More Science Teacher Frustration

It's a neat coincidence that the last post is so topical - once again I find myself trying to communicate with Miki's science teacher.

Miki is working on a science project this week. Unfortunately, my ability to help her has been severely limited. All she had for me was a print-out showing the structure of the report: hypothesis, method, materials, background info, results, conclusion. She did not have any information on how to actually do the report, and, more importantly, no data. The teacher must have gone over all that during class, which excludes ESL students like Miki.

Maybe I'm being unnecessarily harsh on this teacher, but it seems so ridiculous. He knows Miki can't speak any English. He should try to help her more, and if he doesn't have time, why not assign a student to help her? I'm almost positive that most of the science project was completed in class. Why not ask one of the students who finished early to help Miki? She won't understand them, but they could at least make sure she gets a copy of the data.

I ended up writing a note to him and asking Miki to turn it in along with her laughably incomplete project explaining her situation. I asked him to give Miki more time to complete the assignment and to write down the instructions and data for her, or to meet me sometime if that was inconvenient for him.

I really can't think of anything else I could do. This situation is so frustrating!