The frustration of being a high school teacher is that when the underachieving students get pushed on to your classroom there is nothing you can do about it. It is impossible to counteract 13 or 14 or 15 years of falling behind in the 18 weeks that I get to see them and try to teach them high school level material and focus on 105 other students.
When I first graduated from college with a secondary ed - English license and a computer minor. I thought that I was use the computer minor to help me get a job but would teach English. However, this year since I was leaving, the administration decided to stick me with Keyboarding classes the second half of the year. So now I spend the day watching students type. Great fun. How could this be frustrating?
Today, a student was working on a keyboarding / Wheel-of-Fortune game. If they type sentences fast enough and error-free, they get to guess letters, then solve the puzzle. As I was walking back to my desk after refilling the paper in the printer (my main job) a student stopped me and asked, "Mr. Maffey, do you know this one?"
I looked at her screen:
Abraham Lin_oln
Without even stopping, I replied, "Yeah, he was our 16th President." What else could I do? Tell her the answer? Stop and give her a little bio on the importance of Lincoln? Her goal was to get onto the next puzzle, not get a history lesson. So the knowledge would have been passed onto deaf ears. I am continually awed by the ignorance of our youth, the failings of our elementary schools, and the lack of responsibility by many parents.
