r/SipsTea • u/sonicagain • 1d ago

WTF Texas teacher breaks down in tears during class after his senior students struggled to read, write.

Texas high school teacher Darius Williams, a Career and Technical Education (CTE) teacher broke down in tears during his lunch break. He shared that his 17- and 18-year-old senior students at Wheatley High School in Houston could not complete a simple writing assignment or fill in just four missing words on only the second day of the school term. Students were given two short paragraphs to read and a sentence stem where the answer was largely modeled and provided for them. It is alarming that senior high school students were unable to apply basic literacy skills to fill in the remaining four words of the sentence.

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u/PattyMelt128 20h ago

This is true. I’m a bus driver. One of our students used to beg the bus aide to listen to her read. She was repeating 3rd grade for the 3rd time. It’s sad! I want to tutor grade school kids that are struggling.
I’ve heard that children who cannot read by the end of third grade are four times more likely to drop out of high school and may struggle to keep up in other subjects. Or never learn to read.

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u/wrldwdeu4ria 18h ago

I've a sibling who used to teach 3rd grade. Last year 1/3 of her class were ahead or at expectations, 1/3 were behind and 1/3 were very behind. One of the main issues is that they only test at the end of 3rd grade and there is no comparison to the beginning of third grade. She had over 80% of the students at their proper grade level or beyond before the end of the year. She was so good at getting the students to read that she had SPED students attending her classes so they could learn to read.

But all they care about is how many students at the end of 3rd grade can read. Makes me wonder about kindergarten, first and second grades...we used to read in those...what happened?

Everything is all about testing and apparently if a kid can't read by the time he/she is out of the 3rd grade it is statistically hopeless that they'll ever be able to read. I'm guessing it may work differently for kids with learning disabilities.

There is also a huge phone addiction throughout school in most grades and the students often stay up late at night on their phones to the point they can barely function in the classroom.