The girl asked me again. The girl that asked me yesterday how to create and format a table. The girl that asked me eight times yesterday. She asked me again if the columns go "side-to-side" instead of "this ways". She's the girl with the 5 page table for 4 rows of data. She's the girl that can never remember how to remove the lines or move cells no matter that I just walked her through the steps for the eighth time.
So the kicker today was when she was supposed to type a table then make corrections. The kicker was when she was supposed to switch 'Payments - automobile' to 'Automobile payment' and the "P" had a line through it and a cursive "lc" next to it to make it lowercase. She thought it was an "e" so it was now eayment. She said it looked funny. I told her that it wasn't an "e" but an "lc" as in lower-case. She made the edits while I helped another student. When I came back, the word "lcayment" sat there staring at me. "Are you serious, lc-ayment?" I said. I went back to my seat.
As I'm typing this frustration-letting blog entry, a student came up and said what do I do here. I explained it again. "Switch the words then, make the 'p' of payments lowercase." The response I get? "So I put Automobile Payment LC?" Do kids not know what lowercase is anymore? Are we even dumbing down letters nowadays? Are elementary classrooms filled with lessons on "big" letters and "small" letters because our kids self esteem might suffer if we use words (capial and lowercase) that are outside their zones of development?
