High school teacher


Kim Gerber
How school and students have changed over the years I have been a teacher.
Part 1: A brief history of my teaching.
My teaching career consists of 3 parts. My teaching career began at a small private school in Indiana. This was a new religiously based school that required teachers to do a multitude of tasks including cleaning our own chalkboards, floors, and driving the bus.
My second job was at a more established private high school. At this school the workload was more like the public school, but still each teacher had at least 3 preps.
I left this last school in 1991 and now have been at Leyden High School for 18 years. This is the school that I will use to discuss how “school and students have changed of the years.”
Part 2: How School has changed over the past 18 years.
The first change I will mention is tracking. Tracking is the idea of putting students into a course based on ability, reading, and behavior. When I first came to Leyden High School we had 3 levels for freshmen: the practical level, the “regular” level and the “honors” level. The practical level was for the students who lacked some of the skills to be in the “regular” level and students who had behavior problems. The regular level was for the “average” student and the “honors” level was for the more
“advanced” students.
Being a new teacher I taught 3 of these practical classes which was quite a challenge, but also very rewarding. These students really appreciated when teachers helped them and some worked their way out of the “practical” classes into the “regular classes.
Before too long this tracking was replaced by “mainstreaming”. That is putting the regular and practical classes together. This created some very difficult teaching situations as many of these students were very disruptive. In the last few years tracking has been re-established. Now the practical levels are called “academy”
The next big change is our school is becoming more and more diverse. We have students who were born in many different countries and have multitude of cultural backgrounds. This was true of Leyden when I first came but this diversity has increased throughout the years. I love the Leyden diversity. It provides us with a multitude of interesting students and cultures.
The third big change in the school is the movement from individual teaching to cooperative teaching. When I first started teaching teachers made their own tests, set up their own curriculum, and created their own activities. Obviously you could use another person’s activities, but it was not encouraged. Now we all use the same tests and finals and work on curriculum together.
The last big change in the school is the movement from “creative “ teaching to focus on the material that is going to be on the state tests given to students their Junior year. When I first started teaching at Leyden the emphasis was on creative and engaging lessons that could be used in the class. Now the emphasis is on preparing students for their state tests during their junior year.
Part 3: Change in students.
This is a tougher topic than the school changes but my “gut” response to analyzing the change in students is they have not changed that much. Students still worry about their friends, their futures, and their families. Some students care a lot about their grades and some really could care less. Some students are the greatest young people you would ever want to meet, some I wouldn’t trust at all. Yes they come from all different parts of the world, use their cell phones as much as teachers will allow them, and cannot seem to live without their compact music players, but underneath all that they still have the same basic needs as those from 18 years ago.