School and ‘Good’ Kids

I woke up at 7 a.m., a Saturday no less, and couldn’t keep the smile off my face. All I could think about was my eighth-grade math classroom at Mulholland Middle School. My daughter and I had stayed late Friday to rearrange desks and integrate the eight donated Mac Plus computers into each student work area. Now my students would truly be able to integrate writing, English and technology with their math. It is a beginning.

Contrary to a lot of the reported negative stories about kids and schools, I find myself involved with super classes this year--students who want to learn, students who are focused on college. On the whole, these students are involved in learning that displays the integration of math with other academic areas and will become more and more so.

My classes have focused on the basic math skills for two months and now it is time to use those skills on performance tasks. It is my job to select tasks that are realistic and motivating. It is their task to do their best work always; to ask questions; and to be willing to redo, rewrite until a quality project is produced. I’m sure with the patience and enthusiasm of both teacher and students, the goal will be reached.

There are lots of good kids out there, not just in my classes. My mother, a retired teacher, used to say, “For every bad kid you read about in the newspaper, I have a hundred good ones.” That was in the ‘60s. I have never forgotten it. The same is still true, except maybe instead of 100 good ones, it’s 200.

GAYLE FISH

Van Nuys