The holidays were too short, and we are back to work. Yesterday the kids came back, and there has been quite a bit of schedule-changing. All the freshmen who failed the first semester of Algebra I have been assigned to a 2 hour math class (actually class plus lab) in an effort to catch them up and help them pass TAKS. Since there were 125 kids (out of 600) that failed, there has been some serious rescheduling.
We are starting off with a project on the Three Gorges Dam in China. During the powerpoint presentation yesterday I questioned kids about various things they should have learned last semester (plate tectonics, rainshadows), and I came away impressed - they remembered more than I gave them credit for! Unfortunately, geography isn't considered an important subject - like Algebra - so we don't get the same attention or emphasis. Congress won't even pass the Geography Education bill, so most kids in this country don't take the class in high school. Perhaps if Rumsfeld and Cheney had taken geography they wouldn't have thought Iraq would be a piece of cake to conquer and reform.
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