The Teacher Who Couldn't Read or Write

[momof2inca]

<p>I just find this so hard to believe.</p>

<p>[Retired</a> Teacher Reveals He Was Illiterate Until Age 48 - San Diego News Story - KGTV San Diego](<a href=“http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html]Retired”>http://www.10news.com/news/15274005/detail.html)</p>

<p>I don’t think it could happen today in CA. There are required exams and the security at them is very, very tight. You get finger-printed and can’t have any electronics in the room and have to have your drivers license on desk while you test.</p>

[JC]

<p>Well let me tell you that I am a principal in CA and you would be surprised how poorly some teachers write! Education students must take the CBEST test. This test is soooo basic and many of them fail and retake multiple times! My colleagues believe that if you fail this test, you should not be allowed to take it again, unless there is significant proof that additional education has been accomplished!</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>I think it is great that he became a teacher- but it is shocking that he had to out himself when he was middle aged.</p>

<p>I have read quite a few applications for both teachers principal candidates and - and they are very variable.</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.west.nesinc.com/PDFs/WA_studyguide.pdf[/url]”>Error;

<p>this is a test that those entering into Wa state teacher training programs must pass. It gives way more direction on how to take the test then the SAT does. The questions also seem- about at a middle school level IMO. ( actually not even at a middle school level)
Aren’t the high school tests more difficult?</p>

<p>[I passed all the sample questions to be certificated as a teacher of agriculture.](<a href=“http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=3d7baf5e44df4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=d378197a484f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD”>http://www.ets.org/portal/site/ets/menuitem.c988ba0e5dd572bada20bc47c3921509/?vgnextoid=3d7baf5e44df4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&vgnextchannel=d378197a484f4010VgnVCM10000022f95190RCRD&lt;/a&gt;) Ive taken one qtr of Hort at a CC & frankly I got a D in one of my classes ( ID- short term memory issues)
I started to look at the biology certification- but I was too disgusted. No wonder the kids aren’t being challenged.</p>

[Vyse]

<p>I dont buy it, the whole thing sounds too ridiculous</p>

[andreaaaaaa]

<p>i read about this in those Chicken Soup for the Soul books a few years ago.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>So I was looking for info on lack of phonemic awareness- which is a piece of the learning issues my D has & I came across what apparently is a teacher website for sharing info.
But check out the first letter from a woman who apparently designs curriculum?
[Teachers.Net</a> - TEACHERS.NET Frequently Asked Questions](<a href=“http://www.teachers.net/FAQ/phonemic_aware.html]Teachers.Net”>http://www.teachers.net/FAQ/phonemic_aware.html)</p>

<p>

Because many children in the U. S. are coming to school from language-impoverished homes, many of them have never even tried to “target” sounds. They have heard gutteral language or languages other than English used around them and have not had the interaction of sentence structure and dialogue that once occurred in the average home. (In a country where we have “babies” having babies, what can we expect in the area of language development?)</p>

<p>We also have many children who are “crack” babies and whose parents have practiced unhealthy lifestyles to the extent that there are more learning disabled children. Premature babies have been on the rise for years largely because of sexual activity committed at too young an age.</p>

<p>In the U. S. we have a large percentage of migrant children who have lived in Third World conditions which have produced terrible health problems with many of them having ear infections. For these children, the teaching of phonemic awareness is a must because they could not hear clearly during their most formative years of brain development. All of these problems and more have combined to produce a much larger percentage of disabled youngsters.</p>

<p>That is why the Texas Alternative Document (TAD – <a href=“http://www.htcomp.net/tad[/url]”>http://www.htcomp.net/tad&lt;/a&gt;) in Pre-K starts out with the simplest listening/speaking exercises. Our Pre-K students are usually children who are dubbed Title I, and they are usually the children who come from homes that are considered language impoverished homes.</p>

<p>Used to, in days gone by, the public school teachers could start with “blending” of sounds; now we have to start with the most minute, basic skills. We cannot assume anything anymore with the type of students that are coming into our public schools. Yes, many of them are ready for more advanced reading skills; but the only way to make sure that all of them can move on successfully is to start with phonemic awareness and to make sure that they can even “hear” the subsounds of English before they are introduced to any “blending” skills.

</p>

<p>Glad she knows where the premature babies are coming from.
But actually on the March of Dimes website I dont see youth listed at all as a risk factor</p>

<p>

Preterm labor and delivery can happen to any pregnant woman. But they happen more often to some women than to others. Researchers continue to study preterm labor and birth. They have identified some risk factors, but still cannot predict which women will give birth too early. Having a risk factor does not mean a woman will have preterm labor or preterm birth. It means she is more likely to have preterm labor or birth than other women. </p>

<p>Three groups of women are at greatest risk of preterm labor and birth:
Women who have had a previous preterm birth
Women who are pregnant with twins, triplets or more
Women with certain uterine or cervical abnormalities

</p>

<p>don’t mean to get off topic but I was appalled at the ignorance.</p>

[mammall]

<p>My mom friends with their kids still in the public system we left tell me the Freshman honors English teacher at the high school had severe ADD and not ony was reading-challenged but about half the school days simply couldn’t deliver a coherent lecture on the material. She’d go off on riffs about whatever struck her fancy. The big end of year honors project was to construct a mobile representing the Odyssey.</p>

[dmd77]

<p>When I lived in California years ago, I had to take the CBEST to transfer my teaching certificate. I found it shockingly easy–take the 40 easiest SAT questions and give you an hour to do it–but while I was taking it, one person in the room stood up, threw her test across the room, and screamed “this damn test is impossible” and ran out, crying. After the test, I saw a friend comforting her; she’d been in special ed all her life and wanted to be a special ed teacher (I’m a shameless eavesdropper)–but the lack of accommodations on the test made it impossible for her. I don’t know if that’s a good thing or not.</p>

[WashDad]

<p>WashMom took the CBEST on a whim one time, toying with the idea of teaching. Like dmd, she aced it (I think with a 100% score), and was appalled at how easy it was. While WashMom would have been a good teacher I’m glad she didn’t do it. I love, her, you see, and I wouldn’t want to have to be without her for 10 years to life after she choked some administrator to death with his own red tape.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>-but the lack of accommodations on the test made it impossible for her.</p>

<p>That seems illegal.
Or something.
One of the best- most rigourous and demanding teachers at Ds school - confessed to me that he has processing issues and has accommodations in the school-I don’t know if any of those highly gifted and demanding parents realize that when they request him for their highly capable children- it doesn’t seem to impact his ability to teach, in fact it seems to make him more creative and engaging.</p>

[doubleplay]

<p>How can someone who can’t read or write even begin to teach high school? They can’t read anything written by the students, they can’t read guidelines given to them by the state, they can’t even read the dang teacher’s solution manual. How do they correspond with parents and students? How do they prepare lesson plans? This boggles my mind.</p>

[mstee]

<p>What subject did the guy teach? And how did he get to have teaching assistants? I guess those were the good ol’ days when public schools in CA had more funding?</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>well doubleplay some teachers dont prepare lesson plans- they may have a vague idea- but nothing written down.
When D was in grade school, her teacher was gone for most of the year on personal leave & she had a series of subs fill in- they had to come up with a lesson plan on their own.</p>

<p>From Corcorans web site

My dad called me about a teaching job near my family’s home in Carlsbad, Calif. He filled out my application while I dictated the answers over the phone from Texas. Ironically, the high school principal assigned me to teach sophomore social studies and English grammar, along with coaching duties.</p>

<p>Again I learned to survive with wile. The students wrote their names on a seating chart and then pronounced them for me. To avoid reading the list, I asked them the next day to call out their names, claiming I wanted them to get to know one another.</p>

<p>Students read bulletins and textbooks aloud. To create the illusion of literacy, I always carried books as props. I learned my lines and acted out my part like an aspiring young actor on a movie set. I could calculate grades, but I evaluated students orally, developing my listening skills.</p>

<p>At the end of my first year, I decided to quit teaching because the pressure was too great. I cautiously entered the principal’s office to resign and emerged with the chance to teach world history instead of English.</p>

<p>Every day presented a new challenge in the classroom, but I wanted to be a varsity head coach. I looked around for other opportunities, getting a friend to fill out an application for me while I feigned a sprained wrist. I was intrigued by a position in Corcoran - a town in California’s San Joaquin Valley - both by the name and by the salary.</p>

<p>I got a reply from the school and handed it to my dad, knowing he’d be amused by the coincidence of names. Until he congratulated me, I didn’t know whether I’d been offered the job.</p>

<p>As I started teaching bookkeeping, social studies and physical education in Corcoran, I entered a situation where half of the kids were intellectual dropouts; their bodies showed up, but their minds were shut down. They were at-risk students, but I always felt they could be reached.</p>

<p>I was like a deaf person who reads lips, making up for my inability to read by developing other skills. I’d have group discussions, bring in outside speakers, hold individual conferences and use standardized tests with hole-punched answer keys.</p>

<p>It was not uncommon for me to find almost half of my students unable to read past a third-grade level. I couldn’t teach them to read, but I could help them learn as I had learned. For all those teaching years, I avoided facing the real problem in their lives and my own, revealing one of the shortcomings of progressive education.

</p>

[doubleplay]

<p>

I was like a deaf person who reads lips, making up for my inability to read by developing other skills. I’d have group discussions, bring in outside speakers, hold individual conferences and use standardized tests with hole-punched answer keys.</p>

<p>It was not uncommon for me to find almost half of my students unable to read past a third-grade level. I couldn’t teach them to read, but I could help them learn as I had learned. For all those teaching years, I avoided facing the real problem in their lives and my own, revealing one of the shortcomings of progressive education.

</p>

<p>Just the kind of teacher we all wish our kids had.</p>

[emeraldkity4]

<p>ya- I bet it wasn’t a coincidence that the kids who couldn’t read past a third grade level had him.
Ive observed- even though I have been chair of the parent group and a long time volunteer, that some parents have a way of getting the best teachers for their kids- and I apparently don’t know the secret handshake, because even when I made specific clear requests for teachers- they were ignored-the active and engaged parents- get the best teachers in the school for their kids- , even when I was in school- I remember the “dumb class with the dumb teacher” and the preferred class.</p>

[doubleplay]

<p>It should not be a matter of doing the secret handshake and getting the best teachers. There shouldn’t be BAD teachers in the first place. This guy should not have been teaching. He did a disservice to many people. He HURT children. And the system that allowed this is just as culpable.</p>

[mstee]

<p>He taught English??? And World History??? I was going to guess P.E., but didn’t want to offend the P.E. teachers . . .</p>

<p>This is amazing. I’m flashing back to my high school World History class, which was taught by a coach, and where we did not learn world history. We had a work book which was about the customs and cultures of some tribes around the world. I think we read sections of it out loud in class and discussed it. We watched a lot of movies. I don’t recall writing a paper or anything like that. </p>

<p>At the time, I didn’t question it. The class was pretty boring, but the teacher was a nice guy, my best friend’s dad. When I think back on it now, what a SCAM that was. World History. Yeah, right. Let’s just say I had a little catching up to do in college . . .</p>

[mammall]

<p>My senior year English teacher was the high school’s primary pot dealer. Seriously.</p>

<p>I think if we want uniformly competent and sometimes even great teachers we need to do two things – pay them more and get rid of the teacher’s union.</p>

[momof2inca]

<p>mstee, you asked how he got teaching assistants. I’m assuming that he was referring to student TA’s. He mentioned he would have 2 or 3 in every period, which seems like a huge number (that would be more than a dozen or so). He also taught before the rise of computers, which would have helped mask his disability more than today, though I have heard of teachers turning over the entering of grades on the computer to students. And some teachers do not use email, just the phone. I suppose it’s just possible to adapt to whatever situation you find yourself in… but I just don’t see how he could cheat his way to a BA and a credential. I mean think of all the tests college students take… he cheated on all of them? Something doesn’t ring quite true to me with this story.</p>

[mini]

<p>Do we have any evidence whatsoever that his students performed less well as a result? Is there a shred of evidence that he “hurt children”? Why does everyone assume he was a bad teacher?</p>