Associated Content said in 2006, “Every day, as many as 77 percent of American youth are labeled by special definition: Latchkey Kids.”
In the US, a latchkey kid is one that leaves school in the afternoon to go to an empty house because the parent or parents are working. If no parent is home, who is guiding the child?
It didn’t help that I made more phone calls to parents than any other teacher on campus.
It didn’t help that I stayed in my classroom at lunch and at least an hour after school to help kids who wanted extra help, but none of my English students ever took advantage of that help and we couldn’t make them.
However, I was there year after year. Every day I reminded my students that I would be there. There was a sign posted on the wall as a reminder, and it was placed near the door where no one could miss it.
At lunch and after school, I often sat an empty classroom but I didn’t waste my time. I used that time to correct the student work that had been turned in.
By the time I left teaching after thirty years, less than five percent of my students were doing the homework and it didn’t matter how many phone calls I made to parents.
It was obvious that most of the kids I taught did not have the types of parents I had. Many of the parents of my students didn’t speak English and were illiterate, so books were not important and children learn from their parents’ lack of interest.
It is obvious that President Obama’s mother and grandparents were great role models that made a big difference in his education. Why can’t he see that?
That fact that Obama is as blind as Bush was, is because it was probably a teacher’s fault.
Return to Bush and Obama’s Ignorant Gaff – Part 2 or start with Part 1 or View as Single Page
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Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 