(no subject)

[mockingbirdq]

Today I handled documents I'm not allowed to even SEE, and "actively monitored" a room full of 10th graders for 5 hours straight. At one point I heard giggling and realized I was nodding off STANDING UP at the front of the classroom. Active monitoring means no sitting down, no reading, no ANYTHING except staring at students struggling with a hideous standardized test. Hell for everyone involved. Vote democrat so there will be a chance NCLB may be repealed! Please!!

I came home and made Fox scrambled eggs with ketchup, and Tomu and I a bastardized version of Okonomiyaki. I take some pancake mix, add 4 eggs,soy, cooking sherry, some onion and a package of shredded cabbage and carrots (cole slaw mix). Cook in a pan and serve with Tonkatsu sauce. It's really good.

I'm ready for bed now. Bleah!

Comments

[mockingbirdq.livejournal.com]

Ah. I didn't realize Florida had still been doing that so recently. Texas began doing away with the isolated special education rooms and moving students into the mainstream in the 1980's. I have Special Ed students in my classes and so does every teacher in the school where I work. We receive extensive training on Special Ed mods, which is great since many of those modifications are used for my ESL students as well during their first 3 years.

At an elementary level student can pass the standardized tests quickly because a)they are young and can learn language faster and b)the academic material they are being expected to manage isn't very difficult.

Students at high school level can manage survival English in one year as well - the problem is that the academic language they are expected to manage is at a much harder level. Their classes are reading Shakespeare,"Animal Farm" and Elie Wiesel's "Night". Add this to the fact that many of them had a poor education or missed years of schooling, and there is the problem. I can modify work for their classes (just like an IEP) but I can't give them any accomodations on TAKS. They aren't even allowed to use a bilingual dictionary for unfamiliar words :(

NCLB states that by 2013 ALL students in the US, 100%, will pass standardized testing at grade level. This is why more and more special education kids have been taking unmodified tests each year. I'm sure that provision of NCLB will be overturned soon, but what if it isn't?

I know we won't agree on this, so I'll just drop it. Apparently the schools were you live were not following laws that changed many years ago, and definitely weren't following current educational practices. FOr Janice's sake, I'm glad that's changed.