I came to the United States at age four in 1984. My parents never allow me to speak English at home, but expect me to do well in school.
I am thankful for my fourth grade, seventh grade English teacher, and all the teachers who taught me the beauty of English.

In fourth grade, I remembered the endless days of journal writing, sentence correcting, responding to every question in our classwork in a complete sentence using context clues from the question, dissecting sentences and labeling every parts of speech as daily warmups, having spelling tests and vocabulary tests, and reading chapter books one after another. I miss seeing the spelling bee, spelling tests, and morning daily handwriting practice in the classrooms.

In seventh grade honors English class, I remember spending one whole semester reading, learning, and writing Roman myths and one semester learning about Greek myths. My favorite writing activity was integrating 25 of 50 vocabulary words we learned and got tested over every two weeks in our creative writing essay.  

My daughter is in 7th grade “Advanced” English class and she still does not know creative writing. She does not know the parts of speech and basic grammar rules that all students should have mastered by fourth grade.  

I have to say, Florida public school curriculum is not that great.   If parents are thinking about moving to Florida to raise a family and mainly to provide a quality education for your child, think again.  We as parents will need to improvise a lot.

In today’s Florida elementary public school classrooms, I noticed there are no handwriting practice, no spelling tests, no writing block, no word wall, no guided reading groups! No wonder the majority of the students in all the grades I have seen struggle with reading, reading comprehension skill, and writing skill. The number of upper elementary students I encountered not knowing how to read at first grade level is sky rocket high. 

People have taken advantage of that No Child Left Behind. Kids know they can put zero effort and still move up to the next grade level. And what happens over the years with those students who keep moving up grade level but are falling behind grade level? Behavioral problems increase which interfere and disrupt the learning of other students who are trying to learn or are willing to learn. Teachers are there to teach the academic skills, not to discipline or deal with behaviors because that is a parental responsibility.

Mom made sure I did well in school. She may not know how to read, write, or speak English, but she knows how to analyze the report cards. 😆  She only needs to see A’s. Any B on the report card means “bad” to mom. I don’t even dare to have a C on my report card. My teachers who mom doesn’t understand English so they put a happy smiley or a sad smiley on the daily communication chart.

I would be a misbehaved child if not for my mom’s spanking. I am thankful for mom doing her parental duty in raising me and my teachers who have taught me English well.