PHOENIX FLYER

Sept. 10th-14th, 2012

DMHS. The Week Ahead at DMHS.

2012: Mon. Sept. 10th, 2012: 5:00pm: Soccer at Morehead 6:00pm: RCS Board of Education Meeting **Jon Williams will be recognized at this meeting if you are interested in attending Tues. Sep. 11th: 5:00pm: VB at Western Alamance HS Wed. Wed. Sept. 12th: 2:00pm: CASA meeting in Cuthbertsons room 4:30pm: Soccer & Tennis HOME

DMHS. The Week Ahead at DMHS.

Thurs. Sept. 13th: 4:30pm: Tennis at NW Guilford HS 5:00pm: VB HOME 7:00pm: JV Football at RCHS Fri. Sept. 14th: HAPPY FRIDAY!!! leigh GONE 7:30pm: Varsity Football HOME Upcoming Upcoming Events:
Sept. 19th: PD during planning period Sept. 21st: Grading period ENDS Sept. 24th: Early Release Day: Mandatory Common Core training from 1:45-3:15pm *leigh will give details later Sept. 24th: Grades DUE in NCWISE by 12:00am Sept. 28th: Report Cards GO HOME

Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson http://bit.ly/Or9xcn

Alternatives to Failing Your Students

By Bill Page: http://bit.ly/ObUjYy

A Teachers Lament: I have to fail kids who wont learn

Kids dont fail; they are failed. And what they fail is what schools and teachers are responsible for teaching. Among problems facing every teacher, none is more perplexing, pernicious, and persistent than teaching students who dont, or wont learn. Teachers dread having to give Fs; they are humiliating, marginalizing, and devastating to kids. Teachers try their best to avoid failing kids by offering extra opportunities, alternatives, by fudging on grading procedures, and by arbitrary marking. Failing students represents an assault on the teachers role and self-esteem. No student wants to fail, and no teacher wants students to fail, but they are related routine occurrences and a vicious cycle. Educators are in charge Some kids skip happily to school; some kids just skip school, but that doesnt alter the fact that students are conscripts not volunteers. Traditional schooling mandates every child from six to sixteen years of age attend school. And, if as many believe, students must learn a common core of knowledge and skills that educational authorities deem essential, then the schools responsibility is to gather, bundle, and uniformly teach these so-called essentials to every student, including the most reluctant. Simply put, students are compelled to attend classes and teachers are paid to teach them. Failure to learn is the schools problem Students behave in ways they have learnedways that make sense to them. Improving kids learning behavior is the task of school. They learn according to their life experiences. Good learning skills and habits, along with compliant social behaviors, are not conditions of school attendance or a prerequisite of a students acceptance. Saying, The kid is not ready for school, sounds a bit like a doctor who complains, All I see are sick people. By contrast, asserting that, The school is not ready for the kid, establishes the schools responsibility to create readiness. Schools and the teachers, not the kids, have the readiness problem. Failure is a shared relationship The traditional concept of teaching holds the teacher responsible for students acquiring specified skills and knowledge. But if the teacher is responsible, then the student is not responsible. The teacher cant learn times tables or learn to spell for students. Learning is a personal, individual experience for which only the student can be responsible. Learning requires the active cooperation of the students. That doesnt mean, however, that the teachers role is not essential in facilitating the learning. Teaching is a partnership in which the teacher and learner interact in an integrated, cooperative, collaborative process. Teaching-learning is a relationship The educational bureaucracy predetermines and imposes a domination relationship in which the school and teachers literally make the rules and have all the power to accomplish their teaching mission, but students have no power to achieve learning. It is this lopsided relationship that causes many learning problems. School learning is difficult as evidenced by the fact that most kids dont get As and Bs; they get Cs and many get below that. If school learning were not difficult, everyone would get much better grades.