I just wrote up my notes from interviewing one of my Vietnamese students about her experience in the US v. Vietnam. (Had to do if for the bullshit workshop I'm forced to take. So far, this was by far (and by far I mean lightyears) the most informative, helpful and interesting part - I'm rather grumpy over the fact that this workshop is eating up 2 of my Saturdays, more or less, in their entirety. Anyways, the point is that I, well, we, really - I'm not sure I've met a teacher who hasn't - have noticed that our immigrant (as in fresh off the plane) students tend to do better, despite the language barriers, than our homegrown. I think it's a testament to the educational systems in other countries, which, if the students have access (ie - money, which if they made it to America, they probably had something) are pretty rigorous and demanding and they, like learn stuff way earlier than we teach our students.
But, my student pointed out, here her classes push her to think deeper and more creatively. And to discuss stuff. Whereas back home, it was all pretty much rote.
And I got to thinking - maybe our problem is that we think that what is good for adolescents and adults is also good for elementary age kids. Maybe we're trying to be too creative with the young uns so that by the time they get to me (high school) they don't know their ass from their elbow, academically speaking, and trying to get them to discuss the merits of the French Revolution and political philosophy is an exercise in futility (okay - even that might be a little heavy for your average adolescent, just, like, period, but, you know what I mean).
So, maybe I'm just another high school teacher frustrated that so many of my students show up as 11th graders barely reading. And maybe it's easy to blame their teachers/schools in the lower grades. And I know that parents and a broader society that portrays schools as boring and people who like school as nerds, both play their roles, but I can't help but feeling that something is missing in those lower grades. Heck, even my parents were aghast at the education I was getting at (ahem - with snobby, elitist nose in the air) Newton Public Schools. They couldn't understand why I hadn't diagrammed a sentence until I was a Junior in high school. (I seem to remember my mum saying that she had done it in 6th grade or something.) I'm just saying that maybe we should be a little less creative when kids, for the most part, already love school, or at least aren't the jaded, apathetic, sarcastic, sophomoric specimens that they become in high school. That way, when I get them, actually getting a chance to discuss something will seem fun, or at least different, from what they've done all their lives. And, they might actually know something.
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