Let’s talk about “homeroom.”

It’s not homeroom. It’s “RIT instruction time,” and it lasts for 50 minutes between periods two and three. It’s not a graded class. There is no Framework, pacing guide, or list of objectives. A single homeroom has an assortment of students at different RIT ranges. The students will not be labeled by a RIT range until late September. Homeroom is the place where students go to receive instruction in je ne sais quoi. It is the American tax-dollar working hard. It is a roomful of confused kids. It is a stressed out teacher managing chaos. It is impossible to talk about homeroom without sarcasm, anger, and an overwhelming feeling of pissy-ness.

Why does it exist?—“because we have got to do things according to the dater.” That’s right. Dater. Not data. Dater. What might that dater be? No one at this district has a clue how the tests work, how the scoring works, or what to do about the dater.  All they know is that a test will pump out dater, which is synonymous with numbers. We can easily put numbers on paper next to a student’s name, and then give the piece of paper to a teacher. Now, I believe that the teacher knows best what those numbers mean. Nothing! They mean that the school district has covered its ass for NCLB by claiming to instruct students in their individual RIT ranges. But one this is missing. They never told their teachers what to do, because they themselves do not know what to do. Here, no one knows what the dater means, not even after we’ve “interpreted it” (read: translated it into serious jargon). We have the ranges, and we know where the students are at with respect to a particular test. Now it is our job to get these students to higher numbers, with respect to that particular test, which is other than the test toward which we are concentrating our efforts.

Homeroom is the concretization of “high expectation” without explicit direction on procedure: we need you to get students to this level, and we cannot say how. This is an example of exactly what a teacher should never do to his students.

So I don’t know how to plan a lesson for homeroom yet. I have become the living proof that a principal cause of students’ bad behavior in class is a bad lesson plan. Throw any kids you want at me, my class will run better if I have a valuable, valued, and evaluable objective. That is exactly what I’m lacking in homeroom. My students are outrageous in that class, and not so in any other class that I teach.

To address this, I just need to pick an objective, even if it has nothing to do with RIT ranges or State tests. AJ suggested I research HBCU campuses and show them admissions videos and have them record the statistics. I just started this today with Jackson State University, and it was mostly successful. Next, after more colleges and ACT information, I might teach them the Greek alphabet. Then I might give them SATP practice tests and dissect questions. Then I might make them read Oedipus Tyrannus. Whatever. RIT range this!

Comments

[Rédigé par : Daniel E.]

This was hilarious.  I was laughing out loud.  And I could seriously imagine reading in italics, (which Vox does not support in the comment box as far as I know), at the bottom, "Philip Mohr is a first-year teacher in a critical needs school district in Mississippi."  Submit this to USA Today or the Times.

[Rédigé par : splevine]

umm yeah why have you not talked to me about this earlier because I COULD HAVE WRITTEN IT. We have this too, and it's disastrous. Our administration also just doesn't know what to do with it, and so neither do we. We've been yelled at at meetings because we "aren't doing anything" in enrichment, but they took a week and half to get a half-assed plan together in the first place and literally kept avoiding us every time we tried to ask what we were supposed to do in homeroom.  We have an assembly every week, too. Is this the assembly in the perfectly placed homeroom slot? No...homeroom is "too valuable" to lose so we instead lose time in our first three class. Glad to hear this is as messed up somewhere else too. 

Is this what you were asking me about USA test prep for? Call me about this; I may be able to help. 

[Rédigé par : StacyFilocco]

http://www.peacecorps.gov/wws/educators/lessonplans/
This is actually courtesy of Ashton.  We call our homeroom "Reading Period" and it is, conveniently, immediately after lunch.  I completely used the lesson plans from this website for my homeroom last year.  It covers Geography as well as English and I made the kids answer the questions in complete sentences.  The passages are very readable and the kids can also work at their own pace.  I rewarded mine for finishing 5 assignements with a Gatorade.  It makes you realize just how cheap talk can be when administrators can say that they've instituted tutorials etc. in the school day and this is the reality of the situation.

[Rédigé par : TrevorJensen1776]

ahhh, homeroom interventions.  The state pays thousands and thousands of dollars to train and place greatly needed certified teachers like us to come in and replace those vacancies which are difficult to fill or which have previously been filled by unqualified non-certified teachers.  .... Then the same state (at least how it works at our school) has teachers spend an entire class period teaching a state tested subject lesson in something they're not certified in (in violation of your contract).   Fail.