Job Discussion Forums

[kev7161]

Yesterday my youngest student celebrated her birthday. She turned 7. An appropriate age for a first grader, yes? So, why is my oldest child 9 1/2 years old? When I was 9, I was already in 4th grade, as were most other 9 year olds. (This is the kid, by the way, who is fluent in English due to being born in Australia and already went through Australian 1st grade last year.)

I like my school, I (mostly) like my job, but nobody seems to be able to answer why they throw such a wide variety of students with a decidedly vast array of skills and abilities (esp. when it comes to the English language) into the same "special, experimental" classroom.

We all know that it's, more often than not, a certain amount of money and "VIP-ness" that gets these kids into these types of scenarios. Maybe it's prestige for parents to say "My kids in the 'special class'! Aren't you just green with envy?"

Now, granted, I'm glad to have (most of) these kids, else I wouldn't have the job, but there was no pre-testing, no pre-interviewing on my part, seemingly no pre-qualifiers to determine which 25 kids should come into this class (by the way, I've been told that there are a LOT more parents wanting to enroll their child in this program next year). I certainly would never expect all kids to be on the exact same academic level, but these kids range from the "smart-as-a-rock" I posted about previously to whiz kid mentioned above - - and everything in between.

One good thing, of course, is that I've seen definite growth in most of the students. Some seem to have stalled out lately, but I'm hoping it's just a plateau that we can get them past in the coming weeks. Another thing is that this is the first year for this special program, so there was no option in, say, sending a kid to a lower-level or higher-level class because . . . there weren't any other levels. It's just made this job a wee bit - - challenging sometimes.