posted
Last year (my third year teaching) I volunteered to change from a social studies to a technology integration (teaching Mircosoft Office) teacher when we were losing teachers due to over staffing. Classes were huge, but I loved it. Students were automatically engaged with a computer in front of them, and offering 5 minutes of pre-approved fun websites at the end of class took care of most behavior problems.
Well, I lucked out, they liked me so much that the principal let me keep the position for another year. But they made some changes. I no longer teach every kid in the building with new students every quarter. Now I keep the same kids for a full semester, and they are doing the same for all non-core content teachers (gym, health, art, etc.).
Well apparantly my school district states that our students MUST have gym and health at least once per year. This means students who take Spanish, Sign Language, band, chorus, orchestra, or have to take a special "catch-up" math course don't take my class or art. Which leaves us with very few students.
My biggest class will be 20. I have four classes of 9, one of 14, one of 16, and ONE OF 2!
This is a middle school with over 1100 students.
I have no curriculum guidelines to follow. The principal said basically do your own thing as long as there is structure. This is going to me an amazing school year.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
I have two classes of freshman study skills which has no curriculum. The curriculum is whatever I want it to be. Classes are block - 92 minutes long. I give them something to do that coincides with something they are studying in one of their freshman core courses, or I give them graduation exam review for about 30 minutes. The rest of the period is study hall.
I teach an alternating block and one of my day's schedule has me off 3rd block for prep. That means my class leaves at 11:14 and I don't get another one until 1:24. Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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Jealous!!!!! I have the kids (fifth grade) from 7:20 to 2:15 every day, with a 30 minute lunch break (every third week I have to sit in the cafeteria with them, though, because we have no monitors, so no real break then) and a 30 minute PE/music/guidance break, and maybe a 15 minute recess "break" (I'm responsible for them still) (maybe because they are fifth grade and recess might be taken away from them because of the schedule for the Early Intervention Program and the English Language Learners Program schedules).
I just don't see how there can be justification for 30 to 33 kids in fifth grade classrooms when there middle school and high school teachers who have such open and small class schedules as they do (and they have them just like you guys do in my district, too!)
So yeah, I'm jealous! But at the same time, I love my fifth graders and I don't think I'd want to teach middle or high for any money in the world! So, them's the "breaks"!
Have fun with your classes and schedules.
Posts: 315 | Registered: Dec 2005
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I promise I make up for it...my classes are all really big - the smallest is 28 kids. One of my classes has 29 kids and 20 of them are special ed. (and really, I should not have a class where more than half my kids are special ed, but there you go.)
Plus I have a lower-performing group that I have to get ready to pass the state graduation exam...so there is a lot of pressure and accountability for me.
But yeah, I get a 2 hour break for lunch twice a week on my alternating block schedule.
I actually am a little jealous of you, too - I love fifth graders. It's a really fun age - they are not as needy as lower elementary kids are but not into the snotty, annoying middle school age quite yet. If I taught elementary I would only want to teach 4th or 5th grade.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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quote:Originally posted by Belle: I promise I make up for it...my classes are all really big - the smallest is 28 kids. One of my classes has 29 kids and 20 of them are special ed. (and really, I should not have a class where more than half my kids are special ed, but there you go.)
posted
My wife has the same thing this year. They are giving her a MEANS (forget what it stand for, but pretty much the same proportion) class in fifth grade. She will have a co-teacher, but the co-teacher is pretty worthless.
Posts: 3134 | Registered: Mar 2005
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My mother had to do 'pair teaching' with special educators based on some whacky plan on the part of the principal and oh boy that ended in disaster.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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I still remember my 10th grade history class the year someone decided a class with half TAG kids and half special ed kids would be a great idea.
And then rather than tell the students what was going on and ask for our help making it work they tried to pretend we were all in the class by random assignment.
It did not go well.
Posts: 9866 | Registered: Apr 2002
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Yeah I wish these stories weren't par for the course in a lot of places.
Wait actually, when I think about it? I think I was in a very similar situation. Tenth grade, the TAG program I was in had at least 25% retarded kids?
Did it further mutual understanding and togetherness between two ends of a spectrum, each requiring specific specialization in educators and probably higher-than-average competency for such a position? No, it had the expected deleterious effects for the kids on ALL sides, and we hated the retards cause they were 'weird' and one of them smelled and disrupted the class constantly.
Sadly enough, these sorts of things are all engaged with the specific goal of undoing the horrid implications of the long-standing practice of segregating the special-needs kids and sequestering them to closed-off parts of the school, which was par for the course for decades, but it's done so stupidly in so many places and doesn't actually help anything.
Posts: 15421 | Registered: Aug 2005
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In my case they do it because it's easier for the special ed teacher who is supposed to be in there assisting me as my co-teacher if all the kids are in one class. Though, I have been on the job for several days now and have yet to meet her because she hasn't shown up to my class.
That seems to be par for the course - they put the kids with special needs in a classroom with the idea that there will be two teachers in there, but because the special ed teacher knows there is another adult in there they don't feel exactly pressured to get there on time...so they show up late, then later, then not at all. I've been through it many times.
Inclusion is a great idea on paper, but it doesn't seem to work well in the real world of American public schools.
Posts: 14428 | Registered: Aug 2001
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It works out excellently in some school districts, and not in others. The reason has nothing to do with inclusion, it has to do with how districts have adapted to the fact that once a teacher is tenured and under union protection, they usually simply have no way whatsoever to remove them for being incompetent. You are forced to pawn incompetent teachers off on other schools whenever possible, rubber room them when it's an amazingly egregious case, or, when you are stuck with them, dump them where they will do the 'least damage.'
Since one of the most popular dumping grounds is the special education positions, inclusion will fail, because it's 'including' students who are beholden to a broken system that can do little more than, and is little inclined to do more than, babysit them.
Since you seem to have a special ed teacher who, for all appearances, seems to have been completely AWOL for days, I'm going to say it's a pretty high likelihood that your district is one of those cases.
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