August 17th, 2022
Graphic content warning
OK so it might not actually end up being graphic like in an NC-17 way, but I want to give a heads up that this is not going to be a positive happy go lucky post. It’s a post coming out of intense frustration to be honest. (Ready for a RANT?)
I’m not understanding much of what’s going on here in this educational system and I’m struggling to find my place, do s hood job and how to best support the kids. I’m gonna try to explain what’s going on here while remaining ‘kind’. The school I’m working at is in this weird place where historically they haven’t had good curriculum and in some cases any curriculum at all for academic content areas, let alone science, social studies, the arts or social emotional learning. They are really trying to put some structure around their programs, develop content and curriculum and align themself with standards. So in my opinion what they need to do is buy some curriculum! I’m well aware that this is not an inExpensive thing! But the alternative route that they have chosen, which on the surface appears far less costly, is just trying to invent it themselves. In the long run this is gonna end up costing them a lot of money, probably teachers, and students. For anyone who comes from a place where true curriculum is being used, this makes literally no sense. Basically, someone sat down s as far picked monthly target goals for each academic area. Then basically they say go and be free and teach it however you want, and oh yes there’s a website with a bunch of resources, print and use whatever you want, but there’s one printer for the whole primary school (K-5th grade) and no photocopier. To get something copied into s class set, you have to print one copy three to four days in advance, get it to the office, put in a copy request for them to send away to some mysterious location where the photocopies are made. 1/2 the time they come back too light to even read, so you have to go back to office and ask them to get it redone. But then oh yeah we want you to create weekly lesson plans a week in advance and submit those and then reflect on those the week after so that we have all that information for next year. Oh yeah and if you can do everything in two languages, that would be great! Oh wait, that part is not optional, but we’re not really gonna tell you how to do that. You can Work it out with your khmer teaching partner. Oh yeah and can you also do all of this with the bare minimum of supplies and resources?
So then you finally figure out where to get the current reading levels for your sweet little second graders, and you learned that you have four students that are an aa reading level. So for you non-teachers out there, let me just tell you that is essentially what we call a student who is not reading yet. Typically you would see second grade reading levels between E and N. But given the fact that we are dual language program and that English is primarily the second language here for reading and writing, it doesn’t surprise me that I have students between B and E. But students at an AA level, will require a whole separate intervention group to even get them started. They don’t know their letter sounds yet as they’ve never been in an English school (they are brand new to east west). So I am all over this of course, and I go straight to the learning support teacher and ask her about doing some reading intervention support. She wants to discuss and come up with a plan! I’m very pleased! It seems prudent to ask the other second grade teacher if she has any students at this level that would benefit from this group but she shut me down hard. She said there is no reading intervention at this school and I just need to differentiate my instruction. Well of course I need to differentiate my instruction, it’s all I do all day long got everything…..but reading intervention is a whole separate thing from me ‘differentiating my instruction’. I’m just not exactly sure what she thinks the learning support teacher is for if not for something like this. Don’t get me wrong I really like her, but I’m not sure how this is going to end up. I literally have 45 minutes a day to do all my English literacy instruction which includes reading and writing. So I don’t have time for a phonics group on top of that, and I’m only one person ……
I’m worried this is going to ruin teaching for me 😞 i hate to go out like this but I don’t have the bandwidth to deal with it. I’m already counting down the days until it’s done.
