I am negative

Today, we had a Science Department meeting for 3 hours.

I'm indeed shocked to find teachers agreeing that children are 'ceteris paribus', so it's easier to remediate them.

I always thought teachers would think that all children are unique. Even if they are weak in a subject, they are weak in different topics, and in different topics, different areas. Not one child is the same even in their academic weaknesses. Only their results are 'ceteris paribus'.

I am a firm believer of differentiated instructions, but our education system certainly does not agree with this belief.

By 'effective', I mean the remediation must produce results. Even if the children still fail the subject, they should start to border on the 40s range, not remain the same. I don't know what these teachers mean when they say that the programme is 'good'. I didn't want to be rude and start to go into the statistics of the children who pass under them, because of the 'good' remediation programme.

To me, P3 is just too young to have level remediation. They need their form teachers, not some teachers who see them once a week. I'm not sure how those teachers do remediation when they don't even know the children. If there's no relationship between two parties, I don't know how you can see progress. Coco has become more serious about piano ever since she started learning from this new teacher. I believe that it's because the teacher is forming a good rapport and relationship with her.

I just wanted to speak up and voice my opinion, but it seemed to me the other teachers feel that I'm too negative about everything. But most of them don't teach P3, and if they did, they only took the best class. They don't understand that an average P3 child is really a P1 child trapped in a 9-year-old body. They don't have the discipline and motivation to learn on their own, do work on their own. Oh yes, most of these teachers do not have any kids of their own either.

The Science HOD asked if we wanted to get the kids to do Young Scientist Card. I voted against it as well because I struggled to get my weak kids to even do a one-star activity to chalk up another 8 stars. I had to use my curriculum time to get them to complete the activities, with me telling them exactly what to do, giving them the answers, so as to meet the department target of having 80% of the class completing the all-important Card.

The teacher who collected the cards said that "Most of the classes had 80% of the class completing the cards." Yeah, because I forced my kids to do it. Die die forced them to.

I speak up because I know some things don't work. And I know the struggles a teacher handling an average or weak class has to go through just to get them done. But it looks like they are not welcomed.

I'll have to shut my trap the next time.