wombat_socho (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
wombat_socho) wrote2006-09-26 10:22 am
wombat_socho) wrote2006-09-26 10:22 am
Entry tags:
I'm burning diesel, burning dinosaur bones
This is not shaping up to be a good day...the zipper on my last good right support stocking blew out this morning, I couldn't find the other pair (which has a hole in it but is still kind of serviceable) and I was late getting P downtown to work.
And I was already in a foul mood from last night's readings, which filled me with rage. The poetry chapter wasn't so bad, although the vast majority of the chapter was devoted to having kids write stuff that imao doesn't qualify as poetry, and the rest to haiku (which most kids allegedly don't like) or limericks. It beat the hell out of the chapter on teaching kids to read, which started out with some postmodernist crap about the reader "creating meaning by interpreting the text" (WTF!!!!) and then sank into the swamp of teaching malpractice by spending the bulk of its time on various "whole language" approaches which have been documented NOT TO WORK for the majority of kids. There were about three paragraphs on phonics, which the text acknowledged as "still controversial" (OMGWTFBBQ!!!!) while disparaging it as "limited". Well, in the sense that it only teaches kids to READ, unlike these other trendy but utterly fucked and useless approaches, yeah. There's a reason the Feds aren't spending money on any non-phonics approaches, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with politics. It's all about teaching kids to read, because if they can't read they're screwed. There are damn few jobs these days that don't require reading, and the vast majority of them don't pay squat, so any approach to reading instruction that doesn't involve phonics is educational malpractice, plain and simple.
After finishing that and writing a rather sulphurous set of reflections, I retired to bed and made my way through the middle third of The Tale of Despereaux. If I wanted to be obnoxious and snarky I would protest the stereotyping of rats as treacherous and cruel, but I don't want to waste the energy.
After I finished that I rewarded myself with a few chapters of The Scar , turned out the lights and went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.
Off to weigh in and then attend a time-wasting meeting.
And I was already in a foul mood from last night's readings, which filled me with rage. The poetry chapter wasn't so bad, although the vast majority of the chapter was devoted to having kids write stuff that imao doesn't qualify as poetry, and the rest to haiku (which most kids allegedly don't like) or limericks. It beat the hell out of the chapter on teaching kids to read, which started out with some postmodernist crap about the reader "creating meaning by interpreting the text" (WTF!!!!) and then sank into the swamp of teaching malpractice by spending the bulk of its time on various "whole language" approaches which have been documented NOT TO WORK for the majority of kids. There were about three paragraphs on phonics, which the text acknowledged as "still controversial" (OMGWTFBBQ!!!!) while disparaging it as "limited". Well, in the sense that it only teaches kids to READ, unlike these other trendy but utterly fucked and useless approaches, yeah. There's a reason the Feds aren't spending money on any non-phonics approaches, and it doesn't have a damn thing to do with politics. It's all about teaching kids to read, because if they can't read they're screwed. There are damn few jobs these days that don't require reading, and the vast majority of them don't pay squat, so any approach to reading instruction that doesn't involve phonics is educational malpractice, plain and simple.
After finishing that and writing a rather sulphurous set of reflections, I retired to bed and made my way through the middle third of The Tale of Despereaux. If I wanted to be obnoxious and snarky I would protest the stereotyping of rats as treacherous and cruel, but I don't want to waste the energy.
After I finished that I rewarded myself with a few chapters of The Scar , turned out the lights and went to bed at a somewhat reasonable hour.
Off to weigh in and then attend a time-wasting meeting.