect to the other LA dopers, YOU are the LA doper I admire the most!

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I’m about to leave for work, but I wanted to be sure to thank all of you for your encouragement and kind words. It’s a new morning, and somehow just a night of sleep can help things feel so much better. I’m still stressed, but I don’t feel quite so close to the edge of a burnout now.

DRY, wow…I’m very flattered. Thank you. :slight_smile:

And tiggeril–the DeathLlama loves that U2 song. I actually think it’s quite cool, myself.

I hope to talk to my principal, or someone, about the lack of a grading policy sometime this week (it’s conference week, so it’s a bit busy). I’ll keep all of you informed.

God bless!

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Wow, that sucks major weenies Ruffian!

From the sound of it, you may need to crack down on the kids a bit. I know it isn’t easy and the last thing that you want to do is to place yourself in an adversarial relationship with your students. A few items;

[li]NO COMIC BOOKS or other exteraneous reading materials in the class room during school hours. Give demerits and extra work to those who are disruptive.[/li]
[li]In the absence of a grading policy (stinko!), assign fixed points for conduct and effort. (See next item.)[/li]
[li]Look into TOEFL (Test of English as a Foreign Language) for grammer school level curriculum. There may be a learning program that will give you a scale of accomplishment that you can use for grading purposes.[/li]
[li]See if there are any “mixed” language movies that have significant dialog in Spanish as well as English so that you have a basis for discussion in English of something that happened in Spanish. This will also provide some “entertainment value” to leaven the academic starch.[/li]
[li]Consider using the bilingual comic strip “Baldo” as a teaching tool. Have the kids go through the English version and synopsize what happens in the strip. Then give them the Spanish version and have them encapsulate that as well. Then compare the versions both for the childrens’ sake and as a method to gauge skills for grading purposes. Allow them to work in teams first and gradually switch over to individual assignments.[/li]Anyway, that’s what came to mind. My father was a teacher all of his life so I am sympathetic to your plight. Please let us know what you come up with as a solution.

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I also admire the road you’ve chosen. It can be very frustrating, especially when the folks you’re trying to help don’t seem to be doing their share.

Don’t know if this is do-able : but…

what about incorporating comic book type theme - as in have them design a comic book on the topic, using English…
or game formats “who wants to be a Senator…” and so on?
My son’s 5th grade teacher did a variation of baseball where she’d pitch questions about topics and they’d advance around the bases as a team…

Not trying to say that you’re not an excellent teacher, just trying to come up with some suggestions…

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Well Ruffian as you know my wife is teaching 2nd Grade ELL kids in California, so she shares your pain.

Here’s one thing you may want to consider: Maybe this year you have a difficult bunch of kids? Last year my wife was unbearably frustrated by the children in her classroom, she said that the group dynamics of this particular set of students was impossible and it took her twice as long to get a task done as it used to the year before. This year, she’s all smiles and says that the students are great! Hang in there, next year can only be better.

And congratulations on all the extra work you do. I hope that the students and your colleagues recognize the tremendous efforts you put in.

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I think giving them all Ds is a horrible idea. You might as well tell them that the country doesn’t really want them here.

I agree with SwimmingRiddles, fail the ones who simply don’t show up. The rest…

Grade them relative to a standard you feel comfortable with, but not the same one as the kids who had the headstart of knowing English. If someone is doing A work “considering”, give him an A.

And talk to the parents. Tell them how hard and important it is to catch up, and make them know you want to help. If they don’t get involved, you won’t have a policy next year either.

13

My mother used to volunteer with the English as a second language program in our local high school. Many of the students were immigrants from Latin American countries.

One of the things that she found incredibly frustrating was that many had arrived in this country with extremely little education from their homelands. She helped them study their other subjects (not English or language) and had great difficulty because many of the students just didn’t have the underlying educational background to do high school level math or science, whether the language of choice was English or Spanish.

Whether it is from lack of educational opportunities or from a cultural devaluation of education (perhaps resulting from a long-standing deprivation of educational opportunities), many immigrant students have difficulty performing at the level of native speakers. However, you have a unique opportunity to help them. Though they may not be making as much progress as you would hope, the progress they do make is so much more important because the start the process with such a handicap.

Focus on the progress you are making, and not the relative slowness with which it comes. You are making a difference.

Keep up the good work.

Bill

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Ruffian!

I taught EFL to Czech kindergarteners for a year, and ESL to adults (volunteer) for a year in D.C. I feel your pain - I considered doing what you do full-time but I chickened out.

I was very fortunate with both groups - the kids were amazingly well-behaved and attentive - I didn’t speak much Czech when I started, so I think they saw me as a big goofy idiot, but the dutifully imitated everything I said. Games and puppets worked best with them.

My adults were harder - I had students from 7 or 8 African countries, a few Spanish speakers, and a few Arabic speakers. Everyone was at a totally different grade level. BUT, they had a hard time talking to each other so they had to pay attention to me.

It sounds like a little crackdown is in order in your class - you might need to be the hardass bitch of a teacher for a week or so to get them to pay attention. Confiscating comic books, people who whisper out of turn in class sent to the corner, etc.

I had a few things work amazingly well with the students who, week after week, just seemed to not get it. I decided to abandon worksheets, exercises, etc. and get them to *listen * and produce as much language as possible. This stuff may or may not work for you, since, from what I understand, you are not strictly a language teacher. But it might be good stuff to try every once in a while?

  1. personal essays/journals - usually 1-2 paragraphs long, describing something fairly concrete and emotionally immediate - tell me about how your family came to America. Tell me who your hero is and why. Tell me what you like about being in America, and what you don’t like. What are you afraid of?

  2. I assigned them all a TV show to watch in English (their favorite, if they already had one). Soap operas, cartoons with their kids, police shows, one guy wanted “the news.” They had to watch it every week and turn in a synopsis of what happened.

  3. Good old-fashioned dictee - a lot of my students spoke English but could not read or write in any language - they had a hard time believing that the words they knew in their heads were the same as the words they read on the page. So I would read sentences to them and they would have to write down what they heard. COMPLETELY changed one of my student’s reading and writing abilities from non-existent to that of a 5th grader in about 6 months.

  4. Good old reading a storybook out loud. Something exciting! My fourth and fifth grade teachers read me “Where the Red Fern Grows” and “Witches” (Roald Dahl)for 20 minutes every day after lunch/recess. It calmed us down, it made us clamor for more, and I’ve never forgotten the stories. If you are teaching social studies, find a kids’ book set in the time period you are dealing with. With my adult students, I read Huckleberry Finn, and it turned into a great discusson of slavery and race (most of them were from Africa, countries where slavery still exists).

I’m with the people who say “don’t give them all D’s.” Maybe for the next term you can make your own grading policy along with your students and discuss it with them:

A/B = you do all your homework, you participate, you behave, you try, you do one extra project
C/D = you don’t do your homework or try

Something like that puts power over their grades in their own hands- have them sign a ‘contract’ to that effect.

Ruffian, you are doing a great thing with your life, and just talking about it makes me want to be a teacher again.

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I just wanted to say that I have the highest respect for teachers. IMO you have the hardest, least compensated (in many ways) jobs in the world. And yet you remain dedicated and caring, at least towards your students.

So to all the teachers here: I could never do what you do. I’m not that good a person. You have all the moral support I can give you, if good wishes count.
magdalene: Did you teach in the Czech Republic? My parents lived there for almost four years. I love the place.

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Suo Na, yes, I was a student there for 1 year and had a biweekly kindergarten teaching-gig. It’s the most amazing place on earth.

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The weather is changing, and the kids are acting bratty! Your house is in escrow. And you can’t find the washer/dryer that comes complete with an AI chip that adds exactly enough bleach.
Your life is all stressed out.
You still are a great teacher.
Your are affecting the kid’s lives in a good way.

Its almost Thanksgiving. That will give you a weekend to decompress and not worry so much about the kids.
Then its the winter break. More time to decompress.
Just make it through the next few weeks, and you will come back ready to wrestle tigers. And, if there are no tigers in the room, perhaps just wrestle gold fish. And if you don’t wanna wrestle the fish, you can just declare yourself the champ. And the kids will cheer. And learn a little bit, too.

pat

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Another possibility comes to mind…
Let them bring comic books to class, but use them as a tool. Make anybody who brings one read it aloud at the front of the class to the other kids. Maybe you can come up with some kind of game or some such b.s. like “if Iron Man told you that, answer him with proper grammar,” or maybe even “Is ‘THWACK!!!’ a noun, and adjective, or an interjection? How could it be used as a verb?” haha

Just a thought.

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  1. It wasn’t exactly a comic book; I misspoke (mistyped?). It was a page or two of comics within their reading anthology itself, which they were using to help them answer the questions on the worksheet. While I was walking around making sure everyone was on task, I found one student (someone who is frankly a bit of a space cadet) reading this page and completely ignoring his assignment.

  2. I am not a make-nice teacher. I crack the whip pretty hard when it comes to attention and taking work seriously. I have a long series of disciplary actions and consequences for everything from having a pencil in their hand when I am giving directions, to losing assignments, to not raising their hand, even for going to the bathroom more than once in a school day. I sent one student to the office today for constantly talking, not doing work or paying attention, etc; he ate lunch in the office, wrote a letter of apology, and did all work there. If it happens again, he’s going to be suspended (principal’s orders, there).

  3. This is a difficult group. I had many of these kids for third grade (this is my first year teaching fifth), and it was an agonizing year. That (3rd grade) year they were absolutely dunked in English, sink-or-swim. A new proposition outlawing Spanish instruction had passed–and though they’d learned to speak English, they’d never written or read a word of it. That was, quite simply, an atrocious year of teaching. In addition, this is a very, very talkative group. The 4th graders (3rd graders I had last year) are night-and-day different…at least a full grade level higher. I do look forward to having that group again next year.

  4. Giving As is absolutely not an option in academic areas. Although technically it’s a “suggestion,” the direction passed down to the teachers from administration )(principal, vice, resource teacher) is to give these kids Ds if they are not at grade level. I have about 8 that are getting Cs or above. (We’re told to explain a D means “approaching grade level,” not “below average.”) Effort can be rewarded, but their actual grade must reflect how they are performing in light of academic standards established by the State. Confused? Yeah, so am I.

  5. Most of my kids come from homes where their parents don’t have an elementary education, nonetheless a high school degree. One parent is so proud of their kids because he’s in 5th grade, and no one in that family had ever gone past 3rd before. Most parents speak little to no English, and the ones who do have only a basic command of the language and do not have the advance skills necessary to help with grade level material. There is very, very little home support in our district.

  6. Because of that, I am starting an after school homework club to try to offer at least a little extra help…

  7. I have assigned English TV for homework–in fact, I assigned everyone to watch 30 minutes of election coverage and write a paragraph about it (some were fairly amusing).

  8. I have to teach the curriculum I am given, and am mandated to teach to California standards–and get these kids as close to achieving those infernal standards as possible. Some examples of fifth grade standards: write a five-paragraph expository essay detailing an item you treasure. Provide details. (Meanwhile, it has to have no fewer than 2 spelling mistakes, 2 mistakes in syntax, etc.) Ugh. I’m going to get them there, dammit.

Anyway…okay, so I was feeling a little defensive. PLease don’t take it personally; I’m a bit sensitive right now and advice really, really isn’t what I need…just encouragement. (After I calm down a bit, I’ll then be able to hear advice. :slight_smile: )

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I urge you to start a thread talking about some of these amusng paragraphs. I am sure that will rise your level of satisfaction with the job. Well, it might not laugh, but it will surely make me laugh. And that is pretty important as well, isn’t it?

Anyway, it sounds like you are doing everything you can, and then some! The after school idea sounds great.

One good thing about the state giving you such a lack of information. It gives you a scapegoat in other areas of your life. ::Stuck in a traffic jam:: Stupid state should fix their standards, causing cow trucks to overturn. ::Radio station plays a bad song:: stupid state and their standards infecting the DJs.

pat