How One Teacher is Working Her Magic to Help Struggling Students Reclaim Their Education, Part 1 of 2

Defining a High-Standards Math Curriculum for Struggling Students, Part 2 of 2 I made the case in my previous blog that adjusting the pace of instruction for struggling students in a high-standards curriculum is imperative. We all have different aptitudes for a given endeavor—from music to mathematics—and it is unrealistic to expect that all students can learn the same set of complex ideas in the same, fixed period of time.

The holiday divinity and fudge are just about gone, and the heart-warming Christmas movies seem to have been replaced by weight-loss commercials. I’ve made more than my share of New Year’s resolutions, and rarely have I stuck to the calorie-counting, mile-running regimens that I have planned. This year, rather than set some lofty goals that I will most likely fail to achieve, I plan to stop trying to find who or what is to blame for the problems with education today. Instead I want to purposefully do everything I can to effect positive changes for my students, get to know them better as individuals, and connect their learning to content that they find valuable and relevant to their own lives.

Rather than focusing on text reading this month, let’s turn our attention to one of the critical components of language necessary for comprehension: vocabulary.

In the digital age, we have the world at our fingertips. However, nothing truly compares to experiencing something firsthand. If experience is the best teacher, then there is a strong rationale for field trips.

Year after year, I struggled with students who claimed to hate reading. They didn’t like to read. They told me so, over and over again. I have a stock response: “You know, every time you say that an English teacher cries.”