Uphill Battle

The difficulties of teaching in the 21st century have been well documented on this blog; Especially in an inner city school like mine. This post will not be a rant about everything that is wrong with public schools in America today. No folks, it will be much simpler than that. I teach reading and English to 6th grade students who come to school with very little support from home. They receive no help with their homework, come to school completely unprepared and receive no experiential learning in their family lives. In short, these kids come to school way behind the curve; Behind the eight ball to say the least. In addition to that, these students do not have reading modeled for them at home and do not have proper english spoken and modeled for them. With all that being said, have a look at the graphic below and you can see why teaching English to inner city kids is an uphill battle.