I don't often chortle at the breakfast table as I read the daily news from the P&C, but Monday morning's news was an exception.Diagramming on the whiteboard! Studying prefixes as a way to learn vocabulary. And this is teaching English as a Second Language to those whose native language is English?
What next? Expecting ninth-graders to be able to read? [See Giant Strides.]
Dorchester 2 Deputy Superintendent Barbara Stroble points out, "It's the old way we used to teach English." Pathetically, the cadre of teachers who already know how to teach this approach steadily shrinks as they retire. Apparently that is why "The training for each teacher costs more than $1,000, and the kits for students are $60 each."
Wouldn't you love to know what's in those "kits" that's worth $60?
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10 comments:
I just knew you would probably almost faint like I did when I saw the student diagramming sentences on a white board. As a retired English teacher with CCSD, I agree wholeheartedly with what you said about teachers who were taught how to diagram and how to teach it to their students are now retiring or about to retire. SO glad to finally be vindicated after years and years of being told by the Language Arts powers to be in Charleston COunty that diagramming was not helpful , was too hard, and didn't help. Yes, yes, yes!!!
And we never knew we were teaching English as a Second Language.
So true, Babbie. I never considered English to be a Second Language. Go figure!
Yep, that's what we called "English" when I was in junior high. (I don't recall doing much of it in high school.)
You're right, Clisby. Back in the day (Junior High days), we were taught all of the in's and out's of grammar, etc. We didn't get that in high school because we were supposed to have already been taught that, and for the most part, we had been taught what we needed to know.
Big changes coming to Downtown schools with this new seismic report coming out...Buist moving off peninsular!!!
This way more white parents can get their kids a restrictive, private education away from black and Latino kids at public expense.
Sort of like some other types of schools we hear about.
Chicken Little, oops, I mean Bill Lewis, is about to take center stage again and the Post and Courier is giving him everything he wants. Thanks to Lewis, these engineers are doing McGinley's dirty work designed to block charter schools and direct minority kids into another educational deadend for downtown schools. How reliable are insider reports? They constantly endorse predetermined outcomes about buildings the school district wants to jetizon anyway.
This is a scam. Closing an entire district's worth of public schools! Sounds like Alabama in the 1950's when school boards tried to close schools rather than face the challengs ahead.
Come on, people. How gullible are we? McGinley and company are playing us all for fools and we're letting them. Don't fall for this seismic terror bull. Sure these classic old buildings downtown need repairs and upgrades, but who let them fall into disrepair for the last 40 years anyway? Bill Lewis and his department did. The way they would have it, seven or more downtown school buildings are about to become the poster children for the next round of capital bonds as school officials prepare to dive into taxpayer wallets again to the tune of a HALF BILLION DOLLARS.
Yes, Bill Lewis and CCSD's favorite engineers say we need this. McGinley says it's a moral responsibility to vacate these buildings immediately. (Just in time for floating the bond proposals to the public, too.) Weren't these the same engineers and administrators who in 2006 said downtown schools, like Archer, were perfectly safe. Oh but the stakes and objectives have changed. Instead of hiring engineers to show the schools were safe, now it's important to show they are unsafe.
Is it a coincidence, or is it part of McGinley's latest plan to shore up her resume? The new Sanders-Clyde is open with hundreds of empty seats though it was designed for 500. The new Burke is steadily being abandoned by more parents as its enrollment drops to nearly to below 500 in what the district said was a 1,300 student school. It seems CCSD is going to fill these empty spots with refugees from their "earthquake on paper".
Of course an earthquake is possible, but their science and their reports have been cooked. There are a lot of other risks CCSD has chosen to ignore which make this whole issue suspect. CCSD officials have twisted the truth so much with the public, they truly deserve our cynicism and distrust.
I really want to see which school gets moved to Ron McNair, which incidentally wasn't reviewed by the engineers this time. How convenient! McNair, or what is know to some as the old Ben Tillman School, is no better structurally than any of the schools named in this staged report.
Bill Lewis and the engineers in his pocket are ripping us off. McGinley is using scare tactics to get what she wants and to cover her mistakes. Any county board member who buys into this hasn't read the report. If they have read it, they must not understand how it's findings have been predetermined. Ask the right questions and you'll get the answers you want. Get the engineers to answer the public questions. Don't let McGinley and Lewis filter (and change) the interpretations as they have done with every previous report. After all neither McGinley nor Lewis is an engineer with the credentials needed to draft or sign a report of this kind. So why do we let them interpret what it means for us?
I doubt if very many buildings in Charleston, old or new, would "withstand" a 5.7 earthquake without some damage. The question should have been, can they withstand enough damage to reasonably allow the occupants to get out safely? After that, who cares if the building can "withstand" the aftermath? The questions are misleading and the conclusions about buildings "withstanding" a seismic event are for one purpose only...to scare the public to death and get the next school capital bond issue passed.
I say get an independent engineer to do a complete review. It should be an engineer with a firm that has no associations with this school board and one that can't be influenced by McGinley, Lewis or any of the contractors currently tied to CCSD. I'll bet the cost of a new school, overly inflated with Bill's usual cost over runs and all, that an independent engineer's findings will be vastly different from those Bill Lewis has been cultivating with his friends at SM&E and other engineering firms like it that have grown fat on CCSD's numerous studies.
You have to wonder what else is motivating CCSD to suddenly worry about the environmental conditions within these schools. Didn't we pay the Gantt firm out of Charlotte a whole bunch of money to do several studies since 2004 all saying these schools were perfectly fine?
What a turn around. Wow, and just when the charter schools where preparing to ask to use all the empty buildings McGinley created last year.
And here's one more bonus for McGinley's latest orchestrated school emergency. If you can't improve certain school ratings, just close a few, move others and rename a few more, and all of a sudden CCSD has miraculously reduced the number of failing schools. This is how McGinley, and superintendents like her, make "progress". She says one thing to the locals and then tells the state this is part of a massive school reorganization. Then the state dutifully resets the ratings and starts over with no failing reports for the "new" schools involved. They get a pass for three years. No one, not even the state, is willing to question anything.
How dumb are we? It seems McGinley thinks we're a lot dumber than we can imagine. She keeps outdoing her last one. From the A Plus program at Burke that never was to this with a lot of failures to complete in between.
For the record, licensed engineers familiar with local schools have already commented that CCSD's use of earlier reports and conclusions on the structural stability of several downtown schools are without merit and have been falsely presented to the public.
We deserve better than this and so do our buildings and the people who use them. Hey, it's late, but I'm just tired of the lies from CCSD officials.
Amen, commenters 1:25 a.m.!!
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