No Child Left Glued to the Table

["PRISCILLA GUTIERREZ" <pgutpgut@msn.com>]

Susan Ohanian posted this on her announcements today, and it is one more 
painful example of scientific reading instruction run amok.  Highly 
qualified teachers under Reading First mandates mean following the script, 
even if it makes no sense to do so...

"We are being instructed that during SMALL GROUP INSTRUCTION, teachers are 
NOT to interact with other students. Now last year kindergarten teachers 
tried to explain how difficult it was to keep 5-year-olds quietly busy with 
only Harcourt materials while we teachers worked with a small group.

Let's say you have 24 children, with 7 in a group. This means 17 kids are 
sitting for up to 40 minutes. . . quietly and NOT DISTURBING THE TEACHER.

The principal was observing one of the kindergarten teachers during small 
group time and a little 5-year-old with special needs using glue had the 
horrific experience of the top coming off of the bottle. Understandably, 
that child went up to the teacher--THE ADULT IN CHARGE. Also 
understandably--and professionally--the teacher got up to help this child.

That evening, the teacher got an email from the principal telling her SHE IS 
NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES TO ENGAGE WITH OTHER STUDENTS during small group 
instruction (unless there is a real emergency)!

Here was a 5-year-old, covered in glue. What was he/she to do--get STUCK TO 
THE TABLE waiting for 20 minutes until the teacher finished with that one 
group?

GROWN-UPS, EDUCATED PEOPLE, ARE LOSING THEIR MINDS HERE IN BUFFALO, and we 
are supposed to condone this form of child abuse! "


? teacher
Buffalo School System
2007-01-10





Priscilla Gutierrez
Outreach Specialist
New Mexico School for the Deaf

....change is inevitable, growth is optional...