posted
Icarus, I know you said you weren't offended, so I'm not trying to mollify you when I say that I don't necessarily think all older teachers are bad, or that it's the new theories they're learning in school that are making the young teachers I know better teachers.
On the contrary, its' not what they're learning, but the dedication they're showing by actually getting a teaching certificate. It's all the new rules in place, all the new hoops to jump through - which, I believe, are weeding out anyone who would major in education because "Well, it's an easy degree to get and the hours should be good. I guess I'll be a teacher."
And, in Alabama, you cannot teach at a secondary level without majoring in your course of study - you can't teach high school math without majoring in math, and double majoring in education.
In fact, I checked at the four year school where I'm transferring for my degree, and the math requirements to get a secondary certificate in math are pretty steep, in my view. It would scare me away.
First they take the same maths as an elementary school teacher would - same as me. That means college algebra, college algebra II with Trig, and two higher maths, which in my case I'm taking calculus 1&2.
After that, they take Calculus 1&2 if they didn't already take it, Basic Statistics, and Calculus 3. Then the junior level work which includes the class Intro to Advanced Mathemetics, Linear Algebra, Differential equations, college geometry, and something called Combinatorics Then a senior level Survey of Geometries, and some electives at the 300 level or up.
That's the math requirement. For the teaching certificate they also have to take 25 semester hours of teaching field classes, most of which have practicum requirements where they must teach in the high school tutoring program on campus, and then of course they must take the last semester student teaching internship.
Will this mean that anyone who graduates this program and gets a teaching certificate is automatically better than any current math teacher like yourself? Of course not, but it does mean that whoever goes through all this wants to be a math teacher. And that's a step in the right direction, don't you think?
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quote:I think you'll find that the answer is, in many parts, no (at least to anything like 50%).
As a conservative Christian in the Bible belt, I think that estimate is really low.
And, if some people teach rejection of the establishment, it's usually because they home school, and take the teaching of their child to read as a personal responsibility.
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"Of course not, but it does mean that whoever goes through all this wants to be a math teacher. And that's a step in the right direction, don't you think?"
posted
I agree that the high level of parental involvement has a lot to do with the success of schools in Utah. But I think another problem is that Oregon suffers from more education fadism than Utah does. For instance, a half an hour of school time in at least some classes I've heard of is devoted to having the kids sit in a circle and talk about how they feel. At the time I had my kids there, children weren't expected to read until 3rd grade. Rather than that being "all children must read by then" the curriculum was designed so that all children were at beginning reading levels by 3rd grade. I'm not sure if this is true now, but I do know they latch onto every federal government program like it was the bible and mother's milk.
I am not convinced that community involvement is considerably better in Utah than elsewhere. I've lived elsewhere, and it was pretty good in Oregon, too. But having been Mormon in both states, I might venture to say that LDS parents are, in general, fairly concerned with their children's education. I think this is probably true of most religious organizations.
In Oregon, there were far more private schools than in Utah. In our search for a better education for our kids, we visited several of the private schools. Only one in the area wasn't religious based, and it was out of our budget. The others were very discouraging in that they did not teach critical thinking, but such things as creation science and an us vs them mentality. I'm not sure what I'd find in the LDS private schools here, but I think it would be similar. After all, Utah is one of the most conservative states out there, and this includes our schools. Sheltering your children from the world here seems to me almost like putting them in a padded room with a helmet and padded armor. The homeschooling movement here is scary, actually, bordering on cultism.
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LJ -- Oh, I think it happens in Utah, too, just not to the same degree. For one thing, the LDS church is, in large part, the establishment.
Belle -- as there's not a particular church to be talking about in the Bible belt, I'm not sure exactly what you're stating.
Of that 50% of LDS members that are considered active, by far most of them likely encourage their children to read the BoM and other scriptures on a fairly regular basis, and most of them probably send their children to church activities which encourage good group behavior and basic analytical skills. That's somewhere between 15 and 30% of the state for each one.
However, just the rate of basic church attendance is only 37 to 46 % of the entire population (http://www.lifeway.com/lwc/article_main_page/0,1703,A%253D153614%2526M%253D200023,00.html ). That 15 to 30% we're talking about in Utah is only LDS members. Since Utah is generally in line with the "bible belt", church attendance among the rest of the population is likely on the order of 40%. .4 * .4 + .5 * .6 yields a good guesstimate of the churchgoing rate in Utah, 46%. That's at the very highest end of Bible Belt attendance rates (and I'll ask LJ -- does active mean fairly regular church attendance, or something more?).
Plus, we haven't even considered something very important here. Do Bible Belt schools show better education per dollar spent?
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From what I've heard from our youth around here, the High Schools in our SLC suburb district are pretty rigorous. From what I understand, not only do they have AP classes, but they have college credit courses as well that can get the GE out of the way. I'm not sure about the area you moved in, but the Salt Lake school district is among the worst in the state. (Of course, again, I think that has a lot to do with parental support which tends to be lower in urban areas) From other things I've heard, the district just north of ours is not as good as our own, either. I guess we just got lucky. The very good schools in this area is one of the things that really make us hesitate about moving.
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quote:Do Bible Belt schools show better education per dollar spent?
How do you define better education? And dollars spent?
We can slice up the numbers any way you choose and compare schools based on what they spend on teachers' salaries, or what they spend on curriculum, or what they serve for lunch. We can compare test scores or dropout rates or college admission rates to see who has the "best" education out there. That's part of the problem - how do you determine what schools are working and what ones aren't?
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I've seen that too But I think that is probably a different kind. During a field trip I once got the chance to talk to a teacher who confided that the problem kids (in a gifted class that, by nature, requires parents actively concerned for their children's education) were the ones with the parents who were always nosing around and complaining to the teacher about what was going on, but never actually coming into the classroom to do volunteer work.
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posted
"problem kids (in a gifted class that, by nature, requires parents actively concerned for their children's education) were the ones with the parents who were always nosing around"
It is not really the nosing around that bothers me, it is the assumption that their child is the only child on this here earth.
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posted
LJ: In Utah, the Church is a large part of the social structure, and more generally the sociopolitical power base (aka the establishment).
I suggest you start taking my statements more literally rather than interpreting them, then you would not misunderstand them so much as you have in this thread and others.
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posted
I find that the parents who complain about me without having spoken to me first--or verified the truth of their children's stories--are the parents of the same kids who don't take advantage of all the opportunities I offer, like extra help, and who don't listen in class.
But enough about how my day is going. Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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quote: America's educational system has gotten worse and worse over the past decades.
Wrong.
quote: It feels repetitive only because our educational theorists keep making the same stupid and false claims, returning again and again to sentimental theories that are not borne out by any serious research.
Wrong.
quote: When it comes to educational policy, we keep electing school boards that leave all the important decisions up to educational professionals
Wrong.
quote: In a way, it's a great scam. The educational theorists who have victimized many generations of students and teachers have succeeded in keeping the American people ignorant enough not to see through the scam.
Irony meter explodes! Who makes the "No child left behind" policies? Politicians. Certainly not educators. The scam is that politicians want to get elected, so they tell us how bad our education system is, despite the fact that we graduate more of EVERY SEGMENT of our population through bachelor's degrees than ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
OK, everybody in this thread that's never heard of the Sandia Report, RAISE YOUR HAND!
OSC, you're a jerk. I hope he hears that.
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posted
Glenn, I think it goes even deeper than that. My paranoia meter says that NCLB is out to destroy public education and redistribute the funds.
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posted
So, Glenn, how many kids have you sent through public school? And how many public schools have you had personal experience with as a parent?
I'm really curious, because my son hopped through 4 public elementary schools in two states until we moved him to private school. The school in CO was one of the best in the state. One of the three in WA was in a very culturally, economically diverse area (we were on the higher scale, but there are a lot of very poor children who go there also). In that time, I saw an awful lot to support what OSC is saying.
We moved my son to private school starting last school year. He had to repeat the grade, because placement tests put him at least half a year behind -- though he was just fine and even a little ahead in public school.
So I'm curious, since you're so vociferous about how the public schools are fine. How do you come to this conclusion?
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The public schools try to educate everyone. Your kid, and the kid down the block who's got one parent working 3 jobs who thinks reading is a waste of time.
Private schools don't try to educate everyone. In fact, thats the opposite of their mission. They can pick and choose, and people willing to spend the money on a private school are almost always much more concerned with their childs education then the average parent in a public school.
In other words, private schools self select to have students who do better then the average kid in a public school.
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quote:despite the fact that we graduate more of EVERY SEGMENT of our population through bachelor's degrees than ANY OTHER COUNTRY IN THE WORLD.
Well, that's a very interesting statistic, but I'd like to point out that you're also the only country to give BAs in, say, Women's Studies.
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A bachelor's degree is still a bachelor's degree, even if its in a field that you personally think is frivolous.
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posted
Paul, I do actually understand that. If my experience with the public school system was one where I just thought it wasn't quite as progressive as I thought my son could handle, that would be one thing. Instead, I saw every year he was in public school at least one thing that was totally stupid, counter-productive, or outright wasteful in terms of money and/or time that I cannot say that kids get as good an education as they should for the cost.
Incompetent teachers who, in a private school, would be writing their resumes and standing in line at unemployment. My son's second grade teacher who spent most of the year teaching art and taking the kids on field trips. Every Friday almost without fail. I went on a lot of those trips. He ended the school year knowing almost no math, and was unable to add reliably. After a summer with home school curriculum, he caught up. It wasn't inability -- it was poor teaching.
Text books that cost an arm and a leg, yet are so glutted with glitzy, slick graphics and barely related trivia that the subject matter is lost. I borrowed several of my son's text books after the adventures we had with 2nd grade. The amount of concentration it took to filter out the garbage could have been better applied to learning with simpler books that presented the material in black and white, at a fraction of the cost.
Totally subjective report card grading criteria. I encountered this at *every* school. While this might be fine in Kindergarten or 1st Grade, it is counterproductive and *STUPID* with 2nd grade on. His last year in public school was 4th grade. They were still graded on the report card with Check+ (Above grade level), Check (at grade level), Check- (below grade level). No letter grades, no way to tell how they reached that grade, because most of the papers were also subjectively graded. This is understandable with creative projects, but with a math or spelling paper, it's either right or wrong. No in between. I didn't realize how stupid this was until we moved to private school, where it is very easy to determine what the grade is without asking the teacher. You look at the assignments (which are sent home after grading), add up the numbers, divide by the number of assignments and get the grade. Very easy, very objective and clear. The child knows where he stands, what his mistakes were, and what his successes are.
These are the main points. Private schools are succeeding in teaching because they have greater freedom to do what works. They are able to fire incompetent teachers. They are able to pick tried and true curriculum that is not subject to the latest lobby. And I think they pick objective grading methods because they are less concerned with a child's self esteem than they are with making sure he learns something and that what he has learned is communicated clearly in his report card.
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posted
My understanding is that, while the best private schools may be better than the best public schools, private schools are not, in the general case, better than public schools. Of course, I haven't seen any numbers on this; it's just hearsay.
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posted
"Totally subjective report card grading criteria. I encountered this at *every* school. While this might be fine in Kindergarten or 1st Grade, it is counterproductive and *STUPID* with 2nd grade on"
Actually, thats a very smart thing to do, based on research. And it seems to be a smart thing to do at least through fifth grade, possibly through 8th, and maybe even through high school.
That happens to be a point where school boards, parents, and state administrators have it wrong, and those "stupid theories" we learn in education programs are in line with scientific research.
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posted
Could be...though I'd sure be upset as the one paying the tuition if the education was worse than public school.
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Simply put, it is not at all clear whether or not private schools in general perform better than public schools ( http://www.epinet.org/content.cfm/books_privatepublic ). It is clear, however, that this is not true in many particular cases and in many particular communities. Furthermore, it is clear that there is no dramatic advantage to private schools. All gains noticed are relatively small, particularly when controlled for socioeconomic level (where there are disputes as to if there are any gains at all).
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
If we're talking about comment-only marking, then I can safely say that from my limited experience it works in practice. The research I've read suggests that if you give students just a grade, it doesn't improve their subsequent performance at all, because you don't give them any suggestions on how to improve. If you give a grade and a comment there still isn't much improvement because they focus on the grade rather than the feedback about what they could do to improve. However, if you give a comment, no grade, then you do see improvement in students' performance. I've trialled it with my classes and it does seem to work - as well as ending the competitive "what did you get?" stuff which doesn't help anyone learn.
Posts: 1550 | Registered: Jun 1999
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posted
Oh, and the reasons people choose private schools often have little to do with overall educational achievement. Common reasons include: religion, snootiness, networking (if someone goes to the right private school, they know the right people), leveraging (if someone goes to the right private school, they get a boost going into college), et cetera.
Not to mention that even if private schools in general aren't necessarily better at educating, that doesn't mean there aren't specific private schools in specific areas that are better at educating than the public schools in that area.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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posted
Wow. Kat and I are from the same county. I went to Woods Cross High, about ten minutes south of Davis (where, actually, I feel I got an excellent education - lots of extras like AP Art History, geography, sculpture, public speaking, and so forth. Yeah, wealthy suburban school).
quote:quote: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For one thing, the LDS church is, in large part, the establishment. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The church runs the schools? It's not the monolith you imagine.
I think, fugu, you were misunderstood here, but I can see why. Socially, the church is often dominant, but Utah's also a fairly well-off, suburban state, which I think has as much to do with test scores as religion.
quote:Lets assume all of 10% of LDS members encourage their kids to read or place them in Church community activities which encourage them to read (I'd bet the percentage is a lot higher than 10%).
(I realize that some children are not school age children, but since we're already severely underestimating I'm okay with it).
Thats about 43,000 students who have regular practice reading. That's a huge advantage statewide in test scores.
You might have a point here, but I wonder exactly how much reading scripture (or having it read to you, which I think is far more typical until you're a teenager) has to do with test scores; it might foster a reading habit, but I think it's far more ritualized than reading, say, Charlotte's Web to your children is. I think the latter is more effective if you want your kids to read.
Rather, I think there's simply a greater emphasis in the Mormon community on learning and secular success in general, which _is_ stressed in the religion. There were a lot of Mormon kids who were desperate overachievers at Woods Cross High.
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posted
*nods* that is quite possibly also very important, though I don't think either effect necessarily outclasses the other to a great degree. The lack of reading (and more importantly, the lac of critical thinking such as that promoted by the analytical study of scripture, which its my understanding that LDS classes for kids touch on at least in small degree) is an amazing hindrance to further learning, it being a foundation upon which so much more is built.
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quote:Text books that cost an arm and a leg, yet are so glutted with glitzy, slick graphics and barely related trivia that the subject matter is lost. I borrowed several of my son's text books after the adventures we had with 2nd grade. The amount of concentration it took to filter out the garbage could have been better applied to learning with simpler books that presented the material in black and white, at a fraction of the cost.
Now this is the same as my experience too. I find the textbooks to be long on sharp looking graphic layouts and short on content.
In fact, my daughter's teachers this year (she only has two, in sixth grade they have one teacher for language arts and social studies, and another for math and science) both seem to teach a lot without the books. I see her bringing home handouts the teacher's printed up themselves, and working off that.
I have been extremely disappointed with the textbooks, and tried to do something about it by bringing it up at the PTO meeting and volunteering for one of the parents' slots on the textbook committee. Didn't get it, though.
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Textbooks are one of the most annoying problems in schools today, and most of that's due to how states pick the list of textbooks that school systems can then pick from. Basically, the textbook companies bribe the state committee members to vote for their textbooks. I've seen textbooks be chosen that don't even exist to be evaluated, yet -- but the manufacturer gave the committee a very nice banquet.
A lot of the problem arises from the people (often rightly) not feeling qualified to decide which textbooks cover the material best. General committee's just a really rotten way to choose textbooks.
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posted
"I have been extremely disappointed with the textbooks,"
I hate our math textbook. The kids aren't supposed to learn billions until the secon or third chapter. In the first chapter, on data and graphing, they have to read graphs and answer questions about them in -da da- billions. Duh. The problems throughout the book are so large-number-heavy, and the language used so obscure, that many kids lose the concepts. So, I make my own stuff or get things in other books or on the Internet.
Posts: 10890 | Registered: May 2003
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posted
Hey fugu - not ignoring you - just got in from work, child's swim lessons, homework, and dinner - I'll grab the handy little directory from the office tomorrow and see if they have a website, otherwise I'll just post their contact information and wax philosophical on a couple of examples -
Posts: 5609 | Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
A simple algebraic perspective on the problem should leave you, the asspiring student, with a firm grasp on the Euclidian viewpoint of a multi-dimensional analysis of non-first order equations and their growth rates.
=
Things with exponents get big really fast, look at this graph!
quote: Will this mean that anyone who graduates this program and gets a teaching certificate is automatically better than any current math teacher like yourself? Of course not, but it does mean that whoever goes through all this wants to be a math teacher.
Not necessarily. It means that they are willing to jump through hoops and spend hours and money on coursework that they will never see again, not that they want to be a math teacher. A lot of people who *want* to be math teachers can't because of the restrictions - not because they don't have the desire or motivation, just that it's not always possible to spend the time and money going back to school *before* you can get a job teaching. Just what do you do in the interim?
Not everyone decides teaching is their calling as freshmen or sophomores in college.
Second, Glenn, I can go quote everything you said and put "wrong" after it, too. I could also write "Lettuce" after it all, and it would amount to the same amount of validity.
quote: Who makes the "No child left behind" policies? Politicians. Certainly not educators.
Thing is, NCLB wasn't conjured from thin air. There were educational experts who are theorists in the field that were consulted and brought in to back the bill, to emphasize how valid it is, and to show that it will work.
Was Gardner one of those? Of course not, because Multiple Intelligences and NCLB are totally at odds with oen another. The politicians may have picked which educators they used as backup, but that doesn't mean there aren't theorists out there spouting nonsense. After all, Rod Paige was once a teacher, and principal, and superintendent.
The truth is, our schools are in trouble. We are losing teachers at a greater rate than we are gaining them, and there's a continental-shelf-like dropoff coming in the next decade. A *large* percentage of the current teacher population already has 25 years in, and can retire at any time. Most veteran teachers don't teach past 35 years.
Further, restrictions and bureaucratic hoops are making it harder than ever to a) become and b) stay a teacher. There is a great attrition rate among young teachers, certainly in the 5th through 9th grade levels, and in math and science.
So, with a large retirement group exiting, and high hurdles for new teachers, we are looking squarely in the face of a severe teacher shortage within the next decade.
Fewer teachers means the job becomes more difficult for those with rapidly increasing class sizes, which means a higher attrition rate, which means even fewer teachers.
Has the quality of education decreased in the past several decades? That's debatable. Is it in danger of decreasing dramatically in the next decade or two? Most certainly.
And all the measures I've seen to improve the situation in recent years have only made it worse.
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The Fillies (hehe) Mustang Community Commitment APBA Fantasy Baseball DDR club Equestrian Club Fillies (hehe) Inkslingers Kingwood Conservative Club Kingwood Songwriters Club Meritless Humor Society Home National Latin Honor Society Rock Climbing Club Slammin Club Surfing Society Teenage Republican Club Texas Two Step Club Tri-cycling Club Home Trivial Pursuit Club/Games Wakeboarding Young Filmmakers Society
A school without wakeboarding and horses would surely seem like a let down.
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quote:A lot of people who *want* to be math teachers can't because of the restrictions - not because they don't have the desire or motivation, just that it's not always possible to spend the time and money going back to school *before* you can get a job teaching. Just what do you do in the interim?
Ummm....what everyone else in the world has to do? Take another job and go to school at night to live until you can get your teaching certificate? Take out student loans to pay for school? This could be said about any profession, not just teaching - if you decide later on that you want to go back to school to do something different it's going to take sacrifices.
quote:Not everyone decides teaching is their calling as freshmen or sophomores in college.
And I didn't decide teaching was my calling until I was over 30 and already had a family. And it's taking tremendous sacrifices on our part to send me to school - not just in terms of money but in terms of time too, when you have four kids involved in schools and/or activities, trying to add in studying time and class time means somewhere, somehow, you're going to miss out on something.
Thing is, if it's a calling, it takes sacrifice and dedication. I don't think it helps the education system to make it easier for people to teach, I think we need to make sure that those that are truly dedicated and want to do it are qualified to do it. I don't want someone with no educational experience or training teaching my kids, I don't care how well they know math.
There are programs out there to help people who decide to go into teaching after having another degree - I know there is one set up for military in particular.
I glanced quickly at the requirements at JSU for adding on a teaching certificate after completing a degree in a different field, and it's 44 semester hours at the graduate level for a secondary certificate, so anybody with a degree in math would have to complete the 44 hours (which includes the student teaching requirements) to be certified as a high school math teacher.
Edit: darn typing too fast syndrome
[ January 26, 2005, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: Belle ]
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posted
Heh. I apologize for slandering Utah's educational system, and I accept that my high school experience was not typical for Texas, as I had thought that it was.
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quote:I don't want someone with no educational experience or training teaching my kids, I don't care how well they know math.
See, this is the thing. The restrictions are the opposite.
To go "alternate route" which is becoming more and more popular, they don't care if you've had *any* education classes. They do care that you've taken a certain level of coursework in a subject field, however.
For instance, to teach 6th grade math, you need to have taken 30 credits worth of collegiate math - which equates to Calc III and Linear Algebra level of mathematics, for the most part.
Now, I understand that you have to show a requisite amount of knowledge to teach a course, but course credit is not an accurate gauge of either subject matter knowledge, understanding, or ability to teach that information effectively.
You could have gotten D's throughout college math, having retaken classes over and over to barely scrape by with 30 credits - and be considered far more qualified than someone who took 18 credits and aced everything.
In a different example, you could have taken high level mathematics and topography, dealing with math theory at the uppermost levels of collegiate study. This doesn't, however, mean you have any real connection to middle school math - or have the ability, or patience, to teach it.
The credits matter, not the understanding of the subject or the ability to teach it. And, on top of the credits, you have to take a Praxis test to show that you understand the material, anyway. If you blow the test out of the water, but are short credits, shouldn't that mean something?
No one has been able to adequately explain the reasoning behind the credit restrictions. Or why getting a Masters degree in topography has any bearing on your performance as a 7th grade teacher.
But, along with alternate route, they do force feed pedagogy. Education classes must be taken along with your first or second year teaching, but, by that point, real world experience in the classroom has shown so many of the theories to be 80% pipe dream and 20% only situationally applicable.
quote: Thing is, if it's a calling, it takes sacrifice and dedication. I don't think it helps the education system to make it easier for people to teach, I think we need to make sure that those that are truly dedicated and want to do it are qualified to do it.
I'm guessing, by this, that you haven't gotten your own class and classroom yet. I could be wrong.
Just walking into that classroom every day prepared to teach (and, more importantly, handle the myriad psychological, emotional, social, and undefinable issues children cope with on a daily basis) takes tremendous sacrifice and dedication - on a level totally apart from that needed to sit through lecture.
No matter what hoops you require someone to jump through *before* they are thrust into the fire, actually teaching in the classroom is the true gauge on whether a person has the required dedication and willingness to self-sacrifice. Unfortunately, the two types of sacrifice are entirely different.
Giving up time for class is a world apart from giving up time to sit in a counselor's office with a 13 year old girl who has been sexually assaulted. Giving up time for homework is a world apart from giving up time to sit with a parent of a student who brought a knife into school. Some people are entirely cut out for the former, but not the latter.
But more importantly, the opposite is true. There are truly gifted people who have the wherewithall to teach, and have a natural ability. (I have seen many as paraprofessional aides). These people may not have the patience, however, to sit through hours of theoretical coursework.
Do I think our teachers need to be held to a higher standard? You bet I do. However, a standard of college credits is arbitrary. The ability to take a class has no bearing on your ability to teach one.
There are substitute teachers and paraprofessionals I have worked with that could teach circles around long-tenured teachers, and course credit doesn't even enter the equation.
I think (though I can't be sure) that those on this site working towards eventually becoming teachers would much prefer to have a greater ratio of time in a classroom environment to time spent taking courses; time spent observing teachers in the field, rather than listening to lecture; time spent observing students and helping them deal with their problems, rather than hearing lecture about child psychology.
But this is not the emphasis. The emphasis is on institutional learning, rather than practical first-hand experience. There is series of high jump bars put in place for teacher training, when the job itself is like the long distance hurdles - the skills gained in one don't necessarily transfer from one to the other.
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Then a senior level Survey of Geometries, and some electives at the 300 level or up.![[Smile]](smile.gif)
But I think that is probably a different kind. During a field trip I once got the chance to talk to a teacher who confided that the problem kids (in a gifted class that, by nature, requires parents actively concerned for their children's education) were the ones with the parents who were always nosing around and complaining to the teacher about what was going on, but never actually coming into the classroom to do volunteer work.
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