One teacher's take on Lindamood Bell

I talked to one district teacher about LMB today. Here is what she had to say (at least to the best of my abilities to take notes)

Our LMB coordinator was very nice, very hardworking but did not have a credential so the LMB program had to hire hourly teachers to actually teach the LMB concepts and then train those teachers.

The entire districts K-5 teachers were trained in LMB before school on a Buy Back day last August. Expensive kits were bought for all teachers. Teachers were supposed to go back to their classrooms and implement the program more fully. Especially in the schools and grade levels that were selected for the most help. Teachers were told to Visualize and Verbalize with the students 30 minutes a day using the LMB materials.

Teachers pushed back saying there was not enough time as it was to get through all the other materials in the core subjects without losing another 30 minutes a day. So LMB said ok do it at least 15 minutes. Teachers tried. But of course it really took longer than 15 minutes.

But really weird thing is when teachers asked about doing it this year they are told not to worry about doing it, but especially do not do it when the San Diego County DAIT team is at the school evaluating.

Is that because the program is not on the Approved List of Interventions?

Last year students were pulled by LMB coordinator at any, old time during the day and the students often missed Core Academics. The LMB hourly teachers tried to make up for it by asking the pulled out students to come in early to give them help with core academic areas they had missed in the school day. Of course some parents did not bring their kids. Besides how does a student make up the classroom time lost with the full class instruction and manipulatives for a complex elementary teaching topic like rounding numbers?