Saturday, March 07, 2009

Packemin Is Better



I just finished tutoring a young man who is attending Nassau Community College. The math he is doing is math my geometry kids could do in a heartbeat. Well, they would need a little bit of help with the fractions, but I know they could be taught to use their calculators to help overcome this obstacle. After being with this student, a boy who graduated from a high school in the Five Towns area of Long Island, I have a little more hope for my students. I also have a lot more faith in my school. Packemin HS does not have the technology the Five Towns HS has. Packemin does not have classes as small as the Five Town HS has. Packemin HS is doing a better job of educating its students than Five Towns HS.

5 comments:

NYC Educator said...

Perhaps. But one on one comparisons only go so far, and even if further study proves you right, that's no reason to deprive your students of reasonable class sizes and decent facilities. This is particularly true since Mayor Bloomberg accepted hundreds of millions, if not billions, to remedy this.

Pissedoffteacher said...

Absoutely true. I was just pointing out the amazing things we do in the crappy environment we work in.

NYC Educator said...

I guess I have to agree. But you won't be reading about it on the op-ed pages of the tabloids, which want to continue funneling space and money that could help our kids into the grubby hands of Eva Moskowitz.

Pissedoffteacher said...

Evil Moskowitz was just brought up at the town hall meeting I attended, and not broughtup in a positive light either.

Weprin and his politician buddy had no answers.

appple said...

fairly recent developments (the past decade or so) have significantly changed five town HS. i know because i grew up there and graduated from fths when it was one of the top schools in the state. teachers there were (and still are) paid premium salaries, earn more than double what nyc teachers earn for per-session work, and have significantly smaller classes. the trade-off, the student body is no longer composed purely of five town, educated, upper-middle class children with involved, supportive parents. those children have moved off to the city to pursue careers and left their parents behind. the population of the five towns has exploded with orthodox jews, coming from queens and brooklyn and israel, sending their children to private yeshivas, joining the public school board, and voting the school budget down year after year, yet still taking advantages of what the public school offers - special education, ESL, busing, and a variety of specialized classes, all things the yeshivas do not offer. the dynamic has shifted incredibly, making what was once a typical upper-middle class suburban school, suddenly an extremely diverse place.