One part of chapter one that stuck out to me was the part when Mr. Michie is thrown into a classroom without much preparation or and clue of what was available in his room. This reminds me of how I started my Pre-K job this fall. I was given the position on a Friday, 2 and a half weeks before the start of the school year. The whole first week after receiving the position, I was on vacation where I had no way of getting any preparation done. The following thursday was open house for parents and children and the room had to be set up how it was going to be for UPK. I also had to plan 3 activities for the children to do during the open house. No one gave me any curriculum for UPK (other than NYS Standards) no one showed me what resources I had available in the classroom, no one told me how the day was supposed to be run. When I read this part of the book, I knew exactly what Mr. Michie was feeling and it made me feel optimistic that if he could pull his class together with less than a week to prepare, I certainly could do it too.
"If my lessons aren't learned
I hope they remember respect
rules I broke by hugging
an emphasis on laughter
and questions not answered
but asked"
This quote from Pamela Sneed really struck a note with me. I personally feel that in pre-school, academic topics can be learned later, if children can't read going into kindergarten it isn't the end of the world, if children leave knowing only how to write the letters in their name it's okay, they have time, if children can't yet count to 30 they will survive. All of these things I believe come secondary to the social and emotional lessons that children learn. Children have the rest of kindergarten to learn how to read. If they have learned school-readiness skills (such as active listening and how to appropriately interact with other children and adults) as well as respect for and trust in their teachers, they will be in a much better situation where they will be capable of learning much quicker. My main goal for my children in pre-k is for my students to know that they are loved by their teachers, that they are capable of anything they put their mind to, and that its okay to try new things.
Essence Extractor
The teacher must know his/her students, respect their differences, and be empathetic towards them before any learning can begin to take place.
Rigorous Researcher
Since Mr. Michie's stories come from the early 1990's in the City School District of Chicago, I decided to do a little research on some facts about drop-out rates and student make-up during that time.
- From 1991 to 1999, an average of 1,400 youth each year left Chicago’s public schools in the sixth, seventh or eighth grade.
- Sixteen of every 1,000 elementary students dropped out during the 1999-2000 school year, compared to nine in 1991-1992.
- By law, children under 16 can return after being dropped from school rolls. But 73 percent of those who left between 1991 and 1995 did not return to the Chicago Public Schools within four years.
- Until 1991, the schools had truancy officers in every elementary school. The officers were trained by the schools and the Chicago Police Department to visit homes and talk to parents. They also had legal authority to take children to school or families to court.
- The board eliminated the positions to save $4 million, according to a 1992 report by CATALYST magazine. In the following school year, 1,408 elementary school children dropped out, up from 825 in 1991, the biggest one-year increase in the 1990s.
- During the 1990s, thousands of teenagers dropped out of the Chicago public schools before reaching ninth grade, and most of them were African American. The dropout rate rose from nine to 16 of every 1,000 students between 1991 and 1999.
- Since 1991, dropout rates for sixth-, seventh- and eighth-graders have risen citywide. The rate among African Americans has doubled.
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