The Praxis of Pedagogy Day 51 & 52

Yesterday we finished up the reading of "Undermining Oppression" and then I handed out a study guide for the test and we went over questions and answers. Today we had the test. Many of the test questions I pulled directly from the study guide so if the students studied... they should do well. It will be interesting to see how the students did though.

I was grading papers yesterday and once again I HATE GRADING! It's really hard to fairly and justly grade a paper of a student that doesn't have the skills of others in their grade level. When I am getting students with 1st or 2nd grade reading/writing skills then how can I grade them? I mean if I grade on skills appropriate to their grade level then they will always flunk. If I just flunk kids all the time then they will drop out of school and the thing they need to most is to be in school. But at the same time is it right to give a student the same grade as a kid that is up to grade level? I was correcting homework that was on a 1-5 scale and then I came upon a paper that was incomprehensible. After reading through it 4 or 5 times, then I finally pieced together what she was trying to say. So what she was saying did go along with what the assignment was but the paper was so bad I didn't know what to do. It is incredibly frustrating. I have to talk to more people about it. The range in skill level is so great that it's hard to conduct classes. Words that I think a high school student should know they don't know. I was talking to one teacher and he said that he was talking with the kids and they didn't know what practically meant. He had to explain what that meant... It's criminal the skill level of some of these kids.

I had one student who is a part of my CTM bomb a test and I asked him if he studied. He said that he studied a bit and that he didn't study the reading and answer the study guide questions cause it didn't appeal to him. So I guess he figured it would be better to fail the test than to suck it up and answer the unappealing questions. I've read his writing and his skill level is such that he could have answered the questions. I even had a study session after school but he didn't want to participate in it so I wasn't going to force him.