But seriously, here's how it all sums up from my perspective. Math is hard because pretty much from the first course to the last course you ever take, everything is cumulative and builds on itself. I would compare it to constructing a building, where you cannot build the second floor until the framework for the first floor is complete. Because of this, I have to think daily about the best way to approach a new concept for students who lack the confidence or skills from the fundamental math concepts. To use the same metaphor, everyday I am brainstorming ways to build the second floor before the first floor is completed. Certainly not impossible, but tricky indeed.
English is hard to teach at Richmond because so many of the students are English Language Learners. That's not to say that the students have a hard time communicating in the English language, but if you took a day to walk the halls of RHS, you would realize that English speaking and English reading and writing are just about two completely different languages to learn. The community vernacular totally interferes with the ability to string together complete sentences in a meaningful way.
You'd think that I would be totally overwhelmed with how low these students' math proficiency is, but by now, I am a pro at predicting what will and won't be confusing or what concepts will most certainly require a reteaching of the underlying fundamentals (the rule of thumb is to ALWAYS reteach the fundamentals haha). That being said, I don't think I could handle being an English teacher. For math, there is a clear goal in mind every day. To understand a concept means to be able to answer a set of problems correctly. And by the way, there is only one correct answer. In English, I don't understand how teachers could possibly divide up the curriculum in a satisfying way. For instance, one of my students asked me to help him with an essay that was a requirement to get into AP English next year. Many times I reminded him that I am not his English teacher, but he insisted. After a (very) rough draft, he asked me to "look over it." And let me just say that my favorite part of English was writing and grammar, because it all feels very structured and is the closest to black/white, right/wrong answers as you will ever get in English class. So, needless to say, I had to take a breath and think for a second about the appropriate amount of constructive criticism to dish out. In math, it is very easy to pinpoint the problem in addition to identifying all the correct steps. In dialog, "Okay, that's awesome that you did all these steps, but here is where we made a mistake." In English, how do you spin it? "Okay, that's awesome that you spelled all these other words correctly, but you actually forgot the B-E- on the front of the word 'BEcause.'" In my own education, I was drilled with the notion that your writing can always be improved, so where do I stop in correcting this kid's work? He has misspelled words, fragments, incorrect uses of commas and apostrophes (those make me cringe), bland word choice, little to no sentence variation, and some sentences that I asked him to read aloud to me because I just plain had no idea what they were saying. Thank goodness he already knew how to arrange it into paragraphs; I don't think I would have had the patience to deal with that. And I think it's safe to say that ending with a preposition will never ever be the most pressing issue in a student's essay, so forget mentioning that.
It's just so weird to me that these kids aren't able to translate spoken comprehensible ideas and thoughts into written comprehensible ideas and thoughts. How does that breakdown happen? I spoke to my students' English teacher about this and she said that feels like she is teaching five different things everyday, including things like vocabulary and just creativity in writing in general. And since reading is so difficult for them, they are able to pick up less in terms of vocab and writing styles from what they read. I certainly don't envy English teachers. I will say that often when a worksheet of mine asks my students to "explain" something that they are doing, I get a little window into what English class would be like, and I don't think I would like it. THAT would be my definition of being overwhelmed. Then again, less students have such strong negative feelings towards English than they do in math (I think), and our English test scores are nowhere near as dismal as our math scores, so who knows.
In terms of other classes, there's always the English language reading and writing barrier that limits what the students may gather from a textbook, but at least in things like science and history the concepts are completely new, so for the most part, success or failure has no predetermination. It pains me at the beginning of the year to check the state test scores for each individual student and to come to terms with the amount of reteaching that I really will have to do. I hope these teachers realize their incredible advantage when they begin the year with all their students on an (almost) equal playing field. All their students begin the year being 0% proficient in the material, and the state test scores that they receive at the end of the year are an accurate depiction of the effectiveness of the teacher. In math, you might say that some students begin the year with a negative proficiency in that they are ill-prepared from the last class, and this gaping hole in understanding must be addressed before any new learning can happen. Using my time to do this means less time to address all the curriculum content standards, and in the end leads to low scores on state tests. At the beginning of each school year, we look at the test results from the previous year, and frankly our math scores make it look like we are teaching them nothing. And I mean NOTHING. I can't speak for other math teachers (and probably shouldn't based on the things I've heard from students), but I often feel like so much of what I do goes unnoticed - all the sweeping up of previous years of problems in math really helps with my students' fundamentals, but certainly doesn't match up to the vigor of a state test to boost their preparedness.
Right now I am the furthest behind out of all Algebra teachers. When I write it like that it seems that it was a mistake and that I fell behind, but in fact I planned out my lessons in a slower pace than my colleagues. I think I'm getting more students to understand the material, but here's the problem: I'm pretty much committing to poor state test scores since I may not even make it to the last two entire units before the test is given. Or, who knows, maybe I'll get better scores since some of the students may get decent scores on the earlier material. Am I doing a service or disservice by moving at a pace more fitting to my students? It kills me to think about my handful of A+ students who are missing out on so much more of the curriculum because the other 30 students in their class can't keep up. I guess it will be a good experiment and maybe once and for all I will know what to do for next year.
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