Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/5/84; site randvax.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!timeinc!phri!pesnta!pertec!scgvaxd!trwrb!sdcrdcf!randvax!edhall From: edhall@randvax.UUCP (Ed Hall) Newsgroups: net.singles Subject: Re: XSO IQ (Really teachers...) Message-ID: <2572@randvax.UUCP> Date: Fri, 28-Jun-85 15:30:51 EDT Article-I.D.: randvax.2572 Posted: Fri Jun 28 15:30:51 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 3-Jul-85 08:26:54 EDT References: <1476@utah-gr.UUCP> <1560099@acf4.UUCP> Reply-To: edhall@rand-unix.UUCP (Ed Hall) Distribution: net Organization: Rand Corp., Santa Monica Lines: 27 Keywords: literacy, teaching, parenting Summary: It ain't always the kids or their folks... From mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora), responding to Jerry Hollombe > >Then they wonder why their children can't read when they graduate high > >school. > > This has more to do with the students and the parents than with the teachers. Not necessarily so. My first-grade teacher turned me off to reading--made it into complete drudgework--and as a result I lost all interest in it, even at home. (This certainly worried my folks, who tried quite hard to have me moved to another class.) No problem, though--my second-grade teacher believed in challenging her students, and I jumped five reading grade-levels in one year... with the same set of parents, and the same *me*. Now, I'm not one to generalize solely from an anecdotal experience, especially my own, but I and many people I talk to seem to have known a few phenomenal teachers, a lot of middlin' ones, and some real turkeys. But what is increasingly a problem is the burned-out teacher, under stress from meddling administrations and parents and large classes of increasingly unruly students, forced into performing duties rather than creating challenges. Our school systems seem to be getting better and better at creating this new kind of teacher, making bad teachers out of good ones rather than making good ones better. Our loss; our nation's loss. -Ed Hall decvax!randvax!edhall