Laredo's students should read local history, ok how about just read?



Are you sure it's ONLY one out of five?


Today's edition of Monday Wash in the Laredo Morning Times gives us an unfortunate look into the real state of education in our local highschools. Odie Arambula recounts some observations made by a "friendly substitute teacher".
As the story goes, the Substitute teacher (a.k.a sub) asked some students in her highschool history class to read aloud only to find out that they would much rather not, and thus declined. A female student later confided to the sub that the class had never been asked to read aloud before. Well, I'm hoping that this is not par for the course, but I would not too shocked if it represents a lot of of our schools' attitude towards reading, especially aloud.
For most of the school year, students are simply asked to "bubble in" their answers, no matter what the subject at hand. Then, after the New Year, it's all prepping for two or three TAKS subjects, over and over again. This means even more "bubbling in".
What about actually writing down answers and explaining them? What about getting up in front of the class and actually sharing witht the class how they arrived at your answer/conclusion. When students are asked to explain why their answers are right, there's an entirely other level of thinking that occurs IF the right questions are asked. So, like the old saying goes, Reading is Fundamental. Very, very fundamental.