Where is literacy?

Well, the weekend has been a very welcome opportunity to get some rest... but unfortunately now comes the part where I have to do stuff, since tomorrow I am teaching an actual class.

So I have a lot of institute complaints so far. I am not sure how close we will get to having them addressed, but I really, really feel like what I need to know (literacy especially in a second language - 2L) is not being addressed, and we are talking way too much about lesson planning and classroom management and such. Meanwhile, we are supposed to motivate everything by a goal, but there is no real goal for the summer, because there is no way our bilingual students can learn the English-language objectives that have been set for them. We will probably have to alter the final assessment so that they can meet it--and that's exactly what we don't want to do (not to mention can't do during an actual year).

You would think TFA would realize that the people here are pretty good at organization and don't need that much more training in, for instance, a five-step lesson plan. Yes, I need practice, but I don't need to talk about it forever. What I need to talk about is how to help kids read who don't know how to read as well as they should... and for all the rhetoric about how literacy is the keystone of education, at least in the test materials, I have no idea how to help anyone read. We did, however, have a motivating meeting on Friday where we were told about our competition to have a new cheer for our elementary school summer corps and a competition to rename all the TFA materials.

Meanwhile I'm getting really excited about the fall and my bilingual fourth graders (it's been confirmed). I'm hoping to visit the elementary this week and I'm reviewing the curriculum, hoping that I passed the TExES. We were required to take a test called the THEA yesterday, which was a joke and kind of an insult. The saddest thing about it is that it actually means something vis-a-vis high school graduates. A typical question would be something like this:

(1) x = 5. What is x?
a) 4
b) 7
c) 5
d) 8

Or perhaps:

(2) The White House is the official residence of the President of the United States. ____. It was burned by the British during the war of 1812 and rebuilt afterwards.
What sentence should go in the blank?
a) I don't like that President Bush and his Iraq war.
b) Golly, it seems like there have been so many presidents!
c) Building began after the Revolution and was completed in 1800.
d) It would be awesome to live in such a big house, wouldn't it?

[With, of course, the caveat that anyone selecting option "a" would be failed automatically].

The interesting thing about fourth grade is that it is Texas history year... so looks like I will be learning some curriculum along with my students after all!