Schools in San Diego Unified

I love teaching but I am finding students are falling through the cracks in the local schools.  Teachers have so many students.  It is hard for them to meet the needs of each student.  Especially when a student is in middle school that don't want to seem dumb in front of classmates.

As a parent, you should be able to review all your child's homework and see where they are misunderstanding.  Fourth grade is the year to have the best math teacher as that is when fractions are taught.  When a student is weak in fractions it can hurt them in every math class after that.

Finding a tutor to help with certain math concepts is a good idea.  It does not mean your student needs a tutor forever.  When your student is in high level math classes you need to have them attend all study sessions with their teacher and possibly find them a tutor if you can't help them with their homework.

I also have had a student who has trouble reading.  He was denied an IEP because he is smart.  But today, the common core questions, even math, all involve reading.  So even though you are smart if you can't read you end up being below basic.  So if your child is having trouble with reading, you might want to hire a tutor to help them with phonics and whole language learning.  Also fight for additional testing or another IEP.

Remember in your child's classroom there could be 5 or more students that are still learning English. There can be students whose parents work two or more jobs just to survive in this economy and have no time to help their child learn.  There can be students with autism and other special needs in their classroom.  More and more is being expected by teachers from the administration.  Many teachers are overwhelmed.  Your teacher isn't a bad teacher but could just have a large class where she/he can not meet the needs of every student.

Google Helps with Autism Research

Parents - I hope you will participate in the Autism Speaks Genome-mapping program.  Google plans to put the information in the cloud so more researchers can have access to this information.

This gene study was done on heart disease and was found helpful.  So far all the research has shown is that there isn't just one form of autism.

So when researchers come to your house, please participate.  This particular research is  called AUT1OK and will be available to all researchers to sign the standard research agreement.

There is also a similar program going on withe Alzheimer's research where five universities have sequenced 580 genomes.

This takes so much storage space so going to the cloud with Google should help everyone.

From
Genes in the Cloud: Google Steps Into Autism Research by Shirley S. Wang, Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2014