Do you support grade/discipline based segregation in schools ?

[Ben Kenobi]

Aneeshm:

Why are the studious and the orderly students the only bright ones?

[Kidlicious]

I had one black girl get mad at me for calling black people native to the US African Americans. She just didn't like the term. I'm not sure why exactly, but her parents never called or anything.

[Mrs. Tuberski]

Originally posted by Kidicious


What kind of methods? What classes?

well for one the fact that the teachers now are able to embarass the kid cause he doesnt know the answer. for another the teacher doesnt have enough patience to deal with teenage boys. None of these refer to my kids I have been able to sit in on some of their classes because my oldest is adhd and not in special ed. i wanted to see for my self some classes.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski
well for one the fact that the teachers now are able to embarass the kid cause he doesnt know the answer.

I never did that, but for some reason it sometimes works well to control disruptive students. You never should have to use it unless you suck as a teacher.

for another the teacher doesnt have enough patience to deal with teenage boys.

Yeah. That's no good. That's why I don't teach anymore. You have to have a lot of patience.

[MRT144]

Originally posted by Kidicious


Good. Look around off the beaten path. Maybe you can find something that you like, and that you can maybe make a career of.

like teaching

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Mrs. Tuberski

I guess they didnt have lunch at your school. Not to mention after school but I forget most dumb kids according to most of you posting now were to stupid to realize the bell rang

Maybe that's why I suggested seperation - complete seperation . Remember , though , that the seperation is not final . It is re-evaluated monthly on the basis of each student's record for the past six months , and the student is shifted to the appropriate area/section .

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Kidicious


The thing is not all material can be taught hands on like in science lab.

I did a lot of hands on stuff when I taught history, but untimately traditional instruction had to be used.

One of the best ways of motivating history students is to promise one tidbit of Laz' Historical Filth articles every fifteen minutes to half an hour . What do you think ?

[MRT144]

id make them play civ all day

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Kidicious
Yeah. It's a huge problem. I taught remedial Algebra for one year to 10th and 11th graders, because the school district wanted every student to go to college. Unfortunately 40 to 50% of students do not have the capacity to learn algebra even if they tried and that's being generous. Society is going to have to come to this realization that math teachers have already come to. We need a real solution to this.

Now that's BS. Everyone except the mentally retarded can learn algebra.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by aneeshm
@ Sava -

Everyone supporting seperation has provided anecdotal evidence of their experiences , while those opposing it have mostly theorised . Make your own deductions .

If still you remain unconvinced , then I have a great example - the IITs ( Indian Institute of Technology ) . Getting into them is tough as hell ( only 3,500 out of more than 150,000 make it ) , thus all who reach that place have a certain academic and intellectual level , far above the rest of the pack . What that place does is to bring it together , leading to what can only be called an explosion of creativity . Any student coming out of those institutes is guaranteed a great future - not because of a great resume , but because of a his fantastic exposure and ability to apply himself in whatever he does - which has seeped in thanks to the culture he liven in for that crucial four years of their lives .

There have been many students who have graduated from the IIT in some technical branch , taken up a completely dofferent job for which they may not even be fully qualified ( like banking ) , and done fantastically well .

No segregation system I've seen has been based purely on grades. The most I've seen is 50/50.

[Sikander]

When I was in elementary school "tracking" students was very popular. Three of my first six years of school were spent in the advanced class, which was a mix of the most gifted students from two grades. As luck would have it I ended up being from the younger grade level each time. These classes were great for me, and were the only time that I ever felt completely engaged in my twelve years of public school. The rest of the time my classes progressed at the rate of the slightly lower than average students. I was bored to tears most of the time and acted out in various ways sometimes. If the teachers were cool I was allowed to study things on my own as the general class ponderously went over the material I mastered in a few minutes.

I wasn't well-served when I was in the general population. I realize that my IQ puts me easily in the top 1% but I feel that a much larger group of students felt the same way. I ended up disliking school except for perhaps one or two classes a semester. I developed bad study habits because of the slow pace, habits which came back to haunt me later in my education as the wheat was slowly seperated from the chaff.

To my mind we need to group students by type. It isn't simply a question of intelligence, discipline or special aptitudes, but also one of learning styles, cultures and special needs. I know for a fact that the students at the bottom suffered more than I did from their distance from the class' pace. Dyslexic students and students suffering from ADHD etc. were taught no differently than anyone else for instance.

I think we need to make the high school diploma valuable once again in and of itself, rather than a ticket to a wasted college education as it has become for too many. In my ideal world only perhaps half of the students who currently enroll in college right after high school would do so. The rest would be well-educated enough to go right into the work force where they would be trained on the job. I'd take half of the money saved and plow it back into K-12 education. I'd use the other half to improve / expand the community college system so that people who had a little life experience under their belt could continue their educations as they saw fit, whether they wanted to work towards a broader education and an eventual four year degree, or chose instead to learn individual skills to improve their value as workers or to improve themselves personally as they see fit. Even a little work experience will markedly improve people's educational choices and achievements.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Tuberski
I'm one of the undesirsbles that have been mentioned, I didn't graduate HS on time.

Why did I fail? I was taught the same thing year after year.

I took Algebra 1 twice. The first time was with a teacher that order the class by gradeStarting on the upper left of the classroom with the best grade and down the row in grade order.

I never got out of the last couple of seats of the last row.

I took it again 2 years later with a teacher sat on one of the student desks at the front of the class. Everyone else sat where they want to sit.

I had straight A's in that class.

Take you segregation and put it in a private school. Public schools need more teachers like my second, some that will get down with the students and teach.

Teaching is a rare commodity these days.

ACK!

Then you guys can all go into your OWN class and be taught. But don't hold the rest of us back

[Bosh]

One of the main problems is that HS textbooks are so insanely boring. I'm teaching out of a US HS history textbook and its as if they were trying to intentionally take all the interesting stuff out. Just compare a history text to a readable newspaper, the newspaper is full of all the horrible things that are happening and all the bad things that people do and then in a standard history text all of that is completely gutted.

If it wasn't for me my students never would've learned about Pharoahs marrying their sisters, Atilla dying of a nasal heomorrage from getting trashed at his wedding, Bagoas the ******** wonder and his contribution to the decline of the Persian Empire, how Roman desire to wear really really skanky clothing contributed to the importance of the silk road, Ivan the Terrible being a syphilitic orgy-prone psychopath who beat his non-retarded son to death with a stick, Martin Luther's obsession with feces etc. etc. etc.

[Kidlicious]

Regarding assigning seats according to grades, I think it's a great motivational tool, but I never did it because I consider grades private. My master teacher (the person who helps you while you are a student teacher) posted his grades by name outside his room for the whole school to see. I asked him about it and he said it was for motivation. He's a ****ing ******* though.

[Barinthus]

sorry, Kid I have to disagree with you there. Arranging students seating by their grades is just horrible. It doesn't help lower performing students at all and probably encourage them just to give up.