1, 2, 3

One of my students can't count. Let me rephrase that, she can count to about 15 or 20 without trouble, but when asked to choose the bigger of two one digit numbers, she gets it wrong about half the time. For those of you probability experts out there, that's the same as guessing, which I think she's doing. She has no sense of numbers representing things, unless she has those concrete things in front of her.

And I thought it was bad that I had students who used their fingers to add. I have my work cut out for me.

We Don't Need No Homework

Interesting article, for those of you looking for some pedagogical tidbits. I'm fascinated by what folks say about the usefulness of homework -- I never want to be the busywork teacher. If you have any advice from a teacher that you remember assigning particularly good homework, please do share!

Iiiin West Philadelphia...

Okay, so I may not have been born and raised, but you could add one quick pronoun and make the song fit: In West of Philadelphia born and raised. D____ Elementary is where I spent most of my days, and now I work at an B____ Elementary School, less than 15 miles away, Teaching For America. (You'll forgive the attempt at anonymity, but I'm not ready to get fired in my third week for a privacy slip, so I'm covering all bases.) It's amazing to me that my public elementary school in the northwest suburbs and my new public elementary/middle school (the new K-8 model) in the southwest city could be such worlds apart. It's something I assumed would astound me, but never to this extent. I now understand why Teach For America says that teaching experience in public schools is one of the best ways to make lifelong advocates for public education. It's just beyond understanding.

So for those of you interested in accompanying me on my journey of educational discovery these next two years, I will be posting on this blog with occasional musings, observations, and (or course) rants, so stay tuned. Signing off, your favorite 6th-8th grade special education teacher, Ms. M_c (my attempt at Google prevention)