Sadly I'm not surprised at the news that reading scores for 8th graders have declined over the past decade. I have to agree with the fact that this is troubling. The reasons should be obvious to administrators, but the question is what are they going to do to hold students (and to a great extent parents) more accountable? Many kids really come to school with the expectation that they can sit in class, take selfies, play videogames, and watch unrelated, inappropriate content online, and still get an "A" in class. I'm not exaggerating. I was teaching a class of freshmen high schoolers recently and tried to show them an example of what they needed to do to turn in an acceptable presentation. One group was in the back of the class taking a group selfie, and when I redirected them to put their phone away, the student who owned the phone got angry and stormed out of class because I had the nerve to interrupt them. The sad part is she was allowed to remain outside of the class for the rest of the period. If I were the administrator in charge I would have confiscated her phone for the rest of the day, and contacted her parents to come and get it, with the understanding that she would be suspended if the behavior continued. In addition,. I would have marched her disrespectful little behind back to class, and ensured that she understood such nonsense would not be tolerated!
In the same class another student decided that he was going to watch a YouTube video out loud, while I'm teaching at the front of the class. He proceeded to laugh at whatever he was watching. When I asked him to close the Chromebook and pay attention he proceeded to tell me, "Miss, can't you see I'm watching a video on YouTube?" As if I was disrupting him when he was doing something gravely important. So, it gets better... I walked over and told him to either close the Chromebook and pay attention or I would confiscate it. This little lost angel is going to turn to this friend and say, "Didn't I just tell this bitch I am watching YouTube!"
Needless to say he got booted from my class and then tried to to lie and say he didn't call me a bitch. None of the kids involved are anywhere close to being grade level competent in Science... But that is the behavior they present in class because that is what they have been allowed to get away with up to this point.
I don't know when the word "consequence" became more unacceptable than the N-Word in school, but I think the biggest failure of the public school system (and many private schools) is that they are now afraid to be bold enough to let kids know that there are major CONSEQUENCES for negative behavior--be it not doing school work, or if they are disrespectful to teachers. If I ever even dreamed I was in a class and called my teacher a bitch, I would wake up and apologize. No, I wouldn't do this because I feared my parents would "knock me into next week". My parents never had to use corporal punishment, because they made sure that my siblings and I were raised in an environment where respect for our elders--especially people like teachers who were trying to help us to gain an education or do something productive in our lives--was a normal expectation. In addition, I could look at examples of people in my life/community who made certain choices, and the consequences or rewards of those choices. I knew what I wanted my future to be like.
Today, a lot of schools use the an approach called the "restorative justice/practice" model, where you talk to the student about what they have done wrong, and what they can do better. However, in my experience, the kids abuse the process. Some will not even acknowledge the adverse behavior and act as though whatever happened was the teacher's fault, or that the teacher's picking on them for no reason. They know that at the end of the conversation they go back to doing the same thing. They are not being held back when they don't meet appropriate standards to go to the next grade, so why do they care if one or all of their teachers give them failing grades?
People express concerns about machines taking human jobs, but if there isn't a serious attempt to get students back on track academically and behaviorally, I sure as hell would trust a machine to do an appropriate job more than I would trust most young people within the next 5-10yrs!
Right now I'm still in Sir Sidney Poitier "To Sir With Love" mode, and I am not ready to throw in the towel because I believe that raising the educational achievement in public schools is a worthy fight we can't afford to abandon... But some days it's not easy when I could be making a lot more money working under better condition without a rude kid in sight.
