Teachers say parent management is a bigger struggle than finding enough funding or maintaining discipline or enduring the toils of testing. In this week’s TIME cover story, "What Teachers Hate About Parents," Nancy Gibbs reports on the growing frustrations teachers have with parents. It’s one reason, says the Consortium for Policy Research in Education and the Center for the Study of Teaching and Policy, that 40% to 50% of new teachers are gone from the profession within five years. Even master teachers who love their work, says Harvard education professor Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, call this "the most treacherous part of their jobs."
http://www.time.com/time/covers/1101050221/story.html
"If you could walk past the teachers' lounge and listen in, what sorts of stories would you hear?
An Iowa high school counselor gets a call from a parent protesting the C her child received on an assignment. "The parent argued every point in the essay," recalls the counselor, who soon realized why the mother was so upset about the grade. "It became apparent that she'd written it."
A sixth-grade teacher in California tells a girl in her class that she needs to work on her reading at home, not just in school. "Her mom came in the next day," the teacher says, "and started yelling at me that I had emotionally upset her child."
A science teacher in Baltimore, Md., was offering lessons in anatomy when one of the boys in class declared, "There's one less rib in a man than in a woman." The teacher pulled out two skeletons—one male, the other female—and asked the student to count the ribs in each.
"The next day," the teacher recalls. . . "
Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test
In response to President Bush's Federal "No Child Left Behind Act" (NCLB), it is proposed that students will have to pass a test to be promoted to the next grade level.
In the hope that this proposal will be uniformly adopted by all of the states, the new test will be called the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART).
All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in Grades 3, 4 and 5 until they are capable of passing a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program known as the Special Mastery Elective for Learning Language, or SMELL.
If, with this increased SMELL program, the student cannot pass the required FART test, he or she can still graduate to middle school by taking another one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation, or CRAP.
If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL, or CRAP, he or she can earn promotion in an intensive one-week seminar known as the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students, or PRUNES.
It is the opinion of the Department of Instruction for Public Schools (DIPS) that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL, or CRAP.
This revised provision of the student component of the House Bill 101 should help "clear the air" as part of "No School Left Standing."
In the hope that this proposal will be uniformly adopted by all of the states, the new test will be called the Federal Arithmetic and Reading Test (FART).
All students who cannot pass a FART in the second grade will be retested in Grades 3, 4 and 5 until they are capable of passing a FART score of 80%. If a student does not successfully FART by grade 5, that student shall be placed in a separate English program known as the Special Mastery Elective for Learning Language, or SMELL.
If, with this increased SMELL program, the student cannot pass the required FART test, he or she can still graduate to middle school by taking another one-semester course in Comprehensive Reading and Arithmetic Preparation, or CRAP.
If by age fourteen the student cannot FART, SMELL, or CRAP, he or she can earn promotion in an intensive one-week seminar known as the Preparatory Reading for Unprepared Nationally Exempted Students, or PRUNES.
It is the opinion of the Department of Instruction for Public Schools (DIPS) that an intensive week of PRUNES will enable any student to FART, SMELL, or CRAP.
This revised provision of the student component of the House Bill 101 should help "clear the air" as part of "No School Left Standing."
Kids give teachers the darndest things
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
Four plates of cookies,
three Starbucks gift certificates,
two coffee mugs and . . .
a pork chop still hot from the stove?
A see-through nightie?
A stolen necklace?
A girdle?
At a time of year when teachers are digging their way out from the holiday avalanche of cookies, candles, books and mugs, some student gifts stand out from the crowd, from the beloved preowned Teddy bear to the lingerie too racy to show the rest of the class.
So we asked veteran grade school teachers, which gifts are, well, simply unforgettable?
For Lynne Karzi, it was the pork chop. She was teaching at the former Mary Church Terrell school when a 2nd grader brought her a fried pork chop wrapped in tinfoil. He was very pleased with his gift and wanted her to eat it in front of the class."I ate it," she says, noting that it was hot and expertly prepared. "What could you do?"
Karzi, now a 2nd-grade teacher at the Ole A. Thorp Scholastic Academy in Chicago, also received a roll of Life Savers back at Mary Church Terrell. The present made an impression, she says."Every Life Saver meant a lot to me."
At Willard Elementary School in Evanston, 3rd grade teacher Fran Livatino recalls a necklace she received 20 years ago when she was at a preschool on the North Side of Chicago. A kindergartner named Troy with whom she was very close gave her a gold chain with a charm."They just didn't have anything," she says of the boy's family, "and yet he wanted so badly to give me something."Then there was the necklace another teacher received while working at a Chicago school."OK, where'd you get this?" the teacher asked, smelling trouble. From his mother's jewelry box, the gift giver admitted. Wouldn't his mother miss it, the teacher asked gently."Oh no," the boy said. "She's in jail."
Maris Herzog's most memorable gifts include a training bra. The bra had the "BabOOn" label, a status symbol along the lines of Tommy Hilfiger in Korea, the mother's country of origin."Along with my training bra, I also did receive a girdle," says Herzog, a preschool teacher at Walt Disney Magnet School.
Another student, a 1st grader, gave Herzog a sheer nightgown with two show-girl tassels."Oh thank you so much," Herzog said, stuffing the nightgown back in the box so the rest of the class couldn't see it. Herzog has also been favored with used soap, a single earring (her teaching partner got the other), a tattoo parlor gift certificate and Jell-O."I received lime and strawberry," she says.
Four plates of cookies,
three Starbucks gift certificates,
two coffee mugs and . . .
a pork chop still hot from the stove?
A see-through nightie?
A stolen necklace?
A girdle?
At a time of year when teachers are digging their way out from the holiday avalanche of cookies, candles, books and mugs, some student gifts stand out from the crowd, from the beloved preowned Teddy bear to the lingerie too racy to show the rest of the class.
So we asked veteran grade school teachers, which gifts are, well, simply unforgettable?
For Lynne Karzi, it was the pork chop. She was teaching at the former Mary Church Terrell school when a 2nd grader brought her a fried pork chop wrapped in tinfoil. He was very pleased with his gift and wanted her to eat it in front of the class."I ate it," she says, noting that it was hot and expertly prepared. "What could you do?"
Karzi, now a 2nd-grade teacher at the Ole A. Thorp Scholastic Academy in Chicago, also received a roll of Life Savers back at Mary Church Terrell. The present made an impression, she says."Every Life Saver meant a lot to me."
At Willard Elementary School in Evanston, 3rd grade teacher Fran Livatino recalls a necklace she received 20 years ago when she was at a preschool on the North Side of Chicago. A kindergartner named Troy with whom she was very close gave her a gold chain with a charm."They just didn't have anything," she says of the boy's family, "and yet he wanted so badly to give me something."Then there was the necklace another teacher received while working at a Chicago school."OK, where'd you get this?" the teacher asked, smelling trouble. From his mother's jewelry box, the gift giver admitted. Wouldn't his mother miss it, the teacher asked gently."Oh no," the boy said. "She's in jail."
Maris Herzog's most memorable gifts include a training bra. The bra had the "BabOOn" label, a status symbol along the lines of Tommy Hilfiger in Korea, the mother's country of origin."Along with my training bra, I also did receive a girdle," says Herzog, a preschool teacher at Walt Disney Magnet School.
Another student, a 1st grader, gave Herzog a sheer nightgown with two show-girl tassels."Oh thank you so much," Herzog said, stuffing the nightgown back in the box so the rest of the class couldn't see it. Herzog has also been favored with used soap, a single earring (her teaching partner got the other), a tattoo parlor gift certificate and Jell-O."I received lime and strawberry," she says.
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