The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
31–40 of 90 posts
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#32I teach for a living. I'm currently at a community college, but I spent most of the last decade teaching high school. I even did a little 4th grade. (Yes, it is unusual for any teacher to teach that range of grades.) Educational administrators are idiots. They can not do basic tasks. Give them a list of industry certifications like the one I will link below, and ask them to figure out which classes currently offered…
>A big chunk of their funding depends on getting their students certified, and they can not make a plan to achieve that. >I am literally the only teacher in the school who got kids certified (that I know of.) These two things (as explained by you) cannot be true at the same time, or the school could not exist. Could you explain the nature of the funding? Is it supplememtal? Who is supplying the funds?
Welcome to public school education where nothing makes sense and teachers are fleeing in droves.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#33I wish educational systems were less eager to jump into the latest fads, and more conservative in their approach (and I say that as a progressive). In my country we didn't have this particular fad as far as I know, but we are harming kids with the trend of making everything digital. With nonsense such as classrooms of 3-year-old kids where they solve a puzzle by dragging images of the pieces on a big screen, rather t…
I agree on the digital stuff. I really don't like that kids are primarily using Chrome books and stuff as their primary mode of learning. Maybe that would be fine in high school, but I feel that elementary and middle schools should be taught with physical media. I'm touring schools in my area now (k-8) to figure out where we want to send our kids. One school says the kids get hybrid instruction, but every single clas…
I hate it. The over reliance on “Canvas” Which on the surface seems like such of a convenience. But every time I watch my kid turn in his math homework by holding his 2-sided worksheet up to the webcam I just cringe. He’ll never get any reasonable feedback on his work because it’s impossible to read.
Some assignments have “spot check” questions where you input the answer on Canvas. Instructions like “make sure you spell it right”, “use ‘i’ for infinity”, and “do not put spaces after the commas” should’ve made the teacher realize it was a bad idea. But alas.
And the teachers are SO GOOD otherwise. It makes me wonder how much of this is being forced ON THEM.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#34my three year old (just this week, 4) had somehow learned to read on his own (he is on the spectrum). He seem to have picked up both sight reading and phonics as best as I can tell. He will try to sound out the word sometimes, but largely just looks at the word. If it’s big word a
, like “awesomeness”, he will try to sound it out, at least a bit.
The Dr Seuss books are a piece of cake and he could read them at 3 1/2.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#35Too much focus on phonics could turn off some kids. It's not a one size fits all. The other half she's referring to could better spend their time reading since they already know how to instead of spending additional time on phonics. I hated how long they taught phonics, which is really saying something considering I don't remember too much else from that early. How is the political group using the science of reading…
Contrary to stereotypes, kids are not "turned off" by more direct instruction methods. They enjoy the challenge, it's quite fun for them as long as they're not failing completely at it or being bored to death by something that has become trivial. Think about how videogames are designed to be engaging and almost addictive, good instruction should follow along the same principles.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#36If you want kids to read, you need to give them a reason to want to read. For myself, I was given a trunk of about 200 superhero comic books around age 5. Nobody had time to read them to me, so I had to learn how to read them myself. And I still remember the day I realized Peter Parker had books on his shelves I'd seen with my mother's books - so I tried to read Herman Hesse about age 8 because it was a book Peter Pa…
I’ve often wondered if a similar result happened for me. Six year old me got Pokémon Blue, which is pretty much all text based. Coupled with comic books at a friends house, I had great internal motivation to figure those out!
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#37Sounds like another wretched case of human nature at work. Why would anyone care about actually achieving X in the real world, when they could instead do so much better (for themselves) by creating, promoting, and arguing about fancy BS-filled theories on how to achieve X? And, quite logically, all the real-world failures of their fancy BS-filled theories must be the fault of the little people...
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#38I think the note on classism is basically the entire story. Avoiding phonics probably works great for families who have already taught kids to read by the time they reach school.
I could intuitively sound out words by the time I was in grade school. I also had parents reading books with me multiple times a day my entire life up to that point. We made games out of reading the book backwards because if you read words backwards it sounds funny. Being able to do this implies already being proficient in phonics.
By the time I was in grade school, what I needed was a quiet place and dedicated time to practice reading short, easy novels (which I continued to do at home every day). Doing this without already being able to read sounds like nonsense.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#39I think education as a scientific discipline suffers from the credentialism that has required increasing numbers of teachers to get graduate degrees.
The focus in departments granting professional degrees is going to inevitably be on those students, and the dollars they bring with them, rather than on research.
Re: The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Schools
#40Adjacent, but this video on the science of reading is fascinating. tl;dw:
1. We don't know for sure how humans happen to be able to read.
2. We know it didn't evolve; as recently as a few hundred years ago a large majority of humans didn't read.
3. We think edges and intersections and fundamental shapes are key to being able to recognize things in general.
4. We think writing/reading evolved (from pictograms) to fit what our brains are good at.
5. Our brains are ridiculously good at it.
6. At least once we're good at it, we don't sound out words, or even see words individually.