Just wondering what some of your opinions are regarding schools and classroom training. For instance - I am against English as a second language. Too many students can't read, comprehend and write as it is. They cannot even fill out job applications. I am also against calculators being used when students cannot even do simple arithmetic (adding, substracting, multiplying and dividing). Forget basic algebra and fractions!!!!!

Students don't know who our presidents were, half don't know the history of America, and they cannot even name the continents and oceans.

I believe in the old school-marm way of teaching - you learned! If you didn't learn - you didn't pass - period! We should go back to those days.

Not all schools are bad - don't get me wrong - but when you look at many inner-city statistics - not only are they not learning, they don't have the proper school books, and the dropout rate is exceptionally high! I have even noticed that inner-city teachers teach differently and with a different attitude than suburban school teachers and private school teachers.

Just wondering what your opinions are........

I've heard a lot of teachers say that "no child left behind" makes their jobs tons harder, and that the opposite thing happens more than a little bit (people are promoted who have no business being promoted).

Yes it is - I know - I dreaded the start of the school year - just trying to get the kids on the same "page" so that you can start your lesson plans. So many times a student is passed that should not be. And summer school is getting shorter and shorter. The students that really need the help are just not getting it. It's pathetic. They end up dropping out or passing by the skin of their teeth. They cannot read, write, spell or comprehend. I don't know where the parents are! This is something you don't discover all of a sudden when a student is 16 years old. It should be dealt with from the beginning. When I went to school there were no special ed classes, but there were speech classes. If you pronunciated one word incorrectly - you went to speech class. And you learned! You feared not learning. Today - a teacher cannot correct a student without a lawsuit! And school boards - as far as I'm concerned they are just political money wasters! Kids need books in their classrooms - not a bunch of high paid nobodies that don't know what they are doing.

Ok - I'll hush...................

This actually makes me feel good, because I'm going pretty good in school and it's nice to know I'm so high above everybody else.

Oh, don't get me started on some of our educational systems today. Some are very good--others have a way to go. I taught first grade back when the Vietnamese boat people had arrived in Houston and believe me when I say that we didn't have special classes for them in Vietnamese!!!!! And yet because their parents had such high expectations for them those children learned English and mainstreamed easily. Never had one that wasn't a good student.

Now, on the phonics issue and why I think schools should go back to systematically teaching it. At our school we spent the first 6 weeks of first grade teaching phonics

---

day 1 we introduced long O and the rest of the week was devoted to long o activities and practicing sounding out words with long O. 2nd week was long A and so forth. By the end of 6 weeks we had covered long and short vowel sounds and blends. Then we jumped into the basal readers. Because our students could sound out words by then they zipped through the early readers (of course they also had some sight words that they couldn't sound out and had to memorize) but it gave them such a feeling of confidence. By March when we administered the achievement tests, our first grades' class AVERAGE was second grade, second month. We had some students who scored at even higher grade levels. These were typical, average first graders. We as teachers gave them a very easy tool to learn how to read and spell. When I transferred to Lafayette, LA I had a class of middle to low income students. I was told that there was no way that I was going to teach those "Cajun" kids phonics. Yes, I had to work harder, but when we administered the same achievement tests at the end of the year my students outscored the teacher who had the "high achievers"----fancy that? Only difference? I taught systematic phonics and she didn't. She jumped her students into the books from day one and they basically did the look and see method. Now, this method and whole language work

---

they will eventually learn to read but why take such long and roundabout ways to do it???????? I once tutored a 3rd grader being taught the whole language approach and she was woefully doing poorly in spelling and her confidence in reading was at a very low level. One week she'd know the words and the next week didn't. So I taught her phonics

---

back to square one. In 4 weeks (because she had had some phonics but not systematically taught) I handed her back to her parents making A's on her spelling tests and flying on clouds of success. Ok, I've taken up enough space, but I high five you, Mama Mangia.