It Never Ends

Just finished the introduction to Connecting Teachers, Students, And Standards by Voltz, Sims and Nelson. Another book written by educators who don't get it or who do get it and won't dare write it. We are not all the same, programmers don't work in a team with the window washers, engineers at Caterpillar don't work in a team with the chip wheeler, they are entirely different skill sets. As a Social Studies Dept. Chair I integrated nearly all students into our Freshman level Global Studies classes over twelve years ago. I even used the same arguments as the authors, that the lower ability student will learn from observing the higher ability student. Every year we continue to modify our curriculum to try and raise the bar for that lower achieving student and for the majority of lower achievers it doesn't work. We are "teaming" students who will never be teamed in life. I don't want a "dumbed down" curriculum for lower achievers, I want a more direct intervention curriculum that involves parents, counselors, job shadowing, vocational education, technology and regular classes.

Oh, that part about lower ability students observing higher ability students and picking up habits.....we have not seen that happening. In fact, we can't even mix abilities in our cooperative learning groups because the lower ability student has caught on that the upper ability student will do the work if they just wait. We have gone to grouping by grades, top four grades, next four, next four and so on. Yes, that cruelly leaves the bottom four together but we have found that usually one or two of them step up and get the task done! It appears to mirror our larger society where if I just wait, someone will take care of me. Wow, school hasn't started and I'm depressed.

Most educators don't get it, we have the technology to guide students while they work independently. They can contact us with questions (oh, forgot, most of that stuff if used during school hours will get you a detention), allow us to edit writing on-line, share documents between themselves (oh, they might cheat???), but most schools are terrified. IT IS THE 21st CENTURY, time to start teaching students for their future and not my past. Oh, can a history teacher say that?

Remember, be nice and work hard.