The Kids Need Books; Dont They?
I tutor and mentor at Shaw Junior High through the Coaching for College Program. The student that I am working with this year seems to always have homework that consists of photocopied worksheets of some sort. As a tutor, I try to be consistent in my teaching so that I am not confusing her or using terminology not consistent with what she is learning in school. The problem is that she never has her books. The first time I encountered this, I was helping her with her geography homework although the questions were more like humanities questions. She had some definitions that she had to fill in. The student starts asking me the definitions. Of course I know what they were but my simply telling her would not help her. Also, my definitions may not match what her teacher is looking for. When I asked where her textbook was she said that they are not allowed to bring them home; they stay in the classroom. Although I was skeptical, we went to her classroom and retrieved her book. With the textbook, she was able to successfully complete her homework.
It happened again today. Today’s assignment was ratios. The worksheets asked to figure out the height of a tree based on the height of a meter stick and the lengths of shadows of the meter stick and the tree. Again she had no book. When asked about the book she said the same thing that they are not allowed to take the books out of the classroom. My co-coach Josh and I had a grasp on how to figure the problems out but didn’t know how it was being taught. Were we using the correct terminology? Were we showing her the correct way to solve the problems? It’s all a mystery to me. One of the problems, I used trigonometry to figure out. That’s not going to help her at all because she’s not at that level yet.
Is this true that the students are not able to take their books home? If this is true, my obvious concern is how the children can learn if they are not able to take their books home. Furthermore, how are parents or tutors able to help the students without textbooks?
And if it is true, do other DC Public Schools limit use of textbooks to the classroom or is it just Shaw? I’m going to reserve comment until I do some research about this.
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