I have, on occasion, done "free practice" in the piano class I taught, for two reasons:

(1) For students who live far away and don't have a keyboard, it may be the only time they can practice, and since piano is one of those things where the explanation of the concepts takes about 1/10th the time necessary to actually LEARN the concept, practice is important; and

(2) I'm an horrific piano player - the less the kids actually listen to me, the more likely they are to actually learn to play the piano.

DG knows this all too well - my lousiness is not because of her fine instruction, but rather in spite of it. Had I known in 1986 that I'd be doing this for a living, you can bet I'd have practiced a LOT more.

WF
Wes F. in North Adams | Homepage | 12.17.05 - 3:12 pm | #

Hello, Michele sent me.
Joe | Homepage | 12.17.05 - 3:50 pm | #

Hi, I came over from JuneBugg

After too many years in the corporate world, I've returned to college to get my advanced degree so one day maybe I can teach.

Trust me... there are teachers at the university level that are just as you described. Which, to me, is even worse than public school because the students are paying for it themselves... or their parents are.

I just finished a class with an instructor who did nothing but lecture all semester. The books required for the class had little relevance to the subject, so the students really had nothing to study other than notes from the lecture. Her lectures were given at warp speed and none of the students could keep up. (we started with 30 students... ended the class with 10)It's to be expected that students at university level should have to work harder, but sometimes teachers end up setting students up for failure rather than for success.

Ok, rant over, lol. Just nice to see that there are still teachers out there who actually do care about their students

DB
DB | Homepage | 12.18.05 - 5:01 pm | #

*rant follows*

Jane, one of the million reasons I left BCPS was a curriculum that greatly resembles the one you describe. The "reading workshop" on crack is what they have going over there. In a 90 minute period, students are supposed to read for about half an hour...read anything they want. Then spend about ten or fifteen minutes filling out a reading log about that day's reading. My "direct teach" portion of the class was limited to maybe fifteen minutes of the class when I would do oral dictation. I was determined that the little bastards would learn to spell. I was actually questioned by my superiors about why I was having them do that. What, they asked, was the value in that exercise? Huh? I dunno. Perhaps they need to have some aural comprehension of language. Perhaps it was useful that we would review grammar and punctuation along with the spelling, and this was the ONLY time in the day they would get this little niblet of wisdom. Then we'd spend about half an hour on "guided reading." This meant I was to read to them, and we were to talk about the reading. I was supposed to reinforce certain reading skills--the making of inferences, reading words in context, etc. No problem. But if we account for five minutes at the head and tail of the class for housekeeping, you realize that I now had FIVE MINUTES left for writing! Mind you, we were supposed to be prepping them for a state exam that is writing-intensive at the same timie we were supposed to be raising their fifth-grade reading levels up to the age-appropriate tenth-grade reading levels.

*bleeds out ears*

I love reading, really I do, but c'mon now! We cannot be all things to all students in the course of one class. We need to do a bit of everything: reading, writing, grammar and mechanics. Balance, you know? I saw no balance there.

I'm doing private tutoring, too, and I'm seeing similar problems with these girls. ESL students who do NOT know diddly-squatola about phonics. What???? The first things they are supposed to teach them are the sounds of the English alphabet. One child does not know her "e" from her "a" from her "i." She can write a sentence (with painful difficulty), but then she cannot read her own writing back to me.

I say "sound it out" to them, and they look at me like I'm a space alien. Are they using sight words (alone, without the benefit of phonics) in ESL now, too? That should be a crime punishable by hanging.
MJ | 12.20.05 - 11:25 am | #