Both my parents overcame parents who didn't take education seriously. As a result, my parents were the first (and only) of their generation to graduate from college. They passed on their love of learning to their children, for which I shall be always grateful.
These are valid points. However, we have been saying the same thing for over 40 years--since the time I started to teach. The liberals in this country will not agree that parents have anything to do with it. After all, that would mean they are bad parents. They must instead spend billions to improve education, teacher education, reading scores, math scores, and blah, blah, blah... Wake up America!
By this metric, if parents care, their kids will do fine.
Not four posts ago you were lamenting how your child was not being served at his school and was not doing fine.
Can you reconcile these two posts?
Jane: My son is a top student in his grade 7 class. We are still working to get him enrolled in the math class he needs, which is NOT offered by the junior high school he attends.
I just read the post over at Dennis' blog before stopping by here....He makes several valid points.
Flag, you are so right in your comment. As long as education continues to be a political football we won't have any real improvement....just a continual
see-saw from reform to reform.
Another teacher adding to add "right on" to this post. At what point did America decide to abandon the responsibility of the education of their children to people they have never met until the first day of school. And as many of us secondary teachers know, sometimes not even then.
I totally agree with this blog! I am a new teacher in a lower income area on the south side of Chicago. I often find the parents of my student's to be very disengaged. However, much like this blog I found asking questions to other teachers on what I can do to improve to be very helpful.
I actually became part of a 500 teacher test group this summer for a website called Applebatch.com Its a new online community just for teachers to post and answer questions. I learned from other teachers the importance of building community with my students so they could hold each other accountable.
I think Applebatch.com launches this September and it will be free for teachers. If you want a forum to ask questions and get answers you should check it out.
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