Tweet
FacebookSo it turns out I’m no hero. Apparently my marrow just isn’t good enough. That’s a shame. I do hope that 13-year old girl does find a match–it just looks like it’s not going to be mine. Does this mean I have to give back my cape?
My job is a colossal waste of time and taxpayer dollars. There–I said it. It feels good to get it off my chest. Then again, it also feels good to get a paycheck, so perhaps I won’t say it too loudly or to the people who pay me.
Not that I’m the problem. I’m actually quite good at my job–the problem is the position itself. I work for an after-school tutoring company. The program is designed to help students who possess below-grade level math or reading skills and are struggling to keep up. The school identifies students who might benefit from the service and offers it–at absolutely no expense to the parents at all. The theory behind this free program is to help bring those students up to grade-level skills. Students work with tutors in order to boost their skills and (hopefully) catch them up to their peers. My job is to oversee the program, classroom, and students who participate at my school. Sounds like a noble cause, right? A lot of things sound good in theory…
The reality is far different. I have so much to complain about I don’t know where to start. As an educator, I get irritated with the idea that kids are not allowed to fail. I know, horrible thing for a teacher to say–blah, blah, blah. But as a wise man once said, “The world needs ditch diggers, too.” Not everybody needs to go to college. There are perfectly acceptable (and profitable) careers that do not require a college education. I really wish society would realize that. But that’s not my major problem with the program.
The cost
My beef with this service is that it–like anything in life–costs money to run. It’s free to the parents, but someone has to pay for it. My employer charges the schools it services $70 an hour for each kid that receives after school tutoring. Each student is offered 30 hours of tutoring. I have 30 students. Do the math on that for a moment: $70 an hour times 30 students times 30 hours per student. That’s $63,000 the school is paying my employer–more than enough to hire another full time teacher. Class sizes are larger and the good students suffer because the school is spending the equivalent of a teacher’s annual salary to help 30 students who aren’t smart enough to learn the lesson during normal school hours. The school is paying more than $2000 per student in addition to other school expenses.
Does that make sense to you? Instead of having smaller class sizes or creating programs for students who succeed in school, resources are spent on kids who didn’t take advantage of the lesson offered during normal school hours. Typical socialism: punish the successful to help the incompetent. Even more appalling, the students in this program are so far behind grade-level academics 30 hours of extra tutoring won’t help–they need to be held back a year (or two).
Lost cause
The majority of my students are the offspring of Spanish-speaking immigrants. Most of them can speak English, but they struggle with grade material. I have a fifth grade math student who adds left to right (17+13=210 in her book). I have a sixth grader whose English skills are limited to repeating the last two words said to her.
I also have a number of students who don’t have language ability issues–they just have “issues.” As in serious attitude problems. Kids who don’t want to participate in lessons or do assignments because, well, they’re defiant little jerkwads. You know the type: future juvenile delinquents. You can lead a fourth grader to a classroom, but you can’t make him learn. If a kid refuses to do his homework, pay attention in to a lesson, or even write his name down on a piece of paper, you can’t make him learn.
Society probably expects more coming from a teacher than what I’m writing here. I would probably be ostracized by my peers for even saying this. But here’s a dirty little secret society hasn’t learned yet: children are people too. There are plenty of bad people out there. There are 25-year olds who are nothing but asses and leeches on society. But at one point, that 25-year was 11–and probably being a pain in the ass back then.
We try working with the kids–we really do. But the majority of these kids are so far behind…it’s just a waste of time. I have two second graders who can’t recognize letters of the alphabet. Their classmates are reading books and stories while these kids don’t know their ABCs. Tell me how 30 hours of tutoring is going to catch them up to their peers? It’s not. This program is offered to the students at no charge to their parents. Are we helping these kids or just providing free, after-school daycare?
The bureaucracy
This is the part that chaps me the most. As a teacher, I really am looking for the best way to help these kids. Education is built on previous knowledge, meaning a kid can’t multiple double-digit numbers until he learns how to multiple single-digit numbers. We’re supposed to be teaching kids grade-level material. But if the student’s knowledge falls way below grade level, it’s foolish to teach material they won’t understand. I have a sixth grader who is supposed to be learning about variables–but she doesn’t know her multiplication table. Teaching her how to find X when 3*X=15 is pointless if she doesn’t know that 3*5 equals 15 in the first place. Often I find myself faced with the dilemma of teaching a student what she is supposed to know according to the state standards…or going back multiple grade levels to teach her something she might actually have a chance to learn. Since I am an educator, I do what I think is in the student’s best and interest: I take kids as far back as I need to find out exactly where the gap in education begins.
Unfortunately, I’m not supposed to be doing that. My bosses don’t want me teaching that sixth grader the multiplication tables. They insist that I teach her how to figure out the value of X. My boss’ solution to not knowing the answer? “Pull her aside for five minutes to go over the multiplication table.”
Yeah, five minutes–that oughta cover it. She hasn’t learned how to multiply over the past four years in school, but she’ll figure it out with the five minutes I give her.
And that’s where the bureaucracy comes in. The school hires my employer. A strict set of guidelines is established–rules that my employer needs to follow in order to get paid.
No more than four students per tutor Students cannot work one grade level lower than which they are enrolled Students must sign in and out every day.
The school wants a detailed report for each student outlining the student’s goals and progress (and justifying the expense of the program). The goals for each student are pulled directly from their grade-level state adopted standard. All activities for the student must be part of the goal. So I’m not allowed to work on multiplication with that sixth grader because it’s not part of her grade’s standards.
Part of my job is writing these reports. My employer also made it perfectly clear that correctly filling out these reports is more important than actually teaching the kids themselves. I need to detail the work done. I can’t say “student completed worksheet.” I need to say “student completed worksheet at an 80% accuracy level of the goal designated for this month.” It doesn’t matter where the 805 accuracy level comes from. It can be a judgment call. The important thing is that it’s on the report.
This is just bureaucracy–papers that look good to justify the expense. It doesn’t matter if the reports show progress. It doesn’t matter if the student learned anything. It’s like the school just wants to prove that it tried–and the kid still failed.
When writing these reports, I find myself drifting into a gray area. I’m not sure how much I want to disclose and how much I want to leave myself open to termination and/or a lawsuit. My employer wants me to fill out the reports to show the school. The numbers don’t matter–and I was told as much. It doesn’t matter how well a student did. Even if I don’t have an accurate way to score his progress, I have been instructed to make stuff up. I have some students who rarely show up–and I have no idea how to gage their progress. It doesn’t matter–the school wants to see results. So I need to creatively find away to gage a student’s academic level (and document it) even though he has been there only 20 percent of the time.
I’ve asked my bosses about doing different things to help the kids; they really don’t care. Or maybe they don’t know how. They don’t offer solution to the problem; they’re just concerned about reports and ratios. I have six fifth graders and two sixth graders. I lump all the fifth graders together and have them work with one tutor. I have the two sixth graders work together in another group. Unfortunately, my bosses say that’s unacceptable because the contract calls for no more than four tutors per student. They instructed me to take two of the fifth graders and put them in the same group as the two sixth graders. But the students are still expected to work on grade-level material.
According to my bosses, the tutor with a split group is supposed to teach the two fifth graders for ten minutes then turn his attention to the two sixth graders for ten minutes. That method is preferred over my six in a group approach. It’s better for a student to receive half the attention that be put in a group of six students. Is that really more effective than just sticking six students together in one group? Four is okay, but somehow six is too many?
Much like in any bureaucracy, logic isn’t permitted. We can’t have six students in a group–oh no!. Instead of having six students in a group, we’ll cut the group in half. It’s waaay more effective to have tutor split his time between two grade levels, resulting in four students receiving half the tutoring they would have gotten if we in a group of six. After all, the contract calls for it! It’s all about the paperwork. The paperwork needs to show four to one. The paperwork needs to have detailed reports. Helping the kids is irrelevant as long as the paperwork is in order.
So why is the school so concerned about having this program? Why are they pouring good money down a pointless drain? Again, it’s all about the bureaucracy. Thanks to No Child Left Behind, students are no longer allowed to fail. The education system would much rather spend additional money trying to help the dummies instead of encouraging and rewarding those who would actually appreciate it. It’s a gosh darn shame.
Coincidently enough, the after school program ends right before standardized testing. The reasoning behind that is fairly obvious: after students take their test, it doesn’t matter if they learn. Because funding for the schools comes from those test scores. There’s no need to help a struggling child anymore after the testing is done–there’s nothing in it for the school.
Despite my beefs, I like my job. I like working with the kids and helping them out as best as I can. I break a lot of the rules and guidelines I’m supposed to follow–I do it because I know what will really help the kids. I have groups larger than four. I have fourth graders working out of second grade text. I know I’ll never be able to help these kids get up to grade-level. But maybe if I can teach a student how to recognize letters in the alphabet, maybe someday she’ll learn how to read. If my boss every really looked at what I do in the class room, I’d probably get fired because I’m not doing what their contract dictates.
But at least I’m helping the kids–which is more than anyone who is involved in the program actually does.