Well, so far we have a team meeting scheduled for next Tuesday. I talked with the math teacher briefly today with the sp.ed teacher there with me. He hasn’t put in any of C’s grades yet for the work he did over the holiday, grade reflects a 54. YUK!
Anyway, he made a statement in front of both of us that his whole 6th per. class is not retaining anything, he doesn’t know what is wrong with them.
I told the sp.ed teacher in the hallway, if it is the whole class then it probably isn’t the kids, it is the teacher. C tells me that many of the kids on his team are clustered with kids who are on iep’s like himself. I don’t know if this is so, but I suppose the kids would know.
Anyway, we will be brainstorming next week on what to do about all this. I have even talked to the guidance counselor about changing his class, they hate to cross team the kids, I don’t want his entire team changed just one teacher. I think changing all 4 teachers would be too hard on C. He doesn’t do all that well with change. She said it will have to go to the administrator.
Something that I think may work is to substitute one of his elective classes for a period in the resource room to go over the math. The sp.ed teacher is also looking at putting an aid in the class.
Just wanted you all to know I am not just sitting around on this.
Re: update
Hmmm, still following my predictions to the letter, I see; first I could predict where your son’s math is, and then that the rest of the class is having trouble too. No, not a crystal ball, just years of seeing the same thing.
Probably the math program is poor; most of them are.
Probably the earlier grades. teachers sloughed off as much as possible because they themselves are math-phobic — American education steers math-able people to other careers and math phobics into teaching (One of my teacher ed students was shocked that she had to take a math class; she wrote that she was becoming an early childhood teacher because she didn’t ever want to do any more math).
This year’s teacher may or may not be a good teacher, but he is out of his depth and in a Catch-22 in the present situation. I’ve been there and done that myself, so I know. He wants to teach math and higher-order thinking; he has a class of kids who have been trained all their school days to be spoon-fed and to regurgitate and forget as soon as the test is over. So what does he do? Since September he has been trying with all his might to teach math, and the kids aren’t getting it because they are lacking all sorts of basic concepts, not only about math but about learning in general. Does he keep fighting and hope a little bit will stick, or does he drop his principles and spoon-feed like everyone else?
If you can talk to the teacher and suggest reducing the pace — he does not have to teach every single unit in the text in depth (an impossibility in any case) but can concentrate on the highest-priority ones — and suggest reducing the number of concepts and/or problems on each test, then your son has a very good chance of learning something very important from this teacher. He has already learned to be a more independent learner, to keep trying for mastery, and to aim for a high level in math; all very positive results. Remember that college admissions and employers are never going to see the Grade 6 marks, but they certainly going to see whether someone perseveres through difficulties.
Re: update
Amy,
Just so you know. I got audiblox and it does have some exercises that focus on logical thinking. I am doing them with my son.
When I first did them with my son he seemed to have alot of difficulty with them. Then I was telling my husband who I also decided to test to measure his logic.
Well wouldn’t you know my son came over and figured out the puzzle that I was doing with my husband before my husband got a chance to.
When I tried another puzzle with my son he got easily frustrated and pushed the blocks away. He didn’t give it much effort but instead just tried to guess and when he wasn’t right got very frustrated. My son did great with the memory exercises.
I noticed that my 4 year old who has always liked puzzles did very well with the logic exercises but poorly with memory ones. I think this will really benefit him because he thinks this is just a really fun game so we will do it alot.
I think this will be very good for my son. I am going to focus on the logical piece because his memory is great and he already has had his sequencing issues remediated. I will have to go slow to avoid frustration. I haven’t been at this for very long but my first impression is very positive.
Maybe it isn’t the teacher. Did you consider that possibly the teacher is saddled with a really bad math program? I get the impression there are good one’s and bad one’s.
My son’s class is piloting a program supposedly based on some research by the national science foundation. It is called trailblazer math. It is such a great program for my son. They go into depth on each topic. I swear, coming from the straight old way of doing things it makes my head hurt. I would totally understand some hating it.
My son loves it and does really well with it. I am amazed at how independent he has become. He has ADD and I think he needs to become engrossed in things to attend or else he finds them boring. Straight math just doesn’t have a point for him.
Maybe you could find out what they are using and see if they would be willing to pilot a program that goes into depth on topics. If the whole class is having a problem maybe the teacher would be willing to try anything.