September 16, 2007: 5:40 pm: jonthonDay-to-Day
Archive for September 16th, 2007
: 3:52 pm: jonthonDay-to-Day
Knowing that every student on my roster will show up at all, much less on the first day, is a luxury I don’t have.
Even up to last Monday, I was receiving multiple students a day. Their parents take them on vacations that span well into the beginning of the school year, leaving me to wonder how anyone could say the parents are NEVER to blame. The students themselves have a myriad of excuses, from not having uniforms (other kids are in school without them, and they all knew in advance), to trying to transfer (after the school year starts, the only schools with seats are decidedly worse than ours), to just forgetting the day school starts (sadly, what I reflect on as the most believable excuse).
And some kids will never show up. There are kids on my roster who were in my class last year, who attended regularly, who aren’t coming. Friends say they don’t intend to. They are 10th grade dropouts, and all I can really do is submit their names to a guidance counselor. And if the student-teacher ratio is bad (mine are 33-1, 26-1, and 15-1 (ESL)), the guidance counselor-student ratio is worse in folds (our school is about 350-1, and that’s actually relatively low). Families, however loosely defined, hold a trump card over me in this respect: how can I teach students who don’t even show up? And why should I be so flexible, and spend my free time catching up their child on the last two weeks’ worth of work? I’m fairly certain they aren’t any busier than me, but I know that it is many of these same parents who won’t even come to parent-teacher conferences in October, so they’ll never have to wrestle with these grievances.
The saddest thing about all of this may be that their children are watching and learning from these behaviors, and could very well be the source of angst for future teachers for similar reasons. In that light, it becomes difficult to lay the blame on the parents, as one might argue that they were socialized in this way; that they no of know other way.
I do not make or accept that argument anymore.
