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There is just so much frustration that I decided to write a blog about it. FYI, I am teacher teaching on a northern reserve in Canada. In case you didn't know what a reserve was, it is where all the natives/aboriginals/inidians live. It is very isolated, everything is flown in. This is actually my second year teaching here, I am just fed up with all the fucken bullshit that has happened and has been happening here.
The school consists of grades JK to grade 9, so it is mixed up to get more funding form the government. Their way of getting money for the upcoming school year is based on the previous year's attendance records in Sept and Oct. This is just retarded, how can you use previous year's attendance record to predict the upcoming year's enrollment numbers? Because of this, we are forced to keep kids in school regardless of their behaviours. Basically we put up with their attitudes, disrespects everyday for 2 months so the school can get money for the next year. The office does not punish kids or deal with them, if I send them the office, they send them back because they are "ready" to participate in classroom activities again....
You have to keep in mind that, all the native kids here are extremely low in terms of academics, even though they are grade 9, they function at a grade 4-6 level. They have been spoon fed from JK all the way to grade 8. I have always questioned the integrity of their grades from the years before because there is no way they can get to grade 9 if they function at a grade 4-6 level. There has been a lot of pushing kids through and passing kids for free here. There are 3 classes here for kids who are working below grade level, some kids who are like 13-14, can't read and can't perform simple math operations like adding. They don't even know the letter sounds, and times table.
Couple days ago, we just had our grade 9 midterms. The grade 9s have no respect, no work ethic, no motivation, and don't give a fuck attitude. This is true for 80%+ natives here. So the kids normally don't study and don't do any work in class, they don't do any homework because the homework never make it back to the home. The day before the midterm, I literally took the midterm and wrote on the board all the questions that were on the midterm. Basically telling them exactly what to study for, some people copied them down and then just sat there and chatted the remainder of the period. They didn't care at all. Then the exam day, I had 2 girls walk out on the midterm 20 minutes in because they didn't know how to do it and decided to go for a smoke break. So I called the office and the office called the parents. One of the parents came in and was in the principal's office with the students for half an hour. The next day, I was called into the office by the principal and the principal wanted me to give the student a make up midterm next week and find the notes from other students, make photocopies of them and give to that particular student to study for the make up midterm... The principal explained that the parent wants her kid to go to the city in January for grade 10, so we will have to try to "help" her out.
That student chose not to do any work in class everyday, she chose not to study for the midterm when given all the questions on the midterm, she chose to walk out on the midterm, and now all of a sudden she is given a second chance and I have to make photocopies of notes for her to study? Are you fucking kidding me? She was blaming me during the parent principal meeting for talking too fast, writing illegibly, etc... The principal does not want to confront the parents and just sugarcoats everything and changes her story all the time to please the parents, it is fucking ridiculous. Also, she does not go anywhere in town because she is afraid the kids might stone her to death. She wouldn't go to the grocery store unless she has a car for this very reason.
Couple weeks back, the principal went into my classroom and stole all my paper like 8 reams of blank paper for photocopying. I confronted her in her office and her excuse was " I don't see a name on it". Every single one had my name on it written on the side, they were handed out every month for teacher making photocopies. She says I don't need that much and asked where did I get them. I just told her I saved them up from last year and what I received this year. Apparently, you can't save up things here because they will be taken away...
The kids here are just totally fucking hopeless, natives and education don't mix at all. The parents do drugs at home and the kids do whatever they want outside. You often see them walking around 3-4am in the morning even those little kids. They throw rocks at teachers' houses and bust windows all the time. The teachers houses are mostly covered with plywood because of broken windows. Just yesterday, they torched a police cruiser and the chief came into school for a talk with the students. They busted all the school windows and you can't see the outside from the inside of the school because all the windows are boarded up. We just had a few arsons here, several houses got burned down.
Just today, a teacher was accused of looking at a female student in her class "inappropriately" by her parents. The teacher was new here, only been here for a month. He has a class of fully degenerate kids. That female student(14 years old) was always giving him a hard time and was throwing tables and having a temper tantrum everyday. So basically she just made up some bullshit and told her parents and that teacher got in shit for that. Even though it was not true, the principal did not investigate this issue just told him to stay 5 feet away from other students. Now he is uncomfortable stay in the class because he is afraid that other kids might accuse him of something else. This kind of garbage is just absolutely mind boggling.
The female students here do no get along with male teachers because they "hate" guys. The reason being that they didn't have proper father figures in life and their dads were all deadbeats just went around and made babies so that they can get welfare once the kids go to school. This brings me to another point that I am just seeing the parents here using kids to make money(welfare), as long as kids stay in school they couldn't care less. If the kids get kicked out, they would be pissed because of no welfare! There is a huge lack of parenting, I call home all the time about students' behaviours and attendance, the parents always tell me "I'll talk to him/her". This kind of response just tells me that they don't care.
A lot of the teachers are from the city, and they are afraid to speak up and stand up for themselves because they are afraid that they might get fired... LOL.... We get worked to death everyday for shit pay, and we have to do all the extra school work like organizing a festival and baazars, cooking turkey/ham for Thanks Giving feast and Christmas dinner etc... while the local staff members barely do any shit, they just go home as soon as school is over. They just take advantage of us here because we are educated and nice people.
For the record, I am not gonna make any fucken photocopies of notes, she can go get it from her friends. I should just fucking give her a 0 on the midterm and call up the education ministry and report this unprofessional practice. If they are doing this all the time, imagine what kind of other corrupt shit they are doing... trying to send kids to the city to make themselves look good, to prove to other people natives can succeed.... I am not trying to generalize that all natives are retards and they can't succeed. I am sure that there are couple smart natives out there, but for the most part, fucken hopeless at best.
Oh, I forgot to add that natives do not pay tax, they get free money from the government and the government pays for ALL of their health coverage like free surgery etc.. they also get lighter sentence if they commit a crime unless it is a serious crime like murder.
 
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There's alot of groups that do the same thing in my area. Church groups mostly and the native kids who went to my schools were the same. Why work? Why try? Once their of age to be hired the church can just get them a job. Same way with natives, my friend works at wallmart and since its on a native reserve natives get hired 100% of the time. They even have a set number of native workers they have to hire before turning any natives away.
You could try getting a job with kids who actually care. I dont see that school being very fulfilling for a teacher. Yeah natives get alot of benifits, its pretty ridiculous. Lifes not fair, whatever.
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I've heard many stories like yours, its shitty  I have a lot of friends that went into education. They got lucky and got jobs in the city. I recently heard of a program that the gov will either pay for/or pay a part of your education if you are willing to teach on a reserve. Crazy stuff.
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I'm pretty sure teaching is tough and children can be little monsters universally. I've heard worse teaching stories.
It sounds like the kids don't take the lessons seriously. Maybe you could try to find new ways to engage your students -- let them know what's in it for them. Where's your work ethic?
I never hated school, but I certainly didn't appreciate then why I needed to learn things that weren't interesting to me. My best experience in the lower grades was a 6th grade teacher that raised the bar: he had us reading NYT, Carl Sagan, National Geographic, and doing frequent writing assignments. Most cracked under the stress, but it was so far ahead of the other teachers in the grade that we were way ahead of our peers going into middle school.
Maybe because there are such low expectations for these students you can ask for some freedom/flexibility in teaching methods?
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On November 11 2011 12:43 mmp wrote:
I'm pretty sure teaching is tough and children can be little monsters universally. I've heard worse teaching stories.
It sounds like the kids don't take the lessons seriously. Maybe you could try to find new ways to engage your students -- let them know what's in it for them. Where's your work ethic?
I never hated school, but I certainly didn't appreciate then why I needed to learn things that weren't interesting to me. My best experience in the lower grades was a 6th grade teacher that raised the bar: he had us reading NYT, Carl Sagan, National Geographic, and doing frequent writing assignments. Most cracked under the stress, but it was so far ahead of the other teachers in the grade that we were way ahead of our peers going into middle school.
Maybe because there are such low expectations for these students you can ask for some freedom/flexibility in teaching methods?
The thing is, its not that you need a different approach to teaching them, its that most of them could care less. I have lived around many many natives, and yes there are some really nice ones, but from my OWN personal experience I have mostly run into complete assholes. Over 80% of my cities homeless are natives who just dont want to work. You can give one of them a job, and in the end drugs and alcohol wins over, and they end up right back where they started. I really dont want to come across as racist, as I have friends who are native and they are great, but speaking from what I have witnessed the last 25 years, they have some serious problems in life.
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It's ironic that they receive (apparently) all these government benefits, but somehow still seem to suffer, due what is ostensibly their choice.
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Canada13378 Posts
I don't think enough people realise the historical and I mean recent as well, issues aboriginal peoples in Canada have faced. Reserve schools completely fucked over a lot of the education system for aboriginals. Many adults don't trust it and there is a lot of substance abuse thanks to cultural transmission partly due to the side effects of serious physical sexual and mental abuse that happened in reserve schools as well.
Also, some reserves and their educational systems are poor at the lower levels in part due to lack of funding and also due to the fact most of the funding they get is from incentive programs which some people forge results to achieve
But really no need to be so ignorant of the social and historical issues facing aboriginal people in Canada. They are a disadvantaged group and the situations you face are part and parcel of educating disadvantaged groups. Im sure its similar in inner city schools with high african american population in the states in major cities.
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And here I was thinking that it was only Australia that had such a severe level of problems with it's Aboriginals. They literally have a mentality that if they want something new they just burn their old one down and the government will get them a new one. Don't like your house? Burn it down and the government will build a new one. Don't like the playground? Burn it down and the government will build a new one. It is the most heartwrenching thing to go out to the communities one year and get to know the kids and then come back the next and find them all changed because over half of the girls (who hadn't previously had it happen) have been raped by a family member and everyone has gotten into alcohol and drugs.
The problem is that this cycle will keep going as long as the government keeps rewarding them for doing nothing and If the government stops giving them so much for nothing then everyone (both aboriginal and non-aboriginal) will be up in arms about it.
People have to realise that adversity isn't an excuse to give up. Just because you're born into a situation doesn't mean you have to stay in that situation your entire life and bring your kids into it.
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On November 11 2011 12:50 eXigent. wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2011 12:43 mmp wrote:
I'm pretty sure teaching is tough and children can be little monsters universally. I've heard worse teaching stories.
It sounds like the kids don't take the lessons seriously. Maybe you could try to find new ways to engage your students -- let them know what's in it for them. Where's your work ethic?
I never hated school, but I certainly didn't appreciate then why I needed to learn things that weren't interesting to me. My best experience in the lower grades was a 6th grade teacher that raised the bar: he had us reading NYT, Carl Sagan, National Geographic, and doing frequent writing assignments. Most cracked under the stress, but it was so far ahead of the other teachers in the grade that we were way ahead of our peers going into middle school.
Maybe because there are such low expectations for these students you can ask for some freedom/flexibility in teaching methods? The thing is, its not that you need a different approach to teaching them, its that most of them could care less. I have lived around many many natives, and yes there are some really nice ones, but from my OWN personal experience I have mostly run into complete assholes. Over 80% of my cities homeless are natives who just dont want to work. You can give one of them a job, and in the end drugs and alcohol wins over, and they end up right back where they started. I really dont want to come across as racist, as I have friends who are native and they are great, but speaking from what I have witnessed the last 25 years, they have some serious problems in life.
There are probably social elements here that I am not familiar with. We have a lot of problems over here too though, especially in poor public schools and cities where drugs & violence are problems.
Reading the OP, this sounded very similar to the stories teachers tell me about their work in the US, but without the cultural dimension. Poverty is poverty anywhere.
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Yeah, the very roots of the people on aboriginal reserves in Canada are effed up because our predecessors went and tried to forcibly assimilate them into European/white culture.. children were taken away from their families at a young age, and awful things happened at reserve schools for generations. At least that's how I remember it from Social Studies in high school.
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On November 11 2011 14:55 Vestrel wrote:
Yeah, the very roots of the people on aboriginal reserves in Canada are effed up because our predecessors went and tried to forcibly assimilate them into European/white culture.. children were taken away from their families at a young age, and awful things happened at reserve schools for generations. At least that's how I remember it from Social Studies in high school.
I think the more severe problem is the opposite of assimilation; isolating them on reserves and paying their way. They have no integration into society at large and no incentive to work or better themselves. Substance abuse is a huuuuge issue. The government of Canada has basically created ghettos with the reserve system. The feelings of bitterness and entitlement with the culture due to past abuses are a problem too.
My mom worked on a reservation in western Alberta a couple years ago and she had stories very similar to OP's. She taught a grade 2 class. The kids were completely wild and developmentally stunted. She got the day off work one day because a few natives had stolen a truck with some guns in it and were riding around shooting at people's houses. They had a shootout with police near the school. I'm sure her job was actually easier than the OP, being a younger class, but she still quit after a year of it.
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So I read everything and I'm really curious, WTF are you doing working as a teacher on a RESERVE?!
Now that I have that out of my chest, I want to say that it's very unfortunate the way natives are here. Is there ever going to be hope for them or will it be a vicious cycle of shitty parents forever?
Natives have been a problem for a long, long time and ofc it's not even their fault the bad things that happened to them. The damage is so great though that they're still fucked up for the most part. Is there any solutions?!
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Maybe some people were just born to be wild, eh?
AFAIK Native Americans lived for tens of thousands of years at one with nature, no alcohol, no smallpox, no technology. Then we (you? Europeans in general) invaded the Garden of Eden and fucked it all up. Now, although they have their own reservations and aren't "assimilated" per se, Western civilization at large is still trying to fit the western ideas of progress and societal responsibilities onto these people by instilling ideas of education, advancement, and jobs.
These kids were basically brought up in an environment that's intrinsically hostile to the idea of western society, so these programs of schooling don't really work. Maybe if the schools were completely re-adapted to be more culturally based than based on science/math/literature things could be better. Abandon trying to teach science/math/literature, and simply concentrate on teaching the kids their own culture, history, religion, and language. Gradually pull these government-educated teachers out and have the Natives teach their own kids, fund the schools but don't expect the same standardized education that comes out of cities and towns outside the reservation. Let them figure out for themselves whether or not they want/need to learn about math, science, and literature.
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On November 11 2011 16:28 Newbistic wrote:
Maybe some people were just born to be wild, eh?
AFAIK Native Americans lived for tens of thousands of years at one with nature, no alcohol, no smallpox, no technology. Then we (you? Europeans in general) invaded the Garden of Eden and fucked it all up. Now, although they have their own reservations and aren't "assimilated" per se, Western civilization at large is still trying to fit the western ideas of progress and societal responsibilities onto these people by instilling ideas of education, advancement, and jobs.
These kids were basically brought up in an environment that's intrinsically hostile to the idea of western society, so these programs of schooling don't really work. Maybe if the schools were completely re-adapted to be more culturally based than based on science/math/literature things could be better. Abandon trying to teach science/math/literature, and simply concentrate on teaching the kids their own culture, history, religion, and language. Gradually pull these government-educated teachers out and have the Natives teach their own kids, fund the schools but don't expect the same standardized education that comes out of cities and towns outside the reservation. Let them figure out for themselves whether or not they want/need to learn about math, science, and literature. Your sig greatly compliments the points you gave, I lol'd.
I agree, somethings got to change so need to try new things because clearly the reserves currently aren't cutting it.
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It's not going to work Newbistic. They try to do the same here in Australia and the kids do the exact same thing as they always did. As shit as it sounds the only way to fix it is to take all oftheir kids away from their parents and put them in another home but this time minus the abuses that happened previously. I'm not saying destroy their culture, you can put them in other "natives" homes as long as the home you put them in isn't a violent, alcohol fueled mess.
Anyone who comes at this saying that Mifan has done the wrong thing or he isn't trying hard enough is completely wrong. There is no trying with kids like this. They don't want anything you have to give them whether it's "their own culture" or not.
So MMP tell me a worse story then the kids throwing rocks through their teachers windows, setting fire to the cars, throwing tables over at school and then NOT BEING ABLE TO PUNISH THEM. They get away with anything they do because if you punish them you're either being racist or losing the school money which would make the next year even worse. Hell, if you punish them your life will probably be in danger.
You can blame it on what happened to them as a race in the past but that does not excuse them for what they are doing now.
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On November 11 2011 17:16 JoFritzMD wrote:
It's not going to work Newbistic. They try to do the same here in Australia and the kids do the exact same thing as they always did. As shit as it sounds the only way to fix it is to take all oftheir kids away from their parents and put them in another home but this time minus the abuses that happened previously. I'm not saying destroy their culture, you can put them in other "natives" homes as long as the home you put them in isn't a violent, alcohol fueled mess.
Anyone who comes at this saying that Mifan has done the wrong thing or he isn't trying hard enough is completely wrong. There is no trying with kids like this. They don't want anything you have to give them whether it's "their own culture" or not.
So MMP tell me a worse story then the kids throwing rocks through their teachers windows, setting fire to the cars, throwing tables over at school and then NOT BEING ABLE TO PUNISH THEM. They get away with anything they do because if you punish them you're either being racist or losing the school money which would make the next year even worse. Hell, if you punish them your life will probably be in danger.
You can blame it on what happened to them as a race in the past but that does not excuse them for what they are doing now.
The way you put it, what western governments are trying to do in these reservations is a lot like what the United States was trying to do in Iraq, minus hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars. You are right though, there probably will never be a fully satisfactory solution to this mess. Someone somewhere will find a way to be pissed or offended at any given solution.
It's strange how the government is now stuck between a guilt trip and an international human rights clusterfuck. At the moment these governments are basically trickling money and manpower into the reservations to keep the status quo, and everything is fine (except for these beleaguered teachers). The moment anyone actually tries something radical to help you'll probably instantly see thousands of politicians, human rights activists, and out of touch academicians go up in arms about how it'll "destroy the culture" amongst other things.
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On November 11 2011 17:57 Newbistic wrote:Show nested quote +On November 11 2011 17:16 JoFritzMD wrote:
It's not going to work Newbistic. They try to do the same here in Australia and the kids do the exact same thing as they always did. As shit as it sounds the only way to fix it is to take all oftheir kids away from their parents and put them in another home but this time minus the abuses that happened previously. I'm not saying destroy their culture, you can put them in other "natives" homes as long as the home you put them in isn't a violent, alcohol fueled mess.
Anyone who comes at this saying that Mifan has done the wrong thing or he isn't trying hard enough is completely wrong. There is no trying with kids like this. They don't want anything you have to give them whether it's "their own culture" or not.
So MMP tell me a worse story then the kids throwing rocks through their teachers windows, setting fire to the cars, throwing tables over at school and then NOT BEING ABLE TO PUNISH THEM. They get away with anything they do because if you punish them you're either being racist or losing the school money which would make the next year even worse. Hell, if you punish them your life will probably be in danger.
You can blame it on what happened to them as a race in the past but that does not excuse them for what they are doing now. The way you put it, what western governments are trying to do in these reservations is a lot like what the United States was trying to do in Iraq, minus hundreds of thousands of troops and billions of dollars. You are right though, there probably will never be a fully satisfactory solution to this mess. Someone somewhere will find a way to be pissed or offended at any given solution. It's strange how the government is now stuck between a guilt trip and an international human rights clusterfuck. At the moment these governments are basically trickling money and manpower into the reservations to keep the status quo, and everything is fine (except for these beleaguered teachers). The moment anyone actually tries something radical to help you'll probably instantly see thousands of politicians, human rights activists, and out of touch academicians go up in arms about how it'll "destroy the culture" amongst other things.
You've pretty much hit the nail right on the head except for one thing, everything isn't fine.
I personally think that in a lot of these situations people need to look for the lesser of two evils. Sure losing culture is a bad thing but is allowing kids to live in a situation where they are beaten and raped by their family better? I know which one I'd prefer to get rid of.
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i literally skipped every post in this thread that wasnt canadian. unless you are from canada, it's impossible to understand the aboriginal problem here. new zealand/australia has the same problem. i feel so bad for you, man. i have friends who work on reserves in my province (sask) exact same thing here. its really disgusting. its only perpetuating the problem. im quite radical on the subject so i'll save my opinions for another time. just wanted to chime in. god speed, mifan.
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Why do people work in the hellish reserves as teachers in the first place? Can someone explain please I'm really confused. Just go be a teacher in a normal school.
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On November 12 2011 04:03 Kamais_Ookin wrote:
Why do people work in the hellish reserves as teachers in the first place? Can someone explain please I'm really confused. Just go be a teacher in a normal school.
There's an overabundance of teachers, and not nearly enough teaching jobs for them all, so they might just be taking whatever they can get.
iirc you also get a pay bump from the government for working on reserves, I don't know if it's the same in the provinces but I've read that government workers in Inuit communities get a pretty sizable raise. Could just be because they are desperate for people to work in fucking frigid cold 365 days a year :/
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EPT
