How can I reach these kids?

[Grey Jorildyn]

Being in the mental health field I cam tell you that child paychology can have a very positive impact on these kids. There does need to be followup at home in many cases, but these kids are not a lost cause by any means, they just need the right kind of help.

[ZarakiKujata]

I had a college reading level in 4th grade, I don't understand why some people are so stupid.

I think that's debatable otherwise you would have read a fucking intro level social science textbook that talks about how poor people don't get the same attention from their parents for any number of reasons which de-emphasizes reading, go to shittier schools that get less money that causes this etc etc.

Back to OP though, watch Season 4 of the Wire as it deals w/ this very issue (2 cops who have been kicked off the force end up teaching at an inner city West Baltimore Middle School). The story is based off of the experiences of hte writer who himself was an ex-cop turned math teacher. Basically, they trick the kids into learning, i.e. math teacher teaches them how to shoot dice in class w/ monopoly money, as others have mentioned you could easily do the same w/ having them write rap lyrics (even as groups) and disguising it as poetry. Additionally you can check out book 2-3 of Frank McCourt's memoirs, as an inner-city English and then creative writing teacher in many of NYC's poor neighborhoods his thoughts and ideas might be beneficial to you.

[Osiris]

Uh, my family is extremely poor and I went to a pretty ghetto elementary school. I still learned how to read. My parents don't even speak or read English. Oh, and English isn't even my first language. I don't think kids have an excuse except for simply not being intelligent enough.

[ZarakiKujata]

Are you fucking retarded? I'm a non-native speaker as well and as an non-native speaker you should know exactly how hard it is for kids with parents in the exact same situation as you, if your parents can't read to you at night in English then it will severely hinder your ability to learn to read well. Additionally, as I stated often times the parents aren't around for any number of reasons (both legitimate and not) and aren't able to read to their kids. This hinders kids abilities to succeed, particularly when they are in a shitty school that doesnt have any money.

[Lucienne]

Uh, my family is extremely poor and I went to a pretty ghetto elementary school. I still learned how to read. My parents don't even speak or read English. Oh, and English isn't even my first language. I don't think kids have an excuse except for simply not being intelligent enough.

It's good everyone in the world works the same way you do.

I have never worked with kids that young, and my only experience of teaching kids with problems is from working with kids that have autism and Asperger, but here are a few thoughts.

Make sure you know which of the kids actually can write and how well. Talk to their old teachers, find any sort of writing done by them you possibly can. Get as clear a picture of what the kid knows as possible. The better you know your pupils, the bigger is the chance you can help them.

Divide them in groups based on what they know. They don't need to know about it in the first place, but it will make your work easier. You'll probably end up having one group that is fairly literate and writes without being forced - just give them whatever you find fits. In the second group you'll have kids that can write, but hate it - a good thing is to try to find what the kids are actually interested in, not what you think would interest a kid of that age. When I get a new class I usually spend the first lesson giving them some easy tasks and sit outside the classroom talking to them one by one, I always ask them how they feel about the subject, what they find difficult, if they have any ideas about what they'd like to do in the class and some general questions about them. This might be more difficult to do with kids that are younger though, but the general idea of it is to make them believe you see them. If they tell you they have a hamster called Ben, write it down and ask them about it the next week. The better your relationship with the pupil is, the easier it is to teach them. Tell them something about yourself, all my pupils know I have a silly cat and play games. To proceed to your third group, those are kids that you know are not completely literate. Here your primary task will probably be to improve their writing/reading skills before you move any further. Your last group is kids you know nothing about. Try to get to know them, be very patient. Don't worry about wasting lessons on things that have nohting to do with your subject at this point, you won't teach them more if you blindly focus on the curriculum.

Have them write in groups or pairs. You want to make sure you have at least one kid that you know can write in each group. You can think of few topics, preferably something silly, write each one on a piece of paper and have the group draw one.

Have them watch half of a story and let them write the ending. Everyone needs to write at least one sentence. Let them write in pairs if they want to. Pick a funny story, maybe a cartoon.

Start each lesson by having a few kids to tell the class something that happened that they want to share. If you want to you can even tell them something funny yourself to start it. We had our autistic kids to tell us about their weekend every morning to improve their ability to tell stories.

[bigrougabagel]

Give them prizes or treats for successfully doing the work assigned such as fried chicken, watermelon, a basket ball game, purple drank and last but certainly not least a vanilla dutch blunt.

Racist, racist, racist, racist, hilarious.

[Darus Grey]

Just pack some heat one day and shoot up the class-room, as a professional educator it's been my experience that trying to teach children get's you nothing but a bullet for your troubles. You just gotta show them you're quicker at the draw than them, and lead it to its inevitable conclusion.

[Callisto]

@OP if it makes you feel any better my g/f is student teaching 3rd grade in Itasca atm and having similar issues, so it's not just the city kids.

[Cesaria]

It's always a bastard job to deal with kids like this - there's any number of "miracle" solutions promised, made by idiots who get to sit in an office somewhere and never SEE any of the kids with issues like this.

Obvious things like boy-friendly topics - you're doing that. Writing for a purpose, not just for the sake of writing, while it might go against your grain of creative writing for writing's sake - a real audience or reason for writing can be a help. Boys often don't like writing stories, but other types of writing appeal more - things like instructions (I often take things like a remote control car in, and make a point of deliberately doing to the letter any instructions they give me to focus on them giving me precise instructions on what to do... remember if they can't SAY a sentence coherrently - they're not going to be able to write it, you might have to work on spoken language before you can work on written language), comic strips, recounts, sports recounts - things like that, especially ones with short chunks of writing rather than extended paragraphs to start with... getting ANYTHING written to start with, then moving on to making what's written better after that block's over with. Even the brightest kids I have would struggle with the leaf thing to be honest. Things like cartoon sequences without the text sometimes works - getting kids to TALK you through the story and then a sentence per picture, building up to more afterwards. I did see one school that had got some fantastic superheroes work done by using a digital camera to photograph the scenes, and publisher to put speech bubbles on and make it into a graphic novel... looked like a fucking techno-headache to pull off with a class of kids but I keep meaning to try it with a small group.

Whiteboards sometimes help as well - because they're not "permanent" like paper, sometimes that gets reluctant boys who don't want to "get things wrong" writing. I don't know if they've hit the US as much as they have over here - but most UK schools use them a lot - sometimes they're a fucking pain in the arse when none of the pens work and the kids fuck about handing them out - but they can really help for kids to try to stuff out on, and if you've got access to it and want a record of what they've written - you just photocopy the board if you've got little ones (laminating white paper works fairly well as a cheap subsitute but it's a pain to rub the pen off).

As for the "wierd reaction" - it's actually incredibly common to see in schools around here (I teach some fucked up kids lol). It's all bound up with self-esteem, with fear of letting you get close, and often it's just something I've seen kids do when they're having a bad day - they do some work, you praise them for it, so - to strike back at that praise - they wreck the work they've just done. Best thing I've found in the short term while you're building a relationship up with them is just to not react to it - they want a reaction and it's pushing you and testing you to reject them. Sometimes you can coax them out of it, sometimes it's best to just let them stew and when they're getting fuck all attention you find they'll skulk back to the group to see what everyone else is going.

I'm about to commit educational heresy in the UK establishment... I fucking hate the mentality that we give the out of line kids stickers for stuff they bloody well should be doing in the first place, and it pisses me off when Johnny gets a sticker for sitting in his seat for 2 minutes - but, being brutally honest, sometimes for your own sanity - it works. I wouldn't use stickers and crap with kids that age - I used to use raffle tickets for a prize box I had full of shit like novelty pencils and I'd draw a few tickets out each week. I still think it's bollocks but even the good kids these days expect a sticky star for writing the date on their work - I don't know if the US is as bad, but it's the way the UK's headed to hell in a handbasket incredibly quickly.

Biggest thing I've found to remember (and it's fucking hard sometimes) is, it's not YOU they're kicking off at, it's a teacher. There are some really messed up kids out there, you do what you can - but Dangerous Minds and all that sorta film is bullshit really, it takes more than a nice montage in a classroom to change the sort of behaviour patterns these kids have been caught up in for nearly a decade - you do the best you can and then you walk away at the end of the day and switch off for the evening.

Bit rambly - possibly there's some solutions in there somewhere - or just some shit to try or reassurance that you're not alone, we get exactly the same bullshit in the UK and most classes I go in have a couple of these characters.

[Dimmauk]

@OP if it makes you feel any better my g/f is student teaching 3rd grade in Itasca atm and having similar issues, so it's not just the city kids.

And the thing is, teachers will not "reach" everyone. Some kids are just destined to be fucking morons, cause they have moron parents. You cant save everyone. As long as the teacher doesn't give up, and teaches the best they can, then its up to the kids and parents to succeed.

[Callisto]

And the thing is, teachers will not "reach" everyone. Some kids are just destined to be fucking morons, cause they have moron parents. You cant save everyone. As long as the teacher doesn't give up, and teaches the best they can, then its up to the kids and parents to succeed.

Some of the stories I've heard from her so far are absurd, like a kid(9 years old) whose parents let him play MW2 5-7 hours a night instead of doing homework and then everyone wonders why the kid is a fucking idiot and try to figure out what special 'learning disorder' he has and coddle him because he doesn't feel the need to try at all.

[aurik]

Yea but he's going to be fucking badass at FPS games when he's older.

[Callisto]

Which is fine until he can't win tournaments because he didn't pay attention in their 3rd grade computer class and is too stupid to figure out how to work a mouse like the other heavy-hitters, lol

[aurik]

Yes I'm glad I took my 3rd grade mouse instruction. Without those classes I would have been totally lost.

[ZarakiKujata]

Some of the stories I've heard from her so far are absurd, like a kid(9 years old) whose parents let him play MW2 5-7 hours a night instead of doing homework and then everyone wonders why the kid is a fucking idiot and try to figure out what special 'learning disorder' he has and coddle him because he doesn't feel the need to try at all.

I think theres just something wrong w/ alot of parents nowadays. My little brother(11yr old) is in probably one of the best school districts in CT, and all his little dumbass friends want to do when they have come over from about age 8 onwards is play my M rated FPSes. Do their parents just not care?

[Ksandra]

I think theres just something wrong w/ alot of parents nowadays. My little brother(11yr old) is in probably one of the best school districts in CT, and all his little dumbass friends want to do when they have come over from about age 8 onwards is play my M rated FPSes. Do their parents just not care?

Holy Shit it just occurred to me...when you're bother ends up going to HS is he going to end up going to E.O. Smith?... 'cause one of my close friends is a math teacher there lol


But ya I agree with you, kids don't go outside at all anymore.

[Callisto]

Not going outside is one thing, but they should at the very least play games appropriate to the age level and if nothing else mix up the variety of the games, add in some puzzlers or something that requires some thought, lol. That said, I think every parent should force their kind into some form of extra-curricular activity, be it sports, music, or basic part-time jobs/volunteer work. I grew up a giant Square fanboy RPG-nerd for the most part, but pretty much everything valuable that I learned in high school I learned from football/track, nothing's wrong with playing vidyas but parents need to force the issue when it comes to mixing other things in.

[Ksandra]

Not going outside is one thing, but they should at the very least play games appropriate to the age level and if nothing else mix up the variety of the games, add in some puzzlers or something that requires some thought, lol.

I agree, I just meant it's getting to the extreme where kids aren't getting enough outside stimuli. Luckily our generation is more knowledgeable about games so hopefully our kids won't have as much an issue about age games.

Sometimes I miss the atari. Everything was ok, you could only play it for like 1-2 hours before getting bored. And didn't really take away from other activities.


Fuck I miss my atari.

[Callisto]

I'm honestly terrified at the thought of eventually having a teenager who won't go outside and do normal teenager things like experimenting with drugs and underage sex and shoving table-top nerds into lockers, I don't even know where I'd be today without those things.

[Ksandra]

I'm honestly terrified at the thought of eventually having a teenager who won't go outside and do normal teenager things like experimenting with drugs and underage sex and shoving table-top nerds into lockers, I don't even know where I'd be today without those things.

These are the kinds of things I remind my mom constantly that she should be thanking God she raised a nerd.