After careful reflections, I could not help but to think about the days that we lost from school after 9/11. If the video that we saw in class had been made back then, then we would have come to - days of instruction. Not only do we lose class time for all of the reasons mentioned, but also the attention that students require in certain areas are greater than others. I remember watching the movie where a student does not knock on the principal's door and therefore the principal turns him away. The student gets killed by rival gang members. If a student comes into my class distraught I am going to do whatever is possible so that I can get them re-focused and back on track.
There are numerous days that we lose instructional time. I believe that with this in mind we as educators have to have more extra-curricular activity that is relevant to students missing time in school. The boards of educations should have a policy in place that allows students to make up the work that they have missed. How this will be implemented is something for consideration
4 comments:
I agree with you that it is not just the activities that are planned that cause educators to loose instruction time, but it is also the students and teachers mood during a particular day or period. Unfortunately, there is nothing to do to plan ahead for anybodys mood, so the only thing we can do is to learn to be flexible.
As far as planning activities, administrators need to ensure that the activities that are being planned are educational, and that the activities are spread out over time and not jammed into one particular time frame.
It is important for assemblies and field trips to take place, it is part of the educational experience, but as previously stated, these activities need to be well planned.
I agree with you when you stated that we not only loose instruction time not only to planned activites, but also to unplanned activites. Our students enter our classrooms every day with a million things on their minds. Some days it affects them more than others. On those days that it affects them we aren't just going to turn our backs on them. We are going to do whatever we can do to help out. I am an elementary school teacher and I probably loose about an hour or so a week because of this type of unplanned activity if you will call it. That may not sound like a lot, but that time adds up especially when you also have the planned activites to also worry about.
I agree with your analysis of the 180 days video and we are talking about how many days the whole school misses. You bring up a good point about the individual student. If that student is sick a few days or is distracted in your class because he/she received a bad grade on a test (or any of the other ten thousand things that can distract that student) the number of days in the video would be a lot lower. I guess the theme of the video, as in many other aspects of life, is we need to make good use of the time that we have. I continually say there is not enough time in the day and I guess the video shows there is not enough time in the school year.
Your points are quite valid. As school is many things to many people, perhaps the mandate is to re-think and re-structure how we "do" school!
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