His Teacher Isn’t Teaching.
Shane is having trouble in math.
I don’t mean, really, Shane is having trouble with math. He is good at math, and doing okay with the concepts. He gets it. He knows how to study. But he’s having trouble in math – in the classroom, in the room itself.
His teacher isn’t teaching.
Shane told me a month ago that his teacher puts up problems on the board and “mumbles some stuff” and then he sits down and tells them all to do their homework.
But they don’t know how to do their homework, because five minutes at the board isn’t exactly “explanatory” and certainly isn’t sufficient for students who know nothing about what’s being presented.
New concepts come and go, and Shane does his best to figure it out. He spends lunchtimes with his former math teacher – the one who actually teaches her students – and she teaches Shane how to do all the things he should have learned in math class.
So… I’ve started seeking “help” for Shane, at his request.
A month ago, I followed the conventional methods: I contacted the counselor and begged for another teacher. The counselor assured me that there would be no switching classes due to teacher preference. When I explained that another teacher was teaching Shane at lunchtime, the counselor seemed fine with that. She said it was expected that all math teachers would “back up” other math teachers.
The counselor suggested that I contact the math resource person – the head of the department – so I wrote a detailed email to him. He never responded.
Finally, yesterday I wrote to the principal. The principal talked to Shane and emailed me to say that the math teacher would be calling me.
The math teacher called me. We talked. I told him Shane wasn’t understanding anything he said in class. He told me that Shane was doing fine. He said that Shane is welcome to come in at lunch and see him if he needs help.
Shane, of course, learns nothing from this math teacher.
“He came to see me one morning,” said the math teacher. “And he hasn’t come to see me since.”
Oh, surprise! He didn’t LEARN anything from you. Why would he go back?
“He doesn’t understand you,” I said.
I wanted to say: You are not helping him because you are not teaching him because you don’t care about your students and you don’t know how to teach!
Instead, I told the math teacher that Shane is seeing another teacher at lunch, because she is actually teaching the material. He understands her. Shane’s current math teacher assured me that Shane is doing fine.
Shane is getting a B in the non-honors math class. This is not “fine” for Shane.
I texted Dylan, who has had this teacher three times. Dylan said, “I just taught myself how to do it. That’s literally all you can do.”
After all that, Shane is no further ahead than he was at the beginning of the semester, begging for a different teacher – one who teaches.
So today, I will send out a follow-up email. And then I will wait again.
Meanwhile, I will worry that all I am doing is aggravating the teacher who can’t teach, and that he will take it out on Shane. But I simply can’t sit back and do nothing – not with Shane pleading for help.
So, here we go again.