During last period today, I worked with my high school friend. Remember Henry? My friend who has been rocking it out in his Algebra class? This time, he was working on some history homework. He was completing a timeline about the Civil War.
So Henry takes out this beat up looking photocopied packet that he was supposed to get his information from.
Not a textbook with colored pictures.
Black and white.
Photocopies.
At a school where tuition is at least 10,000 Euros a year.
I opened up this little bundle of historical information and was appalled.
Appalled!
The packet was bound together and the words were so close to the margin that they disappeared into the binding so that the first one or two words on the left margin were obliterated. Try to read something with every 8th word missing....it gets a little tricky...
The pictures were black. This was not a case of not being the greatest quality but still doable...these pictures were b-l-a-c-k black. I could barely make out anything! Below the picture, the text said something to the effect of.... "as you can see in the picture..."
Wait! How on earth can a student draw conclusions from a picture that he can't see?!?!
On certain pages, there was a black stripe going down the middle of the two pages from the crease in the book that was being copied. Again, many words were blacked out making it quite difficult to gain meaning from this text.
When the student had to look up a specific amendment, I realized there was no table of contents and no glossary of terms.
On many pages, the font was very tiny and so dense, I would be entirely overwhelmed if I were a high schooler trying to make sense of it.
Not to mention a high schooler who has a learning disability trying to make sense of it.
Or a high school student trying to learn English trying to make sense of it.
Tiny print. Missing words. Black pictures.
Seriously?
Why aren't there copies of the textbook for each student? Why are they given photo copies instead? I can understand the value in being able to make notes or highlight important information, but at the cost of having all the information there? I think not.
I can't help but feel like what I saw was completely 100% unacceptable.
How does a teacher provide that and feel it is sufficient for learning?
Is it just me or are you sharing my thoughts....
Seriously???
7 comments:
Stopping by from SITS...I think many teachers are in your predicament, and very frustrated with the lack of adequate resources to use when teaching children. I can completely relate with you on that. Hang in there! Nice to meet you!
Wow, that certainly doesn't sounds like the best situation when it comes to doing school work. If students have a hard time reading and then are distracted by the lack of visibility that isn't doing anything for them.
That totally sucks!
That kind of thing happens all the time at my school. We very rarely have enough books for each student and I live on photocopies. I agree, it stinks!
I would go broke being a teacher because I would find this unacceptable! I would seriously buy my kids what I needed to teach...one of the many reasons I don't teach, they are up against so much. I know, many of my BFFs are teachers.
Stopping by from SITS!
Some of the same things are found at my daughters school they don't have the same resources and it's unfortunate.
In college professors do that to reduce book fees for students, esp if they only wnat to assign one or two chapters from a bunch of different books. But it doesn't sound like that's the case here.
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