I substitute taught again today for a local elementary school. I am even more convinced that home teaching is probably the route Jeremy and I will have to go for our kids. The classes have 30 students at least which if everyone was on the same level it would work but that isn't the case. I wonder if it would be better to have classes based on academic level than age.
I felt bad for the kids that were totally bored by the busy work assignments and equally bad for the kids that were so far behind that it was obvious that they had given up and were labled by their peers negatively as a consequence. It wasn't that they were incapable of learning the material, it seems as if no one parents or teacher had spent the time to teach them so they would understand it.
The teacher left me assignments to give to the students, much like the same things I was doing in the 3rd and 4th grades however there were some that were really struggling mastering it. The reading level of this class was far below where it should have been and the math level was also very sad. They didn't know how to multiply without the aid of a calculator. My class was working on fractions, multiplying, dividing and simplifying fractions. The teachers switch classes for about 45 minutes and I got another teacher's class for math where they were learning about volume and surface area. It was supposed to be a review but none of the students seemed to know how to find either even with the formulas on the assignment sheet. I explained about how volume and surface area worked with prisms and cylinders. I think by the end they finally started to get it but it was alarmingly sad.
If we continue as a country to lower our educational standards we are heading for a lot of trouble in the future.
On a side note I got mistaken as a student......again. On Monday this happened but that was High School......
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