For the past three years, I was a substitute teacher in the public schools of Warren County, Virginia. I served both as an aide in classrooms with a regular full-time teacher and as a substitute alone in the classroom.
Warren County schools are probably typical of public schools everywhere: Most teachers love the students and are very frustrated that they can’t actually do what they signed up to do: teach. At the same time, many parents don’t understand why their children are not learning. Here are my insights as to why.
First, there’s no way a parent can know what goes on in the classroom.
Once I was an aide in a fourth grade classroom. It ran perfectly: the teacher teaching, kids working away, me helping the ones with special needs. But next door, in the other fourth grade classroom with the identical curriculum, kids were literally climbing over the…
