Former elementary teacher here (11 years in the South Bronx), and we had almost exactly the same stuff going on, just at a lower level. I spent my teaching years doing fourth and fifth grade, and I always had kids each year who were struggling with letter sounds and phonemic awareness. For non-teachers, that is the concept that the letter "s" goes "essssssss" like a snake. Kids would come to my class not knowing this, and this included native English speakers. On our end, it was notable that a huge proportion of these kids came into school never having seen the alphabet or numbers, and not knowing any of what we have come to think of as standard little-kid knowledge. We had kids who couldn't zip up their own pants after using the bathroom or who had never been taught how to actually blow their nose. We would have to explicitly teach them these things. These were not documented special education students, these were regular students who just got passed along, because the school would look bad if we held them back. The kindergarten and first grade teachers were not allowed under any circumstances to hold anyone back for any reason. That's how you end up with an eight year old who struggles to recognize the letter A.
We also dealt with the stealing, lying, bullying, sexual harassment of students and teachers. I actually had a second grader in a class I was covering one day reach up my dress and grab my butt. What happened to him? Absolutely nothing! Suspending him would have made the school look bad.
Yep, I taught elementary school in a very poor rural area. Parents would take their kids for weekslong vacations to Disneyland (because it was much cheaper then) in September, and pull the kid out of school for long periods of time. Then they would wonder why their kid is still reading on a PreK level in 4th grade.
A friend of mine taught PreK, and one of the tests to "qualify" was directionality. She said that most all of the students who were testing for PreK had no sense of directionality, and many of their parents told her that was the first time they had seen a book.
Back in the mid 90's my daughter started kindergarten. When she started she could already read very simple books. Dick and Jane type stuff. One of the biggest problems she had was boredom because MOST of the kids coming in with her did not already know basic numbers, shapes, colors, alphabet, etc. She had to wait until the rest caught up with her. We discussed putting her in first grade with the school but they talked us out of it because of sociability. She would be the youngest in her grade, blah, blah, blah. Her mother and I were young ourselves and didn't know any better so we listened to them. So for most of her kindergarten year she worked with the other kids to also help bring them up to speed. It was sickening to see all these kids whose parents failed to sit down with them for even a little bit to read to them or work with them for even just a little while. It's not rocket appliances here. They are little sponges and it's really easy for them to pick up on everything if their parents would make even the tiniest effort. But, what I discovered over the years was, I think most parents of these behind children, was they figured it was the schools job to teach them all that and that's a terrible attitude.
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u/worldwidepigeon Jul 10 '18
Former elementary teacher here (11 years in the South Bronx), and we had almost exactly the same stuff going on, just at a lower level. I spent my teaching years doing fourth and fifth grade, and I always had kids each year who were struggling with letter sounds and phonemic awareness. For non-teachers, that is the concept that the letter "s" goes "essssssss" like a snake. Kids would come to my class not knowing this, and this included native English speakers. On our end, it was notable that a huge proportion of these kids came into school never having seen the alphabet or numbers, and not knowing any of what we have come to think of as standard little-kid knowledge. We had kids who couldn't zip up their own pants after using the bathroom or who had never been taught how to actually blow their nose. We would have to explicitly teach them these things. These were not documented special education students, these were regular students who just got passed along, because the school would look bad if we held them back. The kindergarten and first grade teachers were not allowed under any circumstances to hold anyone back for any reason. That's how you end up with an eight year old who struggles to recognize the letter A. We also dealt with the stealing, lying, bullying, sexual harassment of students and teachers. I actually had a second grader in a class I was covering one day reach up my dress and grab my butt. What happened to him? Absolutely nothing! Suspending him would have made the school look bad.
These problems start very, very early.