Today, June 11, 33% of my students are absent.

[montanto]

They are at home, watching World Cup Football. Their final essays are due today, but football is more important than that. I love the community that I work with: largely Latino, struggling, working class immigrants all, Latino or not. They have a great love of sports, and football in particular. Today is virtually a holiday for them. How can I blame them for their passion for this thing? Still, here I am, holding the bag of responsibility for their far below basic skill level at the testing laden end of the year. I'm a shitty teacher. My tenth and eleventh graders read and write at the sixth grade level at best, and haven't moved more than a level or two or three since I've had them in class. They are not at the top yet, but they are at home today, watching football. How can I blame them? I take off for Christmas, Easter, and I don't have any attachment to those holidays at all. Why not celebrate something that you are passionate about? Football is their veteran's day, and labor day, and memorial day, and president's day all rolled into one--holidays that they have no attachment to at all. I am a shitty teacher because they will not be at grade level by the end of this month. I am a shitty teacher because my students can't tell me how many bushels of grain in a peck, or explain the transcendentalist nature of Thoreau's literature. I am also a shitty teacher because I don't understand what makes a person "off-sides" in a game that doesn't seem to have a line to be over. I bet they could explain that to me. If they were here. If we were in the same place right now, sharing the things that we have a passion for.

[babylonsister]

1. You can't be a shitty teacher; you care too much.

I think they are lucky to have you.

[montanto]

11. Thanks.

I think so too. In fact I know they are, and they say they are, and so do their parents, but according to the government, I suck.

[roody]

17. F**k the government.

[wordpix]

2. shouldn't have had a due date on one of their self-proclaimed holidays

Hopefully you can give them an extension to Monday and that will solve the problem.

[montanto]

6. Part of my point is that I don't understand their world

any better than they understand mine. I don't follow sports any more than they follow transcendentalist literature, or ancient systems of weights and measures. I had no idea that the world cup was on today. None. I do know what is showing at the museum, however. Different worlds.

[tabatha]

3. Ask them to write stories about the football.

And then check each other's work.

Football can probably be brought into a lot of subjects including arithmetic.

[montanto]

10. That's more like it.

As a culture I think we need to be more sensitive to other culture's passions, and find ways to integrate passions and content material so as to achieve a standard in a non-standard way.

[JuniperLea]

4. Too bad you couldn't have celebrated at school...

Worked the game into a lesson plan... watched the game... had parents bring in treats... make a huge event of taking the exam... celebrate the examination, the learning, along with the cultural attachments to the game.

[sandnsea]

5. Why didn't you make their finals due yesterday?

And why didn't you implement soccer into your lesson plans this week? Probably not a shitty teacher. But definitely bitching about the wrong things.

[montanto]

8. Lol.

:eyes: Really? What, pray tell, am I bitching about?

[Warpy]

7. You're not a shitty teacher

but the switchover to HDTV means you can't lug in a portable TV from home and set it up in class as an inducement to get those butts in the chairs, where they're supposed to be. Creative teachers when I was in school did that for the World Series, either via TV or radio, and told us to write essays about it for homework, to figure out batting averages per player for that particular game, meaning we did have to take notes.

Unfortunately, teaching kids is like training cats. Often you have to try to convince them it's in their best interest to apply themselves or they will just put in minimal effort to get you off their backs. My first tutoring session always found out what they were passionate about. I then posed some sort of problem--a story with the punch line missing, who was the better pitcher, which team was mathematically most likely to win--and then I taught them the skills so they could come up with the answer themselves. Most of the time it worked. Sometimes they were so convinced the world was against them that it didn't and a few of the more entitled white bread suburban kids thought the answers should be handed to them.

All your kids were born on the bench, never mind out in left field. If you've managed to get them up a level in a classroom setting, it's a miracle.

You are a great teacher.

[DebJ]

16. Teaching kids is like training cats....priceless!

[old mark]

9. OP, a few years ago the DAILY absence rate in Philly city schools was over

30%. EVERY DAY!!!

Parents don't care, makes it hard for teachers...
It's not you - it's the way things are now.

mark

[montanto]

14. And the teachers there

are responsible for that too.

Yes, it's worse elsewhere. I feel for teachers in worse situations. The bite is having to take responsibility for unforeseen /uncontrollable outside influences.

[Smarmie Doofus]

12. K and R. It ain't easy, though it seems like it is to the uninformed ....

... and the truly moronic.

[montanto]

13. Thanks, that is kinda the point too.

That there is a lot more going on than simply showing up. Believe it or not, I'm not a total noob at this. I surprise myself, however, by sometimes being totally oblivious to certain outside influences. I know that the Lakers have been playing the Celtics. I know that is important here, because I live in L.A. I had just not thought about the world cup having an influence in the final week of classes--I just didn't know it was going on. I don't watch T.V. Don't follow any sports. It's taken me fifteen years to learn this lesson. These are the "invisible" things that have an influence on student performance and which are never taken into consideration when making judgments about teacher effectiveness.

[proud2BlibKansan]

15. One of my fondest memories of elementary school was in 3rd grade

when my teacher brought in a TV and we got to watch the World Series. The games were during the day then. We also got to watch space flights that year. IIRC that was the year John Glenn orbited earth. It was a pretty big deal and we got to see it at school.

Of course today with cable TV we can't watch anything if it isn't on the Internet. And if it isn't going to help raise test scores, forget it.

School used to be child centered.

And no you aren't a bad teacher. :)