> the philosophy in order to figure that one out. It
 > bothers me that Donna
 > Randsell, who teaches (subs?) in San Diego says that
 > they are still not
 > allowed to use any phonics. The public school in
When I was teaching fulltime here, I was not "supposed to" (that was 4 school 
years ago). Now I understand that they still are not encouraged to use 
phonics, tho even that is changing. I would guess that by the end of this 
school year, teachers will be encouraged to use phonics. The pendulum always 
swings in both directions if we wait long enough, I suppose. It's just a 
shame that we had to wait so long and affected so many lives in the process.
BTW, just for an update from my kids' school district: they were mandated to 
lower class size in the primary grades and want to hire 100 new teachers to 
teach those new classes. However, there isn't a rental or for-purchase 
portable classroom available in the state, I'm told, and Garden Road is 
stretched to the limit with all classrooms full. Their solution is to leave 
the classrooms the same, but put a 2nd teacher in every lower primary 
classroom. While this sounds fine (the teacher-student ratio does get lowered 
from 1/32 to 1/16), it takes a lot of work for two teachers to work together 
in the same room - sorta like marriage. It's not ideal.
                                 -donna
--- GEcho 1.00
---------------