Welcome to Teachers At Risk
-
Dec
12
Sometimes you find explanations to things in the most unexpected places, even when you are not looking for an explanation, even when you really don’t care. That “sometimes” happened to me this afternoon. Anna Karenina gave me insight into Tiger Woods and Erin Nordegren’s feelings about the situation they find themselves in.
It was a beautiful sunny, crisp day and I decided I would go for a walk and at the same time start to listen to my latest audio book Anna Karenina -the unabridged version about 40 hours long. I’d always meant to read it but never got around to it, so when I saw it as an audio book, I decided there’s no time like the present. I down loaded it onto my ipod and started to listen. Listening to an audio book is a great way to get caught up on your reading.
I was walking along enjoying the sunshine and listening to the novel thinking life was good. At least, my life was good. Poor Dolly Arkadeyevich, Anna’s Karenina’s sister-in-law’s life wasn’t very good at this point in the novel. She had recently found a letter her husband, Stepan Arkadeyevich, had written to the governess that made it clear that her husband had been unfaithful (I like that old fashioned word) to her and turned her world upside.
That story sounded very familiar- the Tiger Woods and Erin Nordegren saga. I wondered what they thought about it all. I listened as Stepan Arkadeyevich’s position was explained
All he repented was that he had not succeeded better in hiding this from his wife. But he felt all the difficulty of his position and was sorry for his wife, his children, and himself. Possibly he might have managed to conceal his sins better from his wife if he had anticipated that the knowledge of them would have had such an effect upon her.
Whoa!
Then later I heard how Dolly Arkadeyevich felt about the situation
She’s young, you see, she’s pretty,” she went on. “Do you know, Anna, my youth and my beauty are gone, taken by whom? By him and his children. I have worked for him, and all I had has gone in his service, and now of course any fresh, vulgar creature has more charm for him. No doubt they talked of me together, or, worse still, they were silent about me…. Do you understand?”
Whoa!!!
As I came to the end of my walk, I wondered how the story was going to end? I guess I’ll have to wait until my next walk to find out.
Dec
5
What’s the point of high school anyway? Over the years I’ve often wondered that, and I’m a high school teacher. I used to think I knew but the longer I teach the less sure I am. I’ve been told that high school is supposed to prepare kids. Prepare them for what- work, college, university, life???When I’m wearing my special education teacher hat, I’m just trying to teach students learning strategies to help them over come the disadvantages they have because of their learning disabilities. I am trying to help them pass each course so they can graduate. That really isn’t much of the big picture view, I must say. It’s like not being able to see the forest because I”m too focused on the trees. When I’m wearing my student success teacher hat, I’m doing basically the same thing with at-risk kids. As a math teacher, I’m trying my hardest to engage my students to motivate them so they will pass the course. It seems that my purpose as a teacher in 2009 is getting students to pass grade nine so they can go to grade ten so they can go to grade 11 etc. My focus is on getting kids to pass. Is that what it should be? Is that what the focus of high school should be? Obviously, I’m not the only one wondering about this.
A recent study found
9 percent of high school teachers say their primary mission is to prepare students for college, versus 48 percent of students and 42 percent of parents who say college preparation should be the chief focus of high school.
I think that high schools should focus on more than getting kids ready for college. If we really want to pay more than lip service to respecting students, we need to do more than focus on their intellect . Students are mind and body, heart and soul. Educators like Maria Montessori and Rudolph Steiner recognized this in the late 19th and early 20th century and set up schools that focused on educating the whole child. This notion of educating the whole child isn’t new. It dates back over 2000 years ago to Aristotle.
It seems to me that in the last ten years or so, more and more parents are looking to schools to provide holistic education. Parents are looking to schools to provide character education, to stop bullying and to provide a breakfast program. I have had more than one parent tell me that they don’t know what to do about their children. Their children just won’t listen to them, and they just don’t know what to do. This cuts across all socioeconomic levels. Just recently, a parent told me he doesn’t understand why his 14 year old child is acting out the way he is. He told me he gives him everything he wants and yet his child just keeps acting out. He asked me for parenting advice. This isn’t an isolated incident. Who is to “parent” these kids if parents are not able to. Parents need support and they are asking schools to help educate more than their child’s intellect. Is it the job of schools to educate parents, too?
What do you think?
-
-
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.
Improve the web with Nofollow Reciprocity. -
Edublog Awards
Toronto Reading Council
