An interesting experience...

I've been mentioned in a blog. Not about writing mind you, but about teaching. The interesting aspect of the mention is that the author (and yes, she is a romance author) has me saying things that she took totally out of context. I don't know whether to be angry or to just shake my head in pity. She claims I said my eighth grade students are "too stupid" to learn assonance, when what I said was most eighth graders don't know what assonance is (Now be honest, do you?). If I thought my eighth graders were "too stupid" to learn it, why would I bother teaching it? (By the way, there is a difference between knowing the definition of assonance and recognizing assonance-- I teach the latter) This woman has never been in my classroom, never talked to any of my students, nor did she ask me to elaborate.


We were talking about testing and NCLB, which I find a wonderful idea, but totally flawed in its execution. It's like communism--a fabulous idea, but it doesn't work on human beings. In New Mexico at my school, the testing takes four days of lost teaching time, which is longer than any other academic test out there, including the LCATs, the MCATs or any of the boards. We are expecting students to care about a test that in no way affects them (not gradewise, not placementwise) and then basing how we view our schools based on the results of these tests. In addition, the test makes no allowances for students. If education is truly individual why does every student take the same test? I don't worry about my students' performance on these tests because they're the top of the school, but I am the parent of a special needs child who is not and most likely never will be at grade level for her academics and yet she is required to take the test for her age, not her abilities. Her greatest goal is to succeed, and yet the test makes it impossible for her to do so. She comes home depressed and convinced she is stupid.

But back to this author...She is extremely bright, and truly gifted in the academic sense. She doesn't understand (perhaps understand is the wrong word; believe might be better) that most people don't think (I mean literally the act of thinking, not a belief system) the way she does. So she twisted my words and has labeled me one of those bad teachers who just babysits her students and doesn't want to be held accountable for what I do in the classroom.
Hmmm. I wonder what my students would think after they stopped laughing.
--Gabi

What I'm reading now:
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (Hey, it takes time when you're reading it aloud)
I need to find a new book to start.