Mr. Koob is (like all the seventh grade math teachers this year) having to do a lot of ad-libbing, because with the recent shift in academic content standards for middle school math, the seventh graders this year are basically in a class that they do not have all the prerequisites for. Whenever he teaches a concept, he finds that most of them don't know the material required to understand the new idea, so he has to take time to teach previous concepts. They've been working on proportions for a while now, but we've found that most of the students know next to nothing about fraction-decimal conversions. So, if they have a question where they see that an input-output chart reveals its constant of proportionality to be .75, most of them will not realize that the multiple choice answer "C. 3/4" is the same thing. They just assume they did their work completely wrong. I can see that this is very frustrating for Mr. Koob, and it definitely delays progress. It's not the students' fault, it's just that the changes to Common Core have involved moving higher level math to earlier years, so the seventh graders are basically taking what used to be eighth grade math, even though they just came from what used to be sixth grade math. Therefore, they're missing most of the former seventh grade curriculum and they're jumping in to a world of math that is sometimes too complicated for them.
Koob does his best to simply follow the standards he has, but he often has to take a step back and explain an old concept to kind of put sand in the cracks. There's only so much he can do though, because he needs to prepare them for the PARCC test later in the year. He can't spend too much time on old material or he'll never get to the stuff they have to get through by standardized testing time. This is a lot of pressure I think, both for teachers and students, because these standardized tests are made out to be such a huge deal and they want everything to be taught in a singleminded manner. They really do more harm than help. Of course, that's a whole other discussion, but that is definitely my opinion.
Koob's goal is really just to get them prepared for next year with as few learning gaps as possible while still prepping them for these PARCC tests. He can email parents, but that's only useful if parents want to take initiative and help guide their student. And that's assuming parents will take the time to read his emails... Overall it's a mess and I'm surprised he's managing it as well as he is. Props to Mr. Koob.
I realize now that I skipped over this blog (I answered this week's blog last week, didn't realize this one existed until now), so in terms of my entire experience, I'd say that middle school was great and very eye-opening, especially since Koob was able to give me insight on the first few years of teaching in secondary education. I still think high school would be best, but I'll find out later this year when we do those observations.
Koob does his best to simply follow the standards he has, but he often has to take a step back and explain an old concept to kind of put sand in the cracks. There's only so much he can do though, because he needs to prepare them for the PARCC test later in the year. He can't spend too much time on old material or he'll never get to the stuff they have to get through by standardized testing time. This is a lot of pressure I think, both for teachers and students, because these standardized tests are made out to be such a huge deal and they want everything to be taught in a singleminded manner. They really do more harm than help. Of course, that's a whole other discussion, but that is definitely my opinion.
Koob's goal is really just to get them prepared for next year with as few learning gaps as possible while still prepping them for these PARCC tests. He can email parents, but that's only useful if parents want to take initiative and help guide their student. And that's assuming parents will take the time to read his emails... Overall it's a mess and I'm surprised he's managing it as well as he is. Props to Mr. Koob.
I realize now that I skipped over this blog (I answered this week's blog last week, didn't realize this one existed until now), so in terms of my entire experience, I'd say that middle school was great and very eye-opening, especially since Koob was able to give me insight on the first few years of teaching in secondary education. I still think high school would be best, but I'll find out later this year when we do those observations.