Post #2 tonight!

School is completely crazy! The major difficulty in teaching these fourth graders is that they all have the attitude of a fifteen-year-old, with the intelligence of a Kindergartener to a 1st grader. Literally, most of the students are on a Kindergarten or 1st grade reading level, and about a 2nd grade level of math. We have math fact challenges with Ms. Appel's class, and a lot of the students can't solve, at least not quickly, problems like 9-8, 5+6, and 10x1. They don't know this, yet we are trying to teach them how to convert fractions into like denominators by finding the lowest common denominator. It is quite the challenge! On the front page of the Washington Times last week there was an article about education. THe headline read, "VA and MD schools rank in the top 5 of Nation's schools." Underneath this, the subheading read, "The district falls into last place." DCPS was actually ranked #51 out of the 50 states plus the district! Yikes. To sum it all up, there is a lot of room for improvement. I know I already posted something tonight, but along with my soapbox rantings, I had to include a funny story that happened yesterday before I forget it. I was working with both my class and Ms. Appel's class when a litle girl from Ms. Appel's class named Satina came over to talk to me. She innocently asked, "Ms. Buttah (that is my attempt to type how they all say my name), Ms. Buttars, what do you want to be when you grow up?" I just burst out laughing and responded, "Satina! I am grown up. Why do you think I'm here? I'm going to be a teacher in a few months!" Her reply was that I was too little to be either a grown up or a teacher. This led me to ask the students how old they thought I was, the most common reply was 16 or 17! Jiheib even asked me if I knew how to drive! Oh yeah, one more thing!! Hillary, this really spacey girl in my class, called me mommy today. That is the second student to do this. Hillary already has two mommies, if you know what I mean, so I'm sure a third is about the last thing she needs!