At 09:14 AM 1/30/97 -0500, you wrote:
>As an African-American, I think you can find another word in your
>vocabulary besides "niggardly". The connotation suggests racism. I do
>not care what other members of this list has to say about my comments either.
>
>On Wed, 29 Jan 1997, Richard Kern wrote:
>
>> I am a math teacher in a k-12 public school in a remote location in
>> western alaska whose own math education has had a rather checkered
>> history. paraphrasing someone (niels bohr?) we tend to think in the
>> general and live in the specific. most of the comments in this
>> discussion seem to be more true in the specific rather than in the
>> general which is probably my greatest complaint with "math reform"
>> generally. Any effort to provide general solutions to reform (the
>> search for elegance?) which satisfies the needs our diverse student
>> population (a rather inelegant collection of individuals in my
>> experience) may likely be an intractable problem.
>>
>> An example of a specific truth which concerns me is the implication that
>> most elementary teachers have their own insecurities or phobias about
>> math which hinders their effective math teaching. In my experience, I
>> have found that at least as commonly, if not more so, is the case that
>> elementary teachers whose class size is rarely optimal and who have
>> multi subject responsibilities within their class find it necessary to
>> use their math instruction time to catch up on their classroom
>> management duties while assigning students worksheets or seat work
>> during the time scheduled for math instruction. I find this very
>> unfortunate but given the realities of the expectations placed on public
>> teachers as the result of niggardly education funding, I have a
>> difficult time laying blame at the feet of these teachers. I do not>> think it unrealistic to postulate
that perhaps half of elementary
>> teachers in a majority of elementary schools devote less direct
>> instructional time to math than to the other disciplines in order to
>> complete a variety of routine and non-routine administrative tasks
>> within the classroom. Given the sequential nature of math education, it
>> is apparent under this scenario that a student who experiences
>> difficulty during as few as two years of k-8 math instruction requiring
>> additional direct instruction which is not available under this
>> scenario, may be unable to proceed and rarely has access to additional
>> instruction available outside the school environment. In the modern
>> single parent household or two wage earner household or dysfunctional
>> household, the home safety net which may have existed to a greater
>> degree in the good old days may be lacking.
>>
>> Many great ideas and methods have been generated by the various reform
>> initiatives and situationally I use them to the best advantage that I
>> can devise. All things being equal, were I to have a classroom of math
>> students at roughly the same developmental level I feel that I could
>> teach in a focused, sequential, relevant and individualized manner
>> regardless of the students developmental level. However, the demand of
>> objective teacher accountability to an ideal curriculum approved by a
>> less than ideal school board (progenitors of much ideal gas) often
>> creates a downward spiral effect.
>>
>
>
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Sharon Smith
Augusta Technical Institute
Math Instructor
Isa 43:1-3
email ssmith@augusta.tec.ga.us
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