"It's So Rewarding!"

I won a hundred bucks once in a lottery.

Actually, it was a couple of movie tickets, and the movie wasn't that great.

Still, the fact that I won something was very rewarding. The main point being that I did nothing to earn it.

That's what I call rewarding.

Now, many teachers talk about helping students to read "Cat in the Hat" or memorize the times tables up to 3, and they call that rewarding.

One afternoon before the local high school football game I was about to attend, a colleague of mine from Lawndale found me eating dinner at a nearby restaurant. He informed me that he had been transferred to one of the middle schools in Gardena, as his previous site had been converted into a charter school. So many bad test scores, so little time.

Anyway, he was feeling pretty proud of himself, since he had just finished his Beginning Teacher's Support and Assessment.

"A friend of mine was this close to getting it done. I told him he needed to hurry before it's too late." Then he shined a self-congratulating smile, "Because he didn't get it done, he got RIFfed (laid off)

"I get all the Far Below Basic kids, then I can get them up to Below Basic! That's really good for me!"

He seemed to delight in the abysmal status of these students' numeracy. Middle School students who are already Far Below Basic by then must have suffered though a terrible wasteland of compulsory schooling. I did not feel moved to celebrate with him.

Here we go again, I thought to myself. A teacher, still kicking around in his liberal "let me help you, this should work" mentality, playing up all the great things that he has done to help his students.

But student learning is about the student learning, not the teacher teaching. Really, a good teacher only has to inspire and encourage. Beyond that, the student can tear through information. I began to wonder. . . Those Far Below Basic kids probably could have mastered differential calculus in one year if they received adequate, diligent attention from a mentor. What is there to stop a student from learning anything that he or she wants to?

Why, the teacher, of course, and the schools that hire them, who are more interested in molding them to answer prescripted, multiple choice questions which have nothing to with engaged living.

Before I passively waved him off, this teacher congratulated himself again, declaring:

"It's very rewarding, helping these kids. It's so rewarding."

His "helping" these kids was actually hurting them, holding them back. Cramming thirty kids, many of whom still have not mastered basic English, to relearn basic math is a terrible joke.

"It's so rewarding!"

As if!