I'm so ready for summer school to be over.
It's depressing being an English teacher sometimes. English teachers--the core of any school-- get blamed if a student can't read, if a student can't speak English properly, if a student can't understand, if a student can't properly analyze, if a student can't write, if a student can't spell... All these little things are the heart of literacy, of functioning independently, of problem-solving, of thinking. If a student can't do these things, he or she ends up failing in all the other subjects.
It hurts to teach English. It depresses me when I listen to a student read aloud and he can't even pronounce he word "tonight" correctly. It frustrates me that students think that answers are explicitly written and given, and they want me to tell them the answers if they can't find them in the book. It almost angers me when students just sit in class and say, "I don't understand" or "I don't know," but in reality, they are not even trying, nor do they want to because they are too lazy to do difficult tasks that require extra effort. They don't realize that they're in a never-ending cycle: they hate reading, so their reading skills will never improve. They can't spell, they use all kinds of words incorrectly, like using nouns and adjectives as verbs; they don't care about the comments I leave on their work because I'll always find the same errors on the rest of their schoolwork... all these problems can be fixed if they just expose themselves to reading more often.
Trying to teach the youth of today is like trying to drive a nail through steel. It all seems futile, and I'm getting frustrated.