I am an 11th grade ELA teacher and I would estimate 30-40% of my students are either functionally illiterate or are totally illiterate.
My worst student is unable to associate phonetic sounds to every letter in the alphabet. I am not sure how they made it to my classroom when they read at the level of a 3 year old. They aren't special needs either.
Administration would like us to pass all of these students. They think next school year we should have an options class to promote literacy.
Basically, they want us to read books like the Giving Tree and the Very Hungry Caterpillar to groups of 15-18 year olds.
So Yea Forums, what are some other age appropriate books I should ask for? I was thinking of asking for copies of I'll Love You Forever and The Missing Piece
I am an 11th grade ELA teacher and I would estimate 30-40% of my students are either functionally illiterate or are...
infinite jest
The American education system needs to be burned down and remade.
Catcher in the Rye. Easy, short, relatable, and there's a lot of swearing, so they'll be amused by that.
Shel Silverstein
Dr. Seuss
If they can't read, they can't read. Your school recommends children's books like VHC so get children's books and teach them to read from the basics
The saddest part is that any of this is acceptable. Retarded kids receiving retarded education in the name of social promotion. They should fail and drop out of school. Coddling them and aiming for the lowest common denominator only results in sinking to new lows. Parents will blame schools but it is the parents fault, the onus is on them to ensure their children learn. Would also be better off removing all blacks from the classroom since we're talking pie-in-the-sky here
Sounds like you failed as a teacher. Just have them *read* audiobooks and when they give book reports let them do it orally.
Animal Farm, unironically
You're an idiot. It has nothing to do with social promotion. It's the school system cutting corners, and not giving a shit.
>Sounds like you failed as a teacher.
You're a goddamn moron. I tried to come up with a witty reply, but there's just no way. You realize that OP had nothing to do with years K-10, right?
there are books targeted towards teens/adults with literacy problems. they are easy to read but have more grown up themes. war, romance etc. try e.g. ransom.co.uk or an equivalent in your country.
or give them comics or similar. or maybe find out what they are interested in
I'm sorry to read that user. Are they really illiterate or do they have trouble with their attention span?
I failed school because I couldn't focus on letters. Using coloured and patterned foils I could put over the pages in various order helped keeping my focus. Some of them had colourful underlines, or underlines with different patterns, flowers etc. That helped keepign my attention from word to word and line to line.
Just a thought, maybe the problem is elsewhere, at least for some of them.
Good luck.
are you american?
I second
Also, books for ESL might also be something to look into. They'll have footnotes explaining difficult words and phrases on the bottom of the pages.
user, these students can't perform a more than surface level analysis of any literary work even if it is in audiobook form.
There has to be a very clear bad guy for them to come up with anything.
For example, Nights by Elie Wiesel is required reading for 11th graders in my district. A lot of the reports I received were basically "Hitler bad because he kill jews".
They talk about Hitler as if he's some cosmic evil that is innately evil.
They basically view Hitler the same way they view Ganondorf.
Likewise when we went over Julius Caesar I got a lot of reports that were simply "Brutus bad because he murder Caesar, murder is wrong". When I try to prod them a bit to see if they can figure out why the Liberators killed Caesar I get blank looks or "the liberators evil so they murder Caesar".
Even though we spent a lot of time discussing the Liberators goals and motivations for killing Caesar. We went over Cassius' speech in act 1 scene 2 so many times and even then a lot of them didn't get it.
Sometimes I feel like I'm talking to fucking cavemen.
They shouldn't read anything other than the Bible anyways. All they need to live a successful good life.
I was talking to my neighbor the other day who's a Q-user schizo in her 50s, and we were just catching up, and I mentioned I "oh not much" but went to the bookstore the other day and got a few things, and she wanted to know what, so I showed her "The Conquest of Texas" which is about why Texas history is all fucked up and racist, and I showed it to her, and I was anxious she'd have a bad reaction to the subject matter or get offended or something.
But as I sat there watching her when she was looking at the back of the book, I realized she couldn't really read it. She's not the only functionally illiterate person I've met at the age. I used to have a neighbor who asked me to write letters which he'd dictate because he couldn't write.
They probably just don't care about Caesar, or even really understand the context. If you asked them about Walter White or Nikocado Avocado, they'd probably have very nuanced views.
>associate phonetic sounds to every letter in the alphabet.
???
Die mad about it you complaining faggot. Maybe you should not have been a teacher you fucking complaining pussy.
>boohoo they cant read
Do your fucking job you bitch. Maybe if you spent a little less time worshipping nigs in your class this wouldnt be a problem faggot
You're a retard, blow your brains out.
Did mad about it bitch. Not my fucking problem you cant do your job.
t. illiterate black kid
Wouldn't that mean you literally cannot read aloud at the age of 17? How is that not a mental disability?
> le public school edjewmuhkayshun
Either homeschool or send your kids to a trad private school. THAT'S IT. You're fucked if you're a poor retard, however, so if that's the case just buy your kid lots of books and play classical music or something (literally the least you can do).
How many of those students are black?
I agree with user.
You're a retard, eat a bullet.
>they aren't special needs either
Not possible.
Oh some bitch faggot public educator is mad about his piss poor showing. Fuck him. Hes a fucking faggot who cant do his job. He should fucking man up instead of being a crying pussy. Like i said stop worshipping nigs and teach. But hes too much of a complaining dumb fuck to do that. So here we are with op the crying bitch
>WAAAAAA WAAAAA I NEED A SHAKE WITH MY FRENCH CRIES
>I CANT DO MY FUCKING JOB THESE KIDS ARE SO DUMB
Kys you faggot and op kys you piss poor faggot teacher
I'm not sure how they would even write anything on their own.
I understand the thinking behind universal education as an option for people, but we never should've made it mandatory.
Beyond basic literacy and numeracy, there's just an intractable subsection of the population that'll always be too stupid to teach. And that's not even counting outright troublemakers.
Uppercrusters ignore these problems because they all send their kids to private schools, where the consequence to not meeting the minimum level of acceptability's expulsion. They'll face zero consequences to fucking the underclass, emmiserating the poor bastards who actually have to try and teach these little bastards, and further roadblocking anyone who might have a chance at escaping this hell.
Maybe if people were a lot less like you and actually RESPECTED their children's EDUCATORS and taught their children to respect them and DEMANDED HIGHER SALARIES FOR THE THANKLESS JOB EDUCATORS DO OUT OF THE GOODNESS OF THEIR HEART we would get higher quality work from them. HAPPY PEOPLE = PRODUCTIVE PEOPLE.
>Brutus bad because he murder Caesar, murder is wrong". When I try to prod them a bit to see if they can figure out why the Liberators killed Caesar I get blank looks or "the liberators evil so they murder Caesar".
not a wrong answer
>I used to have a neighbor who asked me to write letters which he'd dictate because he couldn't write.
The virgin scribe and the chad dictator
They basically memorize the shapes of very common words.
They know how "cat" is supposed to look so when they see "cat" in the text their mind visualizes the object the word is referencing.
Then from the words they know they try to piece together the context of any passage they're asked to read.
It makes their understanding of any text surface level at best, and their writing is nearly unintelligible.
Having a conversation with them is alright but they could never spell most of the words they use.
They never submit work either and they just write down random shit during tests but I still have to pass them.
I hope one of those students you think are stupid bash your fucking face in until you have brain damage. You complaining fucking bitch.
t. Dante Alighieri
you sound retarded, how is he supposed to teach them at an 11th grade level if they read at a 4th grade level, he cannot do the job he was trained for
I'm not OP you fucking schizo bitch, I just know that teachers get a lot of fucking crap they don't deserve from idiot losers like you. The solution is to pay them more and to give them some fucking respect for once. God, I really hope you don't have kids. We can all thank natural selection that you probably are unfuckable anyways, lmao.
Ladies, ladies, come on now
This fucking faggot op cant even do his job and you want to pay him more ?
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAA
YOU FUCKING RETARD LMAO
Unless they went to a school like Harvard, I don't see how anyone can feel anything other than resentment towards the educational system. Educators deserve all the hate they get.
It's not his fault that he has to deal with kids who weren't taught properly. You realize he didn't teach these kids from birth right? the kids had an education BEFORE HE EVER GOT THEM so whatever they were taught, he would have to augment, but since they WEREN'T TAUGHT he has to offer remedial education. IT"S NOT HIS FUCKING FAULT maybe if you don't get that then YOUR THE RETARD, BITCH.
>an 11th grade teacher's job is to teach 17 year olds how to read from scratch
I'm sorry your teachers failed you
How can you just fucking say that? What do educators do that is so wrong that the good they clearly do doesn't even make up for it? tell me!
What's the approximate mean household income in your district? Add or subtract $2-4k for anonymity if you need to
agreed. 90% of teachers hate their jobs, and actively ruin children. it's a position of authority that appeals to people who are too weak and chickenshit to deal with adults. the only people I respect less than teachers are cops.
Teaching is not about fucking authority, it's about passing knowledge to people. Are you serious? Did a teacher touch you or something? What an unbelievable take.
user 11th graders dont care anything other than pussy and parties, you're expecting too much.
Have you ever talked to someone who went to school you fucking drip? Everyone will tell you about that one good teacher they had. Do you know how many teachers a kid has during their school life? How is it that everyone has only one or two "good" teachers? It's because most of them fucking suck, and jerk off to memories of yelling at children.
fpbp
we shouldnt pay a unionized teacher a higher salary. you can earn more from being a private teacher
I really hope this is a troll, or OP is legit in 3rd world.
checks out
t. ex-teacher
I just thing the educational system here contributes too much to the social and economic hierarchies and doesn't allow for much mobility afterwards. That most people's entire lives are decided by how they performed as teenagers in terrible social environments is kind of horrific to me.
I've never understood why people get so frustrated about American anti-intellectualism, when it's almost always inspired by justified resentment towards our educational system.
It's a tough call. I got along my high school teachers pretty well despite being a lousy student. The teachers I had in middle school were nasty and horrible. They were exactly as you described.
>OP is legit in 3rd world.
Alabama had a lower literacy rate than Iraq when the U.S invaded Iraq in 2003 user, The United States is third world.
This was both humorous and depressing at the same time.
Schools were already fucked before the pandemic, and now we're trying to play catch-up after sequestering kids in quarantine for two years. This is what our cowardly policymakers did to us and our children.
I don't really understand because if they know words when spoken they should understand what it means in text. Like I'm just thinking of all the kids on youtube videos who are capable of digesting the video and leaving comments. Clearly they are all literal but possible don't understand some grammar conventions. It makes me think what kinds of videos your illiterate students watch instead? Is it those ones where ever 2 seconds is a micro cut to a reactionary face or meme? Then what do their comments look like afterwords?
>it’s another chud assblasted that people don’t like Hitler
>I got along my high school teachers pretty well
The older you get the better it gets. You can communicate with teachers on a more even level, and the ones there for power want to stay away from people who can fight back. Once you're an adult, education is so vastly different.
What industry are you in now user?
I was thinking of moving to IT
My younger brother is 26 working in IT and is making 100k in a non-coastal city.
I'm making 63k right now and he was making roughly that much as a 21 year old fresh out of college.
The glaring problems in the education system made a lot more sense to me when I saw which of my classmates were going into teaching. All of them were airheads who could barely read themselves, so obviously none of them are going to be able to properly teach anybody. Paying them more wouldn't solve anything unless there was a way to also make the field significantly more competitive to filter out the millions of "I like kids :^)" bimbos.
I genuinely don't know what the hell could fix the system at this point and would never willingly send any of my kids into it. I'm gonna need enough money for private schools, I guess.
Tangentially related, it'll be interesting to see how severely fucked the classes graduating from high school in about ten years are - there's going to be an enormous dip in basically every metric from kids who spent two or three of their most essential formative years fucking around on zoom calls instead of learning to read or count. No elementary schooler learned a single goddamn thing in 2020 or 2021.
My 10th grade english teacher touched me but she had a big rack so i was fine with it
Cute
I didn't go to a great public school system and didn't turn out too bad. I think involved parents and natural intelligence can make up for the failings of schooling. Probably would have been better if I'd gone to a good school though.
I don't think there's any way to fix the system, the people in charge of the system don't care at all and have no incentive to improve it.