Time to become a Helicopter parent?

[tskeeter]

Shelia, one point to make about skipping a large part of the book is that, I think, a part of the benefit of reading is that reading teaches you how to write.  My biggest observation in my first college English Composition class was that the kids who didn't know how to write seemed to have done very little reading.  Reading provides a basis understanding sentence structure.  If it's good, it flows and is easy to understand.  It feels right.  If the sentence structure is poor, what you are reading is often confusing.  May require a second, or a third reading, and feels clumsy.  People who read can feel the difference and will work to improve what they write.  Even when they can't quite articulate why they feel a need to make a sentence better.

Skip reading a large portion of a book and you significantly reduce the exposure that the student has to the writing style of the author.  So, the child may not learn how to flesh out a description of a situation, or a place, like Hemingway or Steinbeck.  Part of communicating ideas and persuasive writing is about the details that engage the reader.  It's the difference between a poorly told joke, and a joke told by a master story teller.  Both contain the essential facts.  But, it's the details, embellishments, and timing provided by the master story teller that allows the listener to envision themselves in the situation the joke is about, and makes the difference between amusing and hilarious.   

[sheilaincali]

Nov 26, 2013 14:06:39 GMT -5 @southernsusana said:

Sheila, you just answered one of my questions.  Usually, teachers don't choose their own books to teach in the classroom.  All of our students read the same book if they are in the same grade level.  Pre-AP read these plus a few more.  We even have a pacing guide that says we should be teaching the same books at the same time at both high schools.

My other comment is that Common Core may mean that more books are read in less than their entirety.  We no longer teach a "book."  We teach skills such as providing evidence and making inferences.  Those do not require reading the entire book although that is nice if time permits.  There is also a shift in emphasis away from fiction.  More nonfiction is required

I'm not defending the teacher.  I just thought you may not know that the English Language standards have shifted rather dramatically . . . at least for Alabama.  So the classroom may not resemble the one you remember if Common Core is new to your state or district.

Thank you for chiming in from a teacher's perspective.  I hadn't considered that.  It just struck me as so very odd and wrong that she would tell them to skip half the book and refer to the middle of the book as "unnecessary fluff"  I guess I take offense to her whittling down a book like To Kill a Mockingbird as essentially good beginning- unnecessary fluff- good ending.  Seemed strange to me.  From what DS said it wasn't so much of a "we are pressed for time so these chapters won't be on the test but feel free to read them if you'd like".  It was a straight up "read chapters 1 through 4, skip this whole next section and then read the last couple chapters".  
 

[NomoreDramaQ1015]

It just struck me as so very odd and wrong that she would tell them to skip half the book and refer to the middle of the book as "unnecessary fluff

That's what bothers me too.  I can get not reading an entire book, we only read parts of Moby Dick in my senior English class (thank god!) there just wasn't enough time to read the entire thing.

But our teacher didn't refer to the rest of the novel as "fluff" and the textbook did a good summary of what happened before the chosen excerpts so we weren't lost.  The segement was designed that way on purpose.  We weren't told to  skip to the end the rest is no big deal.  The rest of the book is a big deal we just didn't have time to read it all, hence the summaries so we could get the context of the selected prose.

A lot of the important stuff in Mockingbird happens in the middle.  I would hardly call it fluff since you need it to understand the end of the story.  It puts what happens into context.

To call it fluff would make me question if she's ever read or understands the book herself.

[sheilaincali]

Oped-  They don't classify the kids as "gifted" in our district.  In California he was in GATES but here they don't have that as an option.  Starting in 6th grade he could request to do "extra math" with one of the math teachers before school if the student wanted to be challenged.  In 7th and 8th grade they had 3 math options they could choose from. 
9th grade is the first opportunity they have to straight up choose the "Advanced" Options. 
They could choose their math and two electives.  The Advanced option was available in:  English and Social Studies.

Any kid that registered for the Advanced option they would try to find a spot for. 

As a Sophomore he can choose Regular or Enriched English, regular or AP US History, 2 electives and math.  The rest of his schedule is filled with the regular assigned classes (PE, Physics and Health).

Next year he will have more AP options available to him. 

Last year they had 4 or 5 sections of Advanced English.  This year they only had enough kids choose the Advanced option to have one section of it.  The rest registered for regular English. 

[Deleted]

Eek. So she is an English teacher then. I would ask questions. I would not be up in arms, but seriously wondering about goals and objectives and how they are being met in the classroom.

its no excuse, but my first year teaching was awful. It was so not like the theory. I was teaching high school, when I was like 21/22? I had a really bad mentor/support system. 

It's no excuse, your kid deserves a good teacher who will help him meet the goals he has/needs to meet... But approach it that way, and maybe ask about her support... Does she have a curriculum? Does the class have set goals and objectives? Etc...

[sheilaincali]

I got busy with payroll and haven't emailed the principal yet.  I think I will email the teacher directly and voice my concerns. 

Thank you all for your input.  I was really afraid I was just overreacting and that it was perfectly fine for her to have them skip a large portion of a book. 

[zibazinski]

This happened to DS. A first year teacher was assigned junior AP English. I was once a first year teacher and I wasn't so hot btw. I'd have been overwhelmed had I been thrown to the wolves which is what kids with IQs of 130 and above are when confronted with a brand new teacher. Even DS who is normally cool went ballistic about this new teacher. I thought it was cruel of admin to put her in that classroom situation. She was totally unable to handle it or the kids. She was removed by admin, put in a normal English class and another teacher moved to AP. that is what needs to be done.

[zibazinski]

I also had another teacher removed in 7th grade. For that I had to get a bunch of parents together and go into the principals office. We said she had 24 hours to fix it or we were heading to admin and a board meeting. Which is public and televised. She fixed it. Math teacher couldn't teach math. Lovely. DS thought that was funny until I pointed out that math builds on skills learned previously and if he didn't learn those skills, he was up shits creek. As it was I had to hire a tutor to catch him up because it was weeks before I figured out he didn't know his math. Stupid woman gave him As.  She gave them all As!

[Angel!]

It is weird to me that they only have 1 advanced english class & they give it to a teacher with no experience.  It seems like that advanced classes should be taught by those with the most experience & considered the best.

[michelyn8]

I was in honors English in high school - it was advanced but not the same as what is now called AP (we didn't have that back then).  Our structure was different than other systems in that each six weeks, we moved to a different topic and often different teacher.  One six week grading period we may be with a teacher studying grammar and the next studying 2-3 of Shakespeare's plays. On occasion, teachers would read novels to us and/or tell us not to read ahead.  If I liked the novel, I disregarded what they said about reading ahead but if it bored me, I didn't really read it all.  The crux of it is I do not like analyzing what I read and picked up more from the class discussions than from forcing myself to read something that bored me.

Some classics lend themselves to being read aloud, others not so much.  If you get students who are otherwise focused but not good at the analytical part of most Lit classes, hearing the novel may help them pick up on those parts that they are being asked to deconstruct. 

In any case, if you have concerns, you should address them with the teacher and get her side of it.  Like others have pointed out, it may be part of her lesson plan so she can squeeze more in this semester.  Just because she hasn't relayed the time crunch to the students doesn't mean it isn't there. 

[sheilaincali]

Angel-  I agree with you- I was surprised that they have her teaching the class.  DS has  a number of young teachers this year.  I think his PE teacher (who I had 20 years ago), his German teacher (age 35- graduated from HS with my sister) and his Engineering teacher are his only teachers over the age of 30.

Math, English, Physics and AP US History are all taught by 1st or 2nd year teachers. 

[Angel!]

Nov 26, 2013 15:53:46 GMT -5 sheilaincali said:

Angel-  I agree with you- I was surprised that they have her teaching the class.  DS has  a number of young teachers this year.  I think his PE teacher (who I had 20 years ago), his German teacher (age 35- graduated from HS with my sister) and his Engineering teacher are his only teachers over the age of 30.

Math, English, Physics and AP US History are all taught by 1st or 2nd year teachers. 

Wow, that would really bother me.

[sheilaincali]

The AP US History teacher is amazing.  He knows his stuff and is really challenging the kids.  Started a history club that DS joined.  No complaints with him at all. 

Math- she makes the kids write out everything even the little 2 + 2 parts which seems unnecessary and was a struggle for DS.  His is math minded and can do most of the math to this point in his head.  Making him write it down is probably good for him but it annoys him. 

Chemistry (I said Physics originally but that was last year- my mistake)- is a joke.  She tries but it's a regular class and DS spends a lot of time doing extra labs while she has the class re-test units that he aced.  There isn't another option for him this year but fortunately next year there are a couple of different AP science classes he can take.  With the extra labs that she lets him do and the extra projects that his Engineering teacher gives him I'm not as concerned about the sciences.

I was miffed about English because last year's Advanced class was a joke too. 

I'm thinking maybe I'm taking it too seriously and need to just step back.  It's difficult because all of DS' friends are like DS so when I get together with the parents we talk about school, college, classes, etc. most of the time.  The kids are so serious about their educations that it rubs off on their parents.  I'm sure I'm making a big deal out of the whole thing and that she had valid reasons for having the skip a big portion of the book. 

There is no parent manual that prepares you for this.  I worry every day that I am going to steer him wrong and ruin his chances at getting in to a good college or will direct him to the wrong major or a million other things. 

[alabamagal]

If you are worried about college, all they look at is grades and the advanced classes.  If he is taking advanced English and gets an A, all is good.  They will never know that he skipped the middle of a book

[Deleted]

Shelia, where are you again, sorry I always forget details...

New teachers can go many ways... If they find their niche right away, you can benefit from their enthusiasm and energy. 

But if they aren't in their niche, they have less experience in dealing, fewer tools in the toolbox so to speak... It can be bad. 

There is a reason why something like 50% of teachers leave the profession in like 5 years... Not sure if good mentoring has changed that? 

[milee]

Nov 26, 2013 16:40:13 GMT -5 alabamagal said:

If you are worried about college, all they look at is grades and the advanced classes.  If he is taking advanced English and gets an A, all is good.  They will never know that he skipped the middle of a book

True to some extent.

But I think that skipping the middle of a book could really hurt the students.  The AP tests are national tests which the teacher cannot control and students will need to have extensive knowledge of details and themes from a variety of literature in order to write an essay that is acceptable for the AP test standards. If the students aren't learning the "middle" parts of the books, they are probably missing most of the details they're going to need. Also, once the students get to college if they're in a halfway decent program, the college is going to assume they have a reasonable background in literature, which they won't have if they've been skipping the middle parts of the classics.

It just seems like an odd approach, IMHO. Especially since both the books mentioned are fairly easy reads. Kids in advanced classes shouldn't struggle with whipping through either of those books and if they are, the school should be examining the qualifying criteria, not dumbing down the class.

[Deleted]

Sheila, I don't really have much advice, I just wanted to say I'm sorry you and DS and dealing with this, I know how important his education is to all of you. It does NOT sound like this teacher is a good fit for the class, and frankly I wonder what whoever gave her that class was thinking. The notion of giving a book to read and then telling the students to skip the middle because of the "fluff" is viscerally anathema to me.

I can't help but wonder why none of the other English teachers wanted that class. Maybe because they knew it would be "extra work", dealing with advanced / gifted students. Because frankly, they should all have been "fighting" for that AP class. If that is the case, that nobody wanted it, it speaks VERY poorly of the other English teachers, and the entire department. I have trouble believing that is the case, so there must be another explanation, but frankly, I can't think what it might be. I'd try to (gently) find out why / how this inexperienced and unmotivated / clueless teacher ended up with that AP class. If you can find that out, you will probably learn a lot more about the school (maybe more than you wanted to).

I LOVE the idea of trying to get DS to advocate for himself, since he's so bright and articule. And you can be supportive or even physically present while he does it (or hovering nearby, LOL, sorry, I couldn't resist!) 

I also have to defend "young teachers" ... my DS3 (who is exactly one month younger than Sheila's DS) goes to an International Lycee here. It's a "regular" French lycee, except that it has 13 international sections, so all the kids go to their "section" classes for Literature, and History / Geography, in their native languages. 

The American section (where DS3 goes) is taught by lovely, smart, extremely dedicated middle-aged teachers. About three years ago, suddenly a whole bunch of them took a sabbatical, either to study, or to follow their spouses' careers, or to take care of aging parents, or to get their kids settled at university in the US. And the school hired two teachers who seemed barely any older than the kids LOL. They were both about 25. When I first saw them (DS3 had both of them their first year) I mentally groaned, but I was SO WRONG!!!

Those two teachers were just AMAZING! And their energy was contagious, and it energized an already-energetic English Department and History Department. The school had just gotten smartboards the year they arrived, they just taught the other teachers how to use them, informally. The other teachers technically KNEW how to use the smartboards, but the two young teachers made them COMFORTABLE. One of those two teachers stayed, he's still only about 28! The other was begged to stay, but she was very homesick, so she went back to the US. She is now teaching at a charter school in DC.

They were young, but VERY gifted, incredible pedagogues, SO MUCH ENERGY! They were right there with the kids on social media, starting history / lit blogs, FB groups, etc. ALL the teachers in those departments do that now, but I know that they helped the older teachers feel much more at ease about that. 

They were behind some incredible projects ... one year, they got the younger MS kids to "choose" a nationality, create a family tree, and arrive at Ellis Island. Create a family history, decide who had skills and needed to work to support the others. And they did a parents' morning to present that, complete with recipes and food from all those "native countries". 

[sheilaincali]

georgiagal- there is something to be said for that- it is an Advanced Class and he will get an A in it.  That's true,

My concern is that I don't want them teaching him shortcuts now.  I'm worried because he NEVER has any homework. His friends frequently do but he never does.  He gets it all done in class but I'm not sure how he is able to do it faster than the other kids.  He hasn't studied for a test yet.  I'm legitimately concerned that he isn't learning good study skills. 

Oped-  We are in Minnesota. 

Update-  I don't know if the principal talked to her before DS' class or not but she changed her tune during the class today.  She changed her tune some today.  She told them that they were welcome to read the entire book and that she'd give them extra credit if they wrote a review of the chapters that they skipped in class.  DS has already finished the book so he plans to write the review tomorrow (Thanksgiving break) and downloaded some of the books from the list that Honey provided onto his Kindle to start reading them this weekend too. 

[Deleted]

That's great news! Yes, obviously somebody talked to her. She didn't come up with that on her own. It may well have been because of your "anonymous" phone call. 

I would still want to know why she got that AP class. You deserve an explanation. IMO you get more info on that sort of thing while having a coffee or drink with somebody you know who knows more than you do than by confronting the administration.

I'm very surprised that your DS never has homework, my DS has TONS of homework. But I can't help you with that from here. I hope somebody in the US can weigh in on that. 

They "outlawed" homework here about 15 years ago, because they decided the kids who didn't have parents who could help them, or who weren't present, because they were working to support the family / on drugs / in prison / alcoholics / pick one or more / were at at great disadvantage. So in its infinite wisdom, the French gov't decided to legally abolish homework for nursery and primary schools. I don't think that law applies to MS or HS. 

Thankfully our school district never did that, but they did have to write "suggested work" instead of "homework" for years.

[Deleted]

Milee, Sheila's son can't write about To Kill a Mockingbird (or Of Mice and Men) on an AP English test.  The test tries to replicate college English, and these are lower-level books.  So on that level, it doesn't matter if he reads the whole book or not, but it's a shame not to read most kids' favorite book.  I used to teach it to seventh graders, which would be tough given that it involves a supposed rape, but Mayella obviously wasn't raped so it was a non-issue.

There will be more and more reading of incomplete texts.  We are no longer teaching texts; we are teaching skills.  However, every college survey course I took in English dealt with incomplete texts.  You read a chapter from everything, or at least it seemed like that.  Our 12th grade English book is organized like that.  You get a small part of Beowulf, a couple of tales from the Canterbury Tales, etc.  If you want a whole novel, the parents have to buy them.  Our school is considered college prep, and we only read two entire books in regular English 12--we read Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Frankenstein. We read two plays, Macbeth and Pygmalion.  Everything else is excerpts, a short work like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, etc.  It isn't hat we don't read constantly, but we don't have time to read ALL of Beowulf, ALL of the Canterbury Tales, ALL of Lyrical Ballads, etc.

[Deleted]

Debt, I am not sure this is an AP class.  It sounds more like an "honors" class than even a pre-AP class.

By the way, I was hired to teach the AP class at the most prestigious high school in Alabama.  None of the other teachers would touch it with a ten-foot pole.  The parents complained about how hard the teacher was and got that teacher fired.  They wanted their kids to be challenged, but their kids had to get A's so they would be competitive for scholarships.  The other teachers wouldn't touch the National Honor Society either because one parent showed up with a team of lawyers to protest his child not getting in because of cheating.  I got to be co-sponsor of that, too.  It was fine, and I had great scores, but I was exhausted after a year of that and went back to my PhD program.

I wasn't a "new" teacher.  I was currently working on my PhD at UA and had a teaching certificate.  But no one wanted to teach that class.  They knew they couldn't fight the parents.

The point is that you shouldn't blame the faculty unless you know the whole story. 

[Deleted]

SS, to me, there is a difference between reading an entire poem, like The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, and SOME of Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales, etc. To me they are (sort of) like older versions of modern short stories ...

You don't tell your students to read the first / last pages of Beowulf, do you? You may tell them to read SOME of the Canterbury tales, but not the beginning and the end of one tale, right? 

I DO see your point, but with books lke TKAM or OMAM, there is just no excuse not to read the entire book. And I can"t believe an English teacher would be telling her students that the middle is just "fluff"!

[Deleted]

SS now I understand why none of the more experienced teachers wanted to teach that class LOL! I'm not being facetious, that adds a lot of perspective. It's horrible to feel that because students are in an advanced class, you are supposed to give them great grades, even if they don't deserve them.

Maybe THAT is the backstory here, Sheila? I dunno (sic lol), but there IS a backstory, trust me on that. You need to put on your detective hat and find out what it is. 

When I return papers, some students (ironically, always the weakest ones) tell me But Miss (yes, I'm still MISS to them at nearly 54 LOL, that has been drummed into them, how to politely address your English teacher, so I correct them repeatedly but let it go) we expected better grades! I tell them so that makes two of us, I expected better papers. 

[Deleted]

I agree the poor choice was suggesting it was a strategy to just read parts of the book and skip the 'fluff'... It wasn't that she just picked out significant passages to read...

Minessoata is not an 'adoption' state, so there is a good chance she wasn't given much of a curriculum to follow? ... 

[Knee Deep in Water Chloe]

For what it's worth: 
I was an English teacher and am now a high school principal. 
My "regular" sophomores are reading Of Mice and Men right now.
I have used To Kill a Mockingbird in 7th grade advanced LA and with regular 8th grade LA. 

There should be a lot of grace extended to a first year teacher struggling. However, as a parent, I would be frustrated that my child was not being taught at his level and pace. 

Students who are constantly struggling and/or are in the lower classes are often assigned the more experienced/adept teachers since those students need to make more than a year's growth in one school year. It's a difficult decision as an administrator--who gets the good teachers?

And, I have fired teachers, but it is a difficult process when there isn't something egregious. 
It takes at least three years for even a naturally "good" teacher to reach "great". So, it takes three years for a mediocre teacher to reach good. 

[sheilaincali]

southernsusana= you are correct it is not a true AP class.  It's called Enriched English- it's the "Advanced" option for 10th grade English at our school. 
If she had assigned them to read a specific excerpt of the book that's one thing.   But to tell a room full of kids (many of which fight having to read in the first place) to skip a large portion of the book because it's "Unnecessary Fluff" is not the way to encourage kids to read.  That was my frustration.  She went out of her way to discourage them from reading that entire section. 

Debt= there definitely could be a backstory.  The school offers a variety of AP courses and adds more every year.  Their stated goal is to provide the amount of AP classes that the kids want.  They claim that if they have 50 kids register for a particular AP class and only have room for 25 that they will add a second section of that class rather than tell 25 kids that they can't take the class. 

Chloe- that makes sense too.  I guess if my son was struggling I would want an experienced teacher in there trying to help him.

FWIW- DS has finished the book.  He is a fast reader and he had enough time in school this week to finish it.  He's one of those kids that if he has 5 extra minutes in class he will pull out a book and read it.  

[zibazinski]

[zibazinski]

Crap, that was for Chloe.

[Deleted]

My fear is that he's going to end up like me... I graduated with honors at my rural high school... Never cracked a book. I didn't have to study... Never really challenged by the 'academic' track... And then I just blew college because I got to first semester engineering classes and had never learned how to study... 

Unfortunately, education classes were much easier... 

It sounds like your son does have some more challenging classes, although I worry there is never any work he needs to do out of class.

[Deleted]

Actually, Debt, we don't tell them to read "some" of Beowulf or The Canterbury Tales.  It is simply that "some" is all that is available in our literature book.  I love John Gardener's Grendel and would teach the whole thing as a counterpoint to the excerpt from Beowulf, but it's not approved.  We have to have approved rationales for anything we teach other than from our textbook.  We have one rather stupid page from Grendel in our textbook.  The rest is way too suggestive although I do copy the last chapter and do a little censoring.

My real point is that although these texts are probably approved, don't necessarily fault the teacher because they are not grade-level inappropriate, not challenging enough, etc.  Also, be aware that Common Core will change your classroom.  It has mine.  We still read the four texts that we read in their entirety (four is not a lot within a school year), but at least every other day I am incorporating something nonfiction.  That cuts down a lot on fiction.

Common Core standards don't care if your student read To Kill a Mockingbird in its entirety.  It isn't going to ask kids about the events in the middle.  It doesn't care about the events much at all.  It wants to assess whether your kids can make inferences and support them with evidence.  You can do that with a page from To Kill a Mockingbird. 

Just to upset everyone, I will halfway agree with the teacher in question.  I have taught this book 10 to 15 times.  To Kill a Mockingbird is an episodic book.  In that type of book, one event does not lead to another.  Each can stand as a separate short story.  So you have Scout's first day at school.  You have the kids (a couple of chapters) trying to get Boo Radley come out.  You have Scout bringing the little Cunningham boy home where he pours syrup all over his dinner.  You have the chapter where Jem has to read to the old addicted lady to learn what real courage is.

Those are certainly not fluff, but they are separate stories only VERY incidentally contributing to the main plot.  I would never tell kids to skip them, but they were a major criticism of the book when Harper Lee was trying to get published.  They were a major obstacle to the book becoming a movie.

My real point is to find out the teacher's OBJECTIVE in teaching this book. If it is to simply teach a great moral story, they need to read the whole thing. If the objective is something else, you may be jumping the gun.