we make up the classes here, too.

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Home : 2008 : May : 10

we make up the classes here, too.
By audriana

Well, I'm new to this school, so I'm not sure how we do it yet, but at my last school (large urban district) the 4th grade teachers would all fill out cards on their students. We would have different piles based on race,
gender and ability level.

We would start out with one group (say high white males) and divy them up among all the 5th grade teachers. We would continue until there were no more cards. Then we would look at notes we had made on the cards and make sure the behavior issues were divied up as evenly as possible. We made sure cousins, siblings, etc. were in different rooms. It was

a lot of work. And then summer would come and parents would call in and admin would make changes and in the fall the teachers would wonder how in the world some of those kids were put in the same class.

(We had one principal who was wonderful because he left the lists pretty much as the teachers set them up. He knew that we knew the students better than anyone in the office and we knew which teachers were better suited to particular students.)

I haven't had one parent come in this year to talk about next year's placement. That's a first for me -- usually they start coming in and making requests. Of course, I still have one more round of conferences to get through, so maybe it will happen then.