My Education in Education

It's been a while since my last post. One reason for this is that for the last four months or so I have been working as a substitute teacher in the Houston school system. Anyone who has run the gauntlet of substitute teaching knows how difficult this form of public service can be. This is especially true when one is working in "underprivileged" Title 1 program schools.

My very first sub assignment was a 7th grade math class in just such an environment. The school's demographics were 88% Hispanic, 10% black and 2% Caucasian. The community that feeds students to this middle school is not a ghetto but is most definitely low income where Hispanic gang violence - including drive by shootings - is a regular occurrence. As a general rule the culture of this community does not value education, so parent involvement and support is non-existent. For these parents school is no more than a state run day care center where any academic progress is just a by product.

In Texas in order to "graduate" from 8th grade and move on to high school, all students are required to pass state run standardized tests in English (reading), math and science. As a result there are 17 and 18 year old boys and girls still treading water in middle school along side 11 year old 6th graders. These kids are simply "putting in their time" until by law at 18 they no longer have to attend school. On-campus gang fights and teen pregnancy are not at all uncommon. My initial trial by fire as a substitute teacher was in this academic wasteland.

Not surprisingly I had the typical classroom management issues that face all substitute teachers but at this school they are an order of magnitude more challenging. In spite of the distractions I made my best effort to teach the material and found to my surprise that at least a few of the students were in fact interested in learning but could not bring themselves to participate in the classroom session due to peer pressure to be disruptive and disinterested. I found this out in the last period of the day which is a free period when some of the students came to me for one-on-one assistance.

I shared this experience with the head of the math department and she asked that I return on a continuing basis to team-teach and tutor 7th and 8th students along with the regular math teachers to help them prepare for the state math test. This is what I have been busy doing for the better part of the last 4 months. I am happy to report that we had a 75% pass rate in math for our 8th graders this year. Not a world beating performance, but this is up from less than 50% last year. I like to think I had something to do with this improvement.