Friday, what a week it has been for me, my family, my neighbors, and my students; not to mention a week of school/instruction lost. What does this week have to do with my instruction and classroom? Well, a great deal! What if my children come to school next week from a home with no power or heat. What if they haven't had a decent, hot meal in almost a week? This will not only affect my instruction, but has the potential to affect my classroom management as well. Monday will tell the tale I suppose.
I've been doing some more reading in Straight Talk, trying to catch up with my wife (SWMBO)! I really liked the part about grades. The Core Content Literacy grant that I am participating in has asked the question: "isn't learning more important than grades?" I agree, it is. However school districts, students, and parents have their own ideas about how to go about measuring that. I believe that I have mentioned that my students are in the process of writing/producing a travel brochure/booklet on Central and South America for me. I gave them a rubric to go by with what I wanted to see on the their product. At the absolute minimum, and by showing no effort whatsoever, they will make a "D". To fail at this they have to just not try. So far I have not seen the latter situation. I liken this to setting the out of bounds lines, and the goal lines, and telling them to take the field, and show me what they can do. We are told that our students can amaze us when we put their learning in their hands, and I believe that. Their being interrupted for a week though is going to put a real kink in this.
Homework, sometimes a dirty word. I hardly ever assign it. Why? Homework is practice, and in social studies that entails a lot of reading. I adopted this after asking a social studies teacher of ten years experience why she didn't assign much homework, and her explanation was this: when I see and hear them read in the classroom I know it is getting done, when I assign it as homework, I have no idea, and in general their performance overall shows me it isn't. I have to say that in my very limited experience this is true. A lot of this is because my students come from homes where reading is not valued, or they are not allowed to read because they are required to be the adult in the house due to the absence of the parent either physically because they are at work, or mentally/emotionally due to substance abuse. In either case, my kids don't have the support system they need to get things done for me.