Summer School Week 1

Summer school so far has been eye opening. Jon, I, and another teacher are working with 17 8th graders who have failed the state standardized test in Reading…twice.

If they don’t pass this time, they may or not be able to go to high school. (This will come down to a meeting where the parents and school staff will talk to decide if the kids go, or stay—and repeat 8th grade.) We have been teaching them four main areas (that are on the test): inferences, main ideas, supporting with text evidence/justifying answers, and context clues.

During summer school, the kids do some sort of reading for 6 hours a day. They have done everything that we have asked of them, and trust me, it is boring stuff. (This reading mumbo jumbo is why I am “normally” a science teacher.)

So, how did these kids get here? More importantly, why are they in summer school? I have been talking this over with my mom and sister who are also both teachers.

Is it because they really can’t read? We do have one boy who is still working on his sight words and decoding—he has dyslexia, but man does he work his butt off!

What about the others? Are they lazy? Surely, not all of them. Maybe some of their teachers wrote them off because they are behavior problems? Maybe they have attendance issues? The second day of summer school, we had two kids who were absent. ALREADY! I asked one of their teachers if that was normal. “Oh __________, she misses about two days a week.” (Yikes.)

On the other hand, some of them aren’t behavior problems at all. They are the quiet kids who sit in the back of the room and never say anything. They turn in their work, but they don’t truly understand their assignments (see a possible reason as to why, below). They pray their teacher won’t call on them, and many times they are able to fly under the radar. I have had these kids in class, and sadly, the only way I ever know if they are having any problems is when the test scores come back.

Then again, maybe some of them come from a home where English is not their first language? I would imagine about 13 of our 17 kids don’t speak English at home. I can tell because the majority of the questions they miss are ones that pertain to vocabulary. Patriotic, eagerly, offensive, entertaining—these were some words that the kids were not familiar with in one half hour block at summer school.

Lastly, I think some of our kids aren’t good test takers. They try and try, but they get thrown off with the distracter answers. They understand a lot of what is happening in class, but they just can’t pick the right multiple choice answer.

This is a problem because we are in a testing age, but that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

What can a teacher do? Well, when I figure out the answers I will share them.

I am going to start with teaching a little vocabulary each day—especially the words pertaining to emotions. I am also going to make those kids who like to be silent--speak up. I will encourage them to ask and answer questions and praise the heck out of them when they do.

12 more days ‘til the big day. The third times a charm—isn’t that what they say?