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Us vs. Them
Posted:
Jun 3, 1995 11:49 AM
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Dan,
As one public school teacher to another, I want to ask
you to continue to post your ideas on the list, even though I
don't always agree with you. As someone who has been reading
this list for about 9 months, I find it intersting that most of
the posts come from college level people and so little from
those of us in k - 12. Perhaps that speaks to the avaiability
of technology, I don't know....Anyway, I find that it is
interesting in that they (college level) have many ideas for
us(k-12) to use in our classroom. I try to stay current and I
use many so called inovative teaching strategies in my
classroom, but do I think my students are learning more now
than 10 years ago? The answer is no.
Why is this so? I think much of the answer comes to
the simple point that students don't study very hard these
days. In my honors Trig class, much of the time I could count
on my fingers the students who have actually attempted the few
problems I have assigned to them, unless, of course, I said I
would collect it for a grade. Then all of them will have it.
Doing math problems for practice has little value to most of my
students. In my non-honors Algebra 2 classes, I see even less
out of class work being done. Maybe there are ways to
successfully teach students math only using class time with no
outside work, but I haven't found it.
As k-12 teachers, we see the 50% of the students that
college profs never teach. I can tell you that I do not think
public schools have yet found the best way to teach all of our
students. While the standards are great for some students,
they miss out completely with others.
I'm sure I will get some interesting responses on
this...
--
R. Wayne Ellis phone: (804) 780-6052 (school)
John Marshall High School (804) 321-8523 (fax)
4225 Old Brook Road
Richmond, VA 23227
rellis@pen.k12.va.us
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