These past two weeks have been a bit hectic trying to keep up with all the work that I have to do. I spend the majority of my time right now putting out fires that have been started by the education system itself. I don’t blame the teachers for not having the materials to differentiate their readings. I blame the systems in place that only make materials for the majority and completely leave minority students in the dark. It’s kind of like if your dad went out to buy a family van but bought a motorcycle instead, so now you get to walk to school instead of riding in comfort.

Basically, my problem is that I have a decent number of students who cannot access the text due to their low reading level, low level of English comprehension in both listening and reading, and combining all that with the fact that these classes are text heavy. So if you have any more ideas for me, please send them my way because right now I am drowning trying to remake the materials as we move along.

While dealing with these issues of curriculum development, I had an interesting thought. Who are these materials made for anyway? I mean, we have many students who are not understanding the materials or are understanding them marginally. Then we have the students who exceed the materials without even trying. Then there are those students who couldn’t utilize the materials at all because they are far above their current abilities in reading. There are probably just as many students who don’t understand the materials as there are that do. So, who makes these things and where do they get their ideas from? Maybe I’m being pessimistic and some students just aren’t trying, but . . .

I am just going to put this out there. If you cannot use data or evidence in an argument and still think you have a valid opinion, slap yourself. If your data is wrong, that is a whole other problem that we can face together. But I have had far too many people try to challenge ideas in the past few weeks that absolutely believe they can argue without evidence because they have the right feelz. One even told me that he knew what he knew about sexual assault because he “interacts” with women every day. He then went on to tell me that my data was wrong because it’s just an “estimate.” Yup, it’s just an “estimate” put out by the Department of Defense, only one of the most conservative organizations on the planet, second only to the Vatican.