WHEN DO YOU MEND THE HEM OF A DRESS THAT HAS JUST STARTED UNRAVELING? WHEN THE FIRST SECTION OF THE HEM STARTS UNRAVELING OR WAIT UNTIL THE HEM IS COMPLETELY UNRAVELED.
Just stumbled on this thread. I am a retired elementary teacher. When a chidl was in kindergarten we teachers knew who was having problems with learning and needed help, which children could be successful in school IF their parents were doing their jobs as parents.
I digress here just a second: There will be some students who can not be successful at staying on grade level particularly as they rise through the lower and then upper grades. Some of these have functionally retarded or have a serious learning disability that prevents them from reading from a page even though they may be very bright.
I can not emphasize enough that we wouldn't have this large number of functionally illiterate adults if we would seriously address this problem early on. Preschool for four year olds should be mandatory in every state. (Those children a bit behind in development and have a birthday that makes them in the youngest fourth of the class might need to wait a year.) I understand that this is what is done in some European nations.
I have no problem holding parents responsible. What is wrong with our system is we pick out a 19 year old. Why did we wait that long. Don't try to tell me that on her 19th birthday this problem developed and before that she was a straight A honor student in a public high school.
Not America, our curriculum schedules in high school are first centered around when the coaches can have football practice. (I am a great fan of high school football.) In Middle Schools (Sixth grade-Eighth grade) schools are often guilty of putting the teachers that the high school principal did not want on his staff.
(I taught sixth grade, but there are way too many high school teachers trying to teach middle school age students who aren't really children or teens yet. They are a special group. Taught right they can learn and retain information that is absolutely remarkable, but only if the teacher can stay in front of the kids attention in creative ways to keep the learning on learning designed by the teacher, not on learning of outside influences that in time are destructive to the students character, morale and ultimate level of education.)
And we NEED two teachers in kindergarten rooms with no more than 18 students, preferably 15. It would be even more ideal if one teacher was male and the other female. The boys especially at that age adore having a man come in and teach. All they ever see is women teaching and a very large majority of students that are falling behind are boys who have absentee fathers.
If we could:
1.Have mandatory preschool with two teachers per 12 students. One would not have to be certified teacher and can be a teacher's aide.
2. Have the prescribed kindergarten I mentioned with two teachers per 18 students.
3. Continue having two teachers (One can be a teacher's aide) with no more than 21 students per class.
4. Don't average in the music art, PE, Special Ed, Liberian and all the other special teachers to get the numbers to appear to be the above numbers. These ratios that schools sometimes publish are a joke. Creative statistics will be published to state that the ratio is 15 to 1 in first grade. But in reality there are 24 kids assigned to that first grade teacher's classroom.
5. Let students who are the youngest in the class, show signs of being being developmentally slow repeat either preschool, kindergarten or first grade. I am not saying failed, I said repeat. If the evidence shows that staying another year in those lowest grades will fix problems later on then that is when we use retention. Not in ninth grade after the battle has been lost.
The key is fixing the problems at age four through seven. Hold parents accountable to see that they do what they need to do to see that their child succeed. That is the time to get serious with the parents that don't cooperate and take serously their role as parents.
Post is long so I'll just brush over some of the things that parents could be required to do as early as age 4-7 but can also be done at any grade.
1. Require the parent to miss work and sit with their child all day who won't behave. That really works at high school. Students don't want a parent with them all day taking them to the door of the restroom when they need to go, accompany them to the water fountain, be there for EVERY conversation their child is having with other students. It is amazing how fast students will change their behavior. And it is amazing how soon parents really want to help their child succeed in school.
2. Workshops and such that some parents need in order to be good parents should be provided free with even free child care through sixth grade. We have to train some parents.
ABOUT THAT DRESS. It is amazing how much easier it is to stitch just a few stitches early on than wait until the entire him has to be restitched. Same with our children. We know which ones are going to be drop outs and have problem when they are five. Why are we waiting until they are 16-19 to do something about it?
How do we pay for this? We have the highest rate of incarceration in the entire developed world. I've read that it cost upwards of $50,000 per prisoner including all hidden costs. All that money could better be spent on deveoping model citizens at age four.
Age four. Yes. Our job as educators is to make the student successful right now, now some years down the line or when they grow up. Patterns start young. If the pattern at age is success we have hope for the future. If the pattern is failure from age four to age seven the future does not look bright at all for that student. There are exceptions but generally this is true.
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