Sunday, March 25

Now that I've been home for several days, it's time for reflection and thought about how to move forward and incorporate my Ghana experience into my teaching and my life.  I spent a good part of yesterday uploading all of my pictures and reading all of my emails from when I was gone.  I was very disappointed that my students here at South were extremely immature and ran my substitute teacher off within 5 days.  I  planned so carefully for the absence and am frustrated that at their age, they can't engage a bit more in their own learning.   I look at these girls in Ghana who literally spend 9-10 hours a day in their classroom (3-4 of those without adult supervision) and they don't destroy their materials or mutilate the furniture or abuse each other.  They simply work together to be as successful as they can possibly be. While I was gone from South High, my own students pulled the safety shower twice, dismantled at least 4 lab drawer locks, did their best to kill the fish, and filled every sink with trash....and all while adults were present.  What does this say about the future leaders of our country?  What does this say about the way we're raising our children?  What does this say about our expectations for young people?  Right now I'm feeling very hopeless and pessimistic.  I just have to keep telling myself that, unlike Ghana, in America we have the goal of educating EVERY child, not just a chosen few.  But in the back of my mind, I wonder if seeing education as an obligation rather than a privilege isn't killing our kids' futures....?  It's certainly putting a damper on my own motivation to teach.....and innovate.  The more innovative I become, the more  disruptive the students.  If I lead the class like a concentration camp, the students really work hard.  But I don't want to teach to a bunch of automatons.  How do I do the exciting strategies that get kids to think critically and interact positively without always having 3 or 4 who are destroying something?

There are 4 days remaining in the quarter.  By Thursday, I'm halfway through teaching physics for the first time.  I'm learning so much from teaching a new course and expanding my horizons.  The labs are so nice because there's very little material preparation, unlike biology.  I still think it's a crazy idea to do that half year of biology and half year of physics.  It'll all come out in the wash in two years when we'll have to re-teach it all to the juniors who are actually ready to learn.