Well, that ought to shock my kids. But that was the way it felt. Our last visitor for the month of January came in and put every classroom teacher in shock. I was never so happier than when I realized “I am not a classroom teacher”!!!!!! He is the famous author who wrote our reading series. According to him he has been everywhere (including the middle east) with this series and he has many more places to go.
First thing, he came in and told them their rooms were not correct. They must rearrange them in the format set up in the book. He also told them they needed to move anything they did in math to the background and not let it overshadow their teaching of reading. And on and on…The interventionists listened in on every meeting. He repeated the same thing for each. The only group he was happy with was the second grade. The funniest thing was he said, ” my 25 years of reading research….” But when he repeated it with the next group he said, “my 30 years of reading research….” The other young interventionist caught this comment and was telling me that later and we both began laughing. The man actually aged while we had sat there. AMAZING. What really amazes me, is that he is much younger than I, but that means he could almost be my age. Needless to say, I was not impressed. Especially, when I heard that he repeated the same things to the other schools. It was as if he had come prepared to state these things and all that note taking was for show. He also never made a positive statement to any except the second grade teachers. I really wonder what our supervisor thought of the visit, because she sat through all of them at all the schools. She probably caught a lot of mistakes by the last visit. The teachers are already stressed, but to add this to them was not wise! As if you could actually “not leave a child behind”. So goes the ways in public school education. It changes yet stays the same.