Rufus T. Firefly wrote:....
Echoes my experience with my daughter's history teacher in high school that was clueless about her own subject matter, but knew how to teach to get the kids past the state SOL tests
Murph Tome Warning (as you can see):
You make a key point there, Rufus.
Back in the 80's, many boards of education determined that a great deal of classroom time and effort was to be dedicated to getting students to pass the state-mandated standardized tests for math and reading skills. That meant a considerable amount of the teacher's creative interest and effort and skills were to be focused on those state tests being passed. The same is true in many school districts across the USA, as I understand it.
As an example, back in the 80's. an eighth grade class came to me , in September, which had every single student on a
Fourth Grade reading (Language Arts) level. I dedicated the required
90 minutes per day to those skills. Fortunately, I was blessed to have been provided with the Ginn reading series/set of readers and workbooks, and skill exercises. When my students took the State mandated Standardized Test in April,
all were on the Eighth Grade reading level, and some on the ninth grade level, as determined by that standardized testing. That made me feel I had performed a real service to the children entrusted to my care. It , also, motivated me to feel that I had chosen the right profession for myself, as opposed to Business Management , which was where I had started in the late 60's.
All the concentration on
Language Arts skills could have meant
Science and
Social Studies skills would have been sacrificed, or at the very least, minimized markedly. However, in our classroom, they were not. For example, I went to those "Rest Area" pull-offs that used to be features along Pennsylvania highways, and some roads in NJ, and asked for as many folded-up roadmaps that I could get my hands on. When I had enough for the entire class, we used the large pulldown maps hanging on the classroom walls, of the World, the Western Hemisphere, the USA, NJ, and the county local to our school, along with personal collections of those maps printed for each pupil to possess in folders, to discern where and how their roadmaps related to the larger perspectives. We used the same resources to master the use of the compass and an understanding of longitude and latitude. Believe me, when it was time for Social Studies, every student was very eager to begin the two-times-per-week, 40 minute lessons in Social Studies.
And that's part of my story, if you don't mind hearing about it here.
Murph
