A follow up on B is that she made absolutely no gains on the post-test she took. She did work quietly on the test and took a long time to do it. She told me of a friend who got a GED in just 20 days when she was locked up. She said she was going to take the test herself in December. I told her it was very hard and she needed at least a 9th grade level in her work to pass. I asked her if she wanted to try a practice test.
She spent probably two or three times the time limit in taking the reading predictor test and still failed it by quite a bit. When I showed her the score, she said she'd have to try another one. The idea of actually learning something in order to improve a score doesn't seem to be a part of her outlook!
On Tuesday I lost patience with D who had failed to take notes on my presentation on something last week and then refused to write an essay this week. I gave her a topic of writing about a person she admired and she said she didn't admire anyone. I told her she would not have options for the real GED, but eventually I gave in and gave her a topic of a job she would like to have. Getting her to write one paragraph and then two paragraphs was so difficult. She was defiant about not working. So I wrote out a warning for her, had her sign it and gave her a copy. She was angry and said she would transfer to Bendix. I asked her if she wanted to make the call right then!
I was very frustrated with the immaturity of the afternoon class and was really unsure of how to turn it around. Maybe I am not the person to teach young black low-skilled teenagers. At 9:30 pm I had the idea of writing a letter for a proofreading exercise, but in it I would express my thoughts about what adult education needs to be and how it is not worth showing up if you are not ready to work.
Much to my surprise, D and her sister A showed up the next day. D worked pretty well although A needed reminders to stop singing and talking. We proofread the letter, but I didn't comment any further on it.
The following day, I gave D a note praising her for coming back and working. She proofread her essay which was pretty minimal in content and had numerous errors, but I determined could be passing. She actually had a smile on her face when we finished working on it.
Maybe it will be a turnaround for her. I know that when I show students that they are worth my high expectations, they can begin to meet them. We'll see. The street is powerful and there are so many bad habits of distractions and noise and frustrations to overcome.
The point about this really being a "new job" is that I do feel I am starting over in many ways. In Family Literacy, I usually had students from the previous year who knew me and trusted me and helped me set the classroom climate. Now I have students from Miss Sally's class and they tend to be some of the hardest ones to get to work. Plus I have these very immature teenagers who were kicked out of school, are in trouble with the law, and have low skills--but expect to get GEDs by their presence in class, not by the hard work of learning to read and write and do math.
I am not one bit sorry I made the change, but there are definitely new challenges!
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