I haven't been posting a lot here lately because things have been pretty slow. Central America is about all the exciting news we have had recently, and that has been put on the back burner so that Todd could study and I could get my license applications in. Hopefully both Kansas and Idaho will accept my application and give me my license without having to jump through any more of their hoops!

I have moved from 4-5th grade down to second grade for the rest of the year. I love second grade and the "youngness" of those kids. They are lots of fun and they LOVE to love you! However, those kids CANNOT keep track of their pencils! It drives me nuts...I just want to take a Sharpie and put their names on every one of their pencils. So, in fifth grade, it was the incessant talking and joking that drove me crazy, now, its the pencils!

I have been thinking a lot about our education system. With budget cuts in the future for many, many districts not only in Kansas, but in the US, I am a bit saddened. If the leaders of our country truly want us to compete (or even keep up), they have to put money into our schools. However, I know that money is not the only solution.

Our society is such now that many parents expect schools to pick up their slack. In some cases, parents are very active at home with their children, helping them with homework, practicing facts and spelling words, etc. However, as it is at our school, many parents can't--or won't--help their kids succeed. Children come to school after an entire summer of NOT reading, and they really do lose their fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension skills. By national standards, they are expected to be at grade level when they enter, but this is difficult when they haven't been practicing important reading and math skills over the summer.

Our curriculum includes homework assignments that students are to do with parents, but many parents work and can't help. Or, they don't know how to do the homework. Or, they are so overwhelmed in life and with other children that it just doesn't get done. As teachers, we are held responsible for what goes on at home, even though we have little influence over what happens when that child leaves school. It's an unfair load given to teachers, but yet, we have to do the best we can.

In more extreme cases, what the parent does while the child is still in the womb affects their performance once they get to school. I work with two students, twins, who were born addicted to cocaine. This often results in learning and behavioral disabilities. I can't get the one student to remember that a number minus one=one less than that number. She is in second grade, and you know what? It's not her fault that she can't remember, and it's not my fault that each small success is completely forgotten the next day because of what her mother did. ITS THE MOTHER'S FAULT. And yet there's no use blaming anyone, because at this point, it is what is.

That's where I run into problems with suggestions that we move to performance-based pay. I feel sorry for those who have to coordinate the implementation of this if it ever happens. Do you compare teachers at suburban schools with middle-class students, to teachers at low-income schools where many more students have disabilities, problems at home, and slower (but often steady) learning rates? Can you compare two teachers at two of these types of schools? Can you look only at test scores? No! because test scores often compare students at the same level, instead of looking at the progress of one student. What about students who were born addicted to cocaine? Is it fair to look at their performance and decide that their teachers aren't doing enough, when its the mother's fault? What if you've got the most motivational teacher, and test scores are low? Or you have an evaluator come in who is expecting 5th grade students to be working at a 5th grade level, and they are working at a late 4th grade level, but their improvement has been a miracle? Who evaluates teacher's performance: a non-biased third party who knows nothing about the students and what they face at home, or a district administrator who visits the classroom of a tenured teacher who just doesn't care anymore, but her students get by? What a mess!

Anyway, the more I'm party to the difficulties in education, the more I see that answers are not black and white, Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal. Our country has got to strengthen families and make education a priority.period., or we will continue to generate students who are apathetic, unsuccessful, and unmotivated, just like their parents. There are so many wonderful children that I get to meet, and to be honest, I never thought I would enjoy teaching at the school I'm at...because I wanted it to be easy. But when parents don't do their job,when they make my life difficult, I get to see how important I am to kids, and it feels good. But I'm not sure if I want to continue feeling good at the expense of my kids' home lives.

I am grateful for the Church's teachings on the importance of family. Maybe what is so frustrating is the fact that as a member, I know how to make choices that are good for myself and my family. I don't always make the right choices, but the atonement is there, the teachings are there, the Spirit is there. The Church does place an emphasis on family and education, and I wish that the world would follow the model of the Church.