I have an African America girl in my fifth grade class who has been tardy 54 times and absent 40 times. I know because the office recently gave me a print out report of all my students. I am not joking. Going to judge me by HER test scores?
I have a Filipino boy in my class. Despite the fact that our school is located in an awful ghetto, his father spends every penny he has on taking the boy to basketball practice. He recently drove the boy from here in Los Angeles to Las Vegas to play in a tournament. The boy missed a perfect score of 600 on last year’s California State Testing in Math by only one question. The boy has not been tardy once, absent once, or missed a homework assignment. When I accidentally marked the boy as absent (we do in by computer now, and I marked the wrong box) , the boy’s father was in the office at 2:20 immediately after school to see what was going on. He had received a phone call, and the father GOT OFF WORK to check on his son. But he didn’t come in until after school, because he had too much respect for me, to bother me while I was teaching. I felt like a bum.
We stopped having spelling bees at the school. It was simply too embarrassing for all involved to have the same family of Vietnamese win year after year. Particularly, since all of the kids spoke with an incredibly heavy accent. You see, all the kids were born outside of the country. But they can spell any word on the list, because they will practice several hours a day.
I have a Latino kid in my class. His mother coaches him to act totally stupid and helpless when interviewed by the school psychologist so he can receive extra services from the state.
I have another Latino boy in my class. He has no respect for women. If a woman teacher’s assistant takes the ball away from him, because the bell has rung, he will simply wrestle it away from her, because his father has taught him that women are all b@#$%^’s and than you don’t have to listen to them. His father in Los Angeles can’t stand the boy, and neither can his mother in Bakersfield, so he alternates. He spends a few weeks in Bakersfield. A few here in Los Angeles. No teacher at the school can remember the boy doing homework in anyone’s living memory. He is 12 years old and 9 months in the Fifth Grade, and by California law, cannot be retained again. I guess his low test scores (FBB-Far Below Basic) must be MY fault.
I am just curious. How do you judge me by the actions of third parties that I have no control over?
Libertarian
Why should I get a grade based on what a third party does? What if the student is lazy? Stupid? Unmotivated? Why should that have anything to do with ME?
