MY PERFECT WORLD

The other day I read Ms. Bluebird's blog and had a wonderful conversation with my Dad, where he said he doesn't know how I do it, when my hands are tied and parents aren't taking any responsibility.

I wanted to break down a huge topic into it's simplest parts...the education system is in the toilet and teachers are being blamed for it all.

Let's look at just one aspect.... the latest buzzword.... "differentiate." 

Wikipedia says, "Differentiated instruction involves providing students with different avenues to acquiring content; to processing, constructing, or making sense of ideas; and to developing teaching materials so that all students within a classroom can learn effectively, regardless of differences in ability. Differentiated instruction is the process of ensuring that what a student learns, how he/she learns it, and how the student demonstrates what he/she has learned is a match for that student’s readiness level, interests, and preferred mode of learning."

Does anyone HONESTLY believe that in a 6 and 1/2 hour day, that even SUPERMAN could do this? Maybe, if I had less students, more time, no interruptions, involved parents, children who didn't come to school tired and undernourished and complete training on the new programs, not to mention enough books and paper......and I could go on and on.....

I want to go back to a much simpler time...

In my perfect world parents feed their children, read them books before they tuck them in to bed, give them consequences for poor choices, play catch and teach them to say, "Please" and "Thank You." In my classroom I would have all the basic colors of construction paper, everyone would have a copy of the math text book, we would make cards for Mother's Day, projects with graphs about how mold grows, hold a mock trial, make a 3-D model of the solar system and the Nile River, play chess, memorize the preamble to the constitution, sing songs, write to pen pals in another country, solve algebra equations and sudoku puzzles (because mom and dad had us memorize our multiplication facts), make a fraction pizza, make paper from scratch, grow a flower, do author and culture studies, build a bird house, visit the Natural History Museum, the zoo, a farm and the Nature Center (in the same year), put on a play, build a battery powered car, and have career day.

IT'S FUN TO DREAM SOMETIMES!