That looks like a rough area of town. Parents have often told me, the schools can be so bad in some districts, that the teachers have given up all hope. Not just rough poor parts of town either.
I know it's easy to blame teachers all the time, but I can see their point of view. When a kid has a problem and doesn't seem, for some reason, to try in school, they may simply just keep passing him because they just are so overwhelmed with how bad the school is that they just give up.
A teacher without hope isn't necessarily a bad teacher. Sometimes it is the best of them that just get so fed up and discouraged. It is pretty terrible to take attendance and be told your student is not in class because he got shot and is dead. With the schools having so little money they get made to do things that they don't feel are right.
I think a lot of teachers come in hard charging and full of ideals how they will make a difference, and then they just get slammed in the face so many times they give up.
I think it's also easy to blame parents, but they get discouraged and overwhelmed too.
And the kids. They hear that they are stupid every day and there is no hope of a better life or even a long life, life is just randomly taken away, they react with hopelessness too.
So I think of it as more the situation.
And what if this kid has an undiagnosed dyslexia, or even, just an eyesight problem or hearing problem?
The worst most resistant, stubborn, 'I don't care' students that I went to school with, they had dyslexia. Years ago, no one seemed to have any idea what it was. A kid who couldn't read well was constantly told he was lazy, didn't care, wasn't trying.
I met a reading tutor the other day who told me, 'the kid the teachers hate and shove and me and say, 'here, you can have him!', that's the kid I want!!!!'
Furthermore she told me her approach to reading was heavily research based, and not only how they teach but in what order, and when I said I had learned phonetically and gave an example, she got very excited and intense and said, 'No no no! You're doing it wrong! Here, say it like this...'
She said she was given kids to tutor that were in their teens and could not read a word. She would have them reading within a couple minutes into their first tutoring session and they would walk out saying, 'I CAN read!' the very first session and that would change everything for them. Suddenly they just did not feel like losers any more.
Now there is a passionate caring teacher. And she was about sixty, I'd say. No spring chicken right out of college. But she also had knowledge that other teachers simply did not have. They are not taught these things in teaching courses in college either.
I just have a hope that some of these kids who have lost their enthusiasm for school for various reasons, just happen to meet someone like her.
