Public school in all it’s glory

I found out yesterday that they allow a 2 week maternity leave for a student giving birth.

I mean I know students getting pregnant and having children is not ALL that rare, but it still took me by surprise when a runner came by today (I was subbing in a 12th grade class at one of the local high schools) with a request for one of the girl’s school work for this week and next and tacked to the end of the request was a proud announcement that she had her baby last Saturday.

Well, I guess I should be happy that baby and mom are healthy and she plans on returning to finish her high school education.

Subbing has been an eye-opening experience in some ways.  As a rule I’ve been spending most of my time in middle school classes.  I’m still avoiding the elementary schools and I’ve actually decided that I prefer the middle school kids to the high school ones.

6th and 7th grade trouble makers are still cute and manageable and 8th grade trouble makers still dread getting sent down to the dean’s office.  And all three grades want to talk and interact.  While the high school kids are pretty much set in their ways and find any interaction to be an inconvenience (can’t say after having 2 of my own that I’m surprised.)

Today I had 9th and 12th grade English classes for the kids who are probably not heading to 4 year colleges and we watched a movie (Fantastic 4, Rise of the Silver Surfer – makes prefect sense, right?) and the girls who were talking during it were just totally blowing me off about quieting down and the boys who kept trying to bring up their computers (all the English classes have individual PCs at each desk – and the district rule is that the kids may NOT be on the computer if there is a sub in the room  **see tangent below) would close them back down when I insisted on it, but…

Anyway, back to those middle school classrooms.

In the middle schools I’ve been covering a few different classes, so I’ve seen a range of the work the kids are doing.  All the middle school kids also have one period of study hall and so I’ve also gotten to see work they have in other classes.  And I have to say, their middle school math work has been unsettling.

These kids are in 6th, 7th, and 8th grade and there are some working at more advanced levels and getting through Algebra 1 in 8th grade…but they are the oddities if my 8 week sample is any indication.

Most of the 6th graders can not multiple in their heads.  Their classrooms have multiplication tables (up to 12×12) on the walls; or if their study hall isn’t in a math room, they have agendas that have the tables in the back to use.

If the tables aren’t available for one reason or another, they have no way of getting an answer aside from counting on their fingers (yes, I’m serious. I watched a student last week do multiplication by counting on their fingers)  No one has taught them simple things like:

8×6 =

= 8×5 +8

or

how to skip count (the child I was trying to help needed to find mulitples of 3 – 3s!!)

And the work that they have been doing is Least Common Multiple and Greatest Common Factors!  Imagine trying to do that when they don’t multiply.

And these kids are totally dependent on being able to grab a calculator.

Last week I had 8th graders who were completely lost on how to do long division (and show their work) when there was a remainder.  They could do it on their calculators, but….

The idea of converting decimals (with repeating numbers) into fractions left them totally in the lurch since their calculators just couldn’t handle that one.

And these kids were doing a quiz, so this wasn’t new material.  In fact for both those classes and in others, math classes seem to think letting the kids test with their notes open is standard!

“Here’s your homework with problems just like these (corrected BTW), go ahead and open your notes from class, and use a calculator…”

I feel bad that I made my kids actually do math.  I never had multiplication table up for them to refer to.  And calculators only came out when we started getting into multi-step algebra problems and then only in limited amounts.

I guess I expected too much from them.

** tangent story -

Girl has been taking a computer programing class.  If she continues through the entire sequence she’ll be ready to take the AP test for computer science, but that’s next year.

The other day they had a sub for the class and following the rules as we were given them, she refused to let any of the kids turn on their computers for the entire class.

Now, I realize that’s the rule, but it seems to me that the sub should have contacted the school office and asked if it applies in this particular class.  ALL of these kids’ work is on the computers!!