Accountability, accountability

Since the start of the spring semester, my school has been under a barrage of demands for total student success, and threats of the dismantling of the school, with teacher layoffs of up to 50% if we don't deliver students with passing grades. I've been getting very little sleep wracking my brain to create motivating lessons that will engage students successfully - mostly to no avail.(Or so it seems). Bad weather, mid-winter recess, student illness, and now, spring break, have made teaching entire units virtually impossible. Instruction is choppy at best, and students for the most part have little or no interest in being in the classroom. I know,if you're a teacher, it's more like: "Tell me something new."

I believe there is something deeply wrong at the core of American education. We are fooling ourselves into thinking that a one-size-fits-all approach will solve our educational problems. Children need basic instruction at home, from the cradle, in order to be truly successful in school. They also need to be socialized at home before coming to school. But more and more, teachers are expected to be responsible for a whole person's development. While it is true that excellent teachers can motivate children to learn from eve the least hospitable homes and backgrounds, the job becomes exponentially harder when dealing with over crowded classrooms, a lack of supplies and technology, inconsistent disciplinary strategies, lack of empowerment to teachers and low performing teachers, period.

I have spoken with parents personally about the possibility of learning disabilities in their children, from which I get a swift reply: "there's nothing wrong with my child." I've set up a wiki which features blog pages and a parking lot for questions for my five classes; of the 170 students I teach (on register), only one student has posted comments on the wiki. She refuses to post again until other students post, so far, no one has; it has been up for about 6 weeks. I have promised extra credit for participation, but no one seems interested. I know that if I made it a definite graded project a few more students would actually participate, but that is not an option since not every student has access to a computer that is internet-ready.

I can only hope that the remainder of the spring semester is successful. As we prepare for regents and various other exams student will be expected to achieve success, if they should somehow fail, fail, it will most definitely, according to the legislators and policy-makers, be the teacher's fault.