X is for xylophone

I have spent my weekend in the midwest listening to physician after physician, lecturing ad nauseum on subjects I've already been marinated in for some time now. While statistics and data sets were tossed around by the speakers, their voices inevitably turned into the Charlie Brown teacher voice. My mind began to wander and I started to think of something my mom and I discussed recently.



I started first grade in a new city after my family moved. I had been attending a private religious school for 2 years and my parents decided that I needed to experience public school to properly integrate socially. Because of my age, the school made my mom enter me into the first grade; I had already completed this at my other school but they thought I was too young to mingle with the elder second graders.



My memory of my first day in public school brings up very vivid and vulnerable feelings. I remember hearing the teachers discuss the alphabet and they wanted to review it for all of us. Apparently at this school, they spent all of kindergarten learning the order of (and how to draw) all 26 fabulous letters. The teachers passed out laminated pictures, with each picture representing a different letter. We were to all get in line for recess according to our letter. I was the letter 'x' and I held a picture of a xylophone.



I remember being so unbelievably frustrated. The alphabet? Are you serious? The last thing I remember reading before this new school was "The Tell-Tale Heart." Granted it was not Poe's original version, but it was quite a bit more sophisticated than the alphabet review I was currently enduring. I thought of all the school work that lied between A-B-C and the killer heartbeat that drove the nervous narrator mad.



And I started to cry.



A grandmotherly teacher came to my side. "It's ok. This is just a review of the alphabet. If you don't know where your letter goes, someone will help you." That made me cry harder. She held my hand and helped me into line behind the kid with the watch picture. I would have called it a pocket watch, but we apparently wouldn't be getting to grammer for fifteen years.



I'm not sure why I couldn't verbalize any of this. Undeveloped verbal skills? The inability to translate emotion into words? I don't know. But I remember sobbing because of the overwhelming frustration and having no idea how to tell them why I was crying.



I came home and told my mom I hated school; she probably thought it was the new town, new school adjustment period and it would work itself out. When I got a C in almost every subject on my first six weeks report card, my mom took notice. My homeroom teacher had a conference with my mom and told her that I was far behind everyone else; I didn't know the answers when I was called upon, I couldn't do the assignments, etc. Mrs. B pulled out my papers and showed my mom the evidence. My mom told her that she knew I could do this work, that I was many levels past what she was shown. Mrs. B said I couldn't spell simple words, count money correctly, or read very well. Count money? I was doing pre-algebra the previous year. Mrs. B was skeptical but kept trying to get me to participate. I don't really remember the specifics of not doing the work, not participating. But I remember being depressed about how long it was going to take to get to something interesting, something challenging.



Like I said before, my mom and I only recently talked about this for the first time. All she remembers is that I did badly in school when we first moved. She told me about the parent-teacher conference and how she later brought in examples of my work from my previous school. She said that after that, things were fine. She had no idea what Mrs. B did to change things, but all my grades returned to A's and I no longer hated my new school. (Thank you, Mrs. B. Wherever you are.)



All I knew was that my mom came in to talk to Mrs. B and after that I had my own work separate from everyone else. New topics - subjects I had not learned before, interesting things. Eventually, a few other kids were pulled in with me and we had a small separate group for every subject. I stayed in classes with most of these kids all the way through high school.



But high school is a whole different story...




My Beef This Week



Given this blog theme, my current beef is how we are leaving so many children behind with our "no child left behind" legislation. W passed that shit in Texas and made a poorly functioning educational system completely worthless. Then W steals the presidency and manages to leave the rest of the country's children behind as well. All my friends and family members that are teachers are trying to get out any way they can. We need these teachers. We need Mrs. B.

I spoke with a math teacher friend of mine last night and she has only been back in school for a few weeks but is already ready to walk. She kept asking, "why must they make an already difficult job even more impossible to do?" Granted, that seems to happen everywhere; definitely in my job too, but I get paid over 5 times her salary and get better tax breaks for my trouble. And my job is not nearly as important as educating our children. My aunt recently quit teaching elementary school because of "all teachers left behind" (as she likes to call it). One of my favorite teachers has started teaching at a community college because he couldn't deal with the new regs. Several of my mother's teacher-friends are retiring early because of the same thing.



We are losing good teachers and we are 'educating' students to take standardized tests. Critical thinking skills? Who needs them...We are manipulating statistics to show how great we are doing not leaving the kids behind. We are doing a huge disservice to our youth. Without outside influences, this 'system' merely prepares them for their brave new world sans Aldous Huxley's manual.