Challenging Your Students

My experience in the classroom as a substitute has always been to "fly by the seat of your pants".  Walking into the classroom, not knowing what I will be teaching until 5 minutes before the bell rings has been my experience.  Many times I am in for the same teachers so throughout the year I get to know the students and I have become a familiar face for many of the students and teachers.  However, my experience has always been limited to 3 or 4 days maximum in a classroom.  So I often see the start, middle, or end of projects/units very rarely do I ever see them from start to finish.

I am so glad that I had this opportunity in the classroom. Not only did I read an entire play/book with students, but I was able to see their growth as readers.  My co-ops classes consist of mostly low level students.  Very few aspire to goto college, many of them goto the vo-tech for most of their day and have little vision of what their future will be after graduation.  However, in my short time there, I struggled seeing the potential many of the students have with no one to push them further, or atleast it is how I perceived it.  Students became engaged when reading and enjoyed what they were reading, but I wish that more would have been done to challenge what they could do.  There were tests and quizzes and graded worksheets, but very few project based learning took place.  Yes they were a tiresome group some days that pushed the teacher to her limit, but when the students finished reading an entire play, they were given a test and moving on to the next thing the day after.  I asked if more would be done with the play but was simply told - I have too much that I have to accomplish with them this semester and I don't think they could handle it anyway. 

Another moment that really let me down was after talking to one of the students in class that wrote constantly in a notebook during class.  He was a good student and participated, doing well on his tests and quizzes.  So my last week there he and some other students came over to talk to me at the end of class.  I asked him what he was writing in his notebook.  He told me he was writing a book series of 3 books.  He started to tell me what it was about.  I asked if he had finished any of the books yet and he said only one is written so far, but the rest was "up here" (pointing to his head).  The bell rang and he left, I commented how great that was to my co-op.  Her response to me was - "Just because he is writing it doesn't mean it is any good."  I think by my facial expression she could tell that I was offended by her comment.  She has made it clear to me on other occassions that she prefers her "honors" kids and doesn't enjoy teaching the lower level kids as much.   She is fair and well liked by the kids and does a good job with her classes, but I was disappointed that she didn't push the lower kids. 

For me, I have used this time in the classroom to reflect on what type of teacher I want to be.  I know we all have our capes on and want to go out and change the world as new teachers.  This scares me in many ways, but I have realized how scared these kids must be.  Do we not push the lower kids because their test scores say not to? Do we teach them that they are only able to handle so much information and can't be challenged?  I often was asked to work with kids who missed school, or were sitting in ISS for the day, or who needed to make up a test, or who needed the test read to them.  It was frustrating to know how much they understood, and what they didn't know because they slept through class that day.  I often had conversations with them about what grade they would have if they just stayed awake.  For me many of these kids were capable, but just weren't given the opportunity to be pushed.