Subj: [talk-kitchen] Re: [ncte-talk] Honors Students
Date: 4/4/00 8:21:14 AM Pacific Daylight Time
From: rasanen@worldnet.att.net (Jukka Rasanen)
Sender: owner-talk-kitchen@ncte.org
Reply-to: talk-kitchen@serv1.ncte.org
To: ncte-talk@serv1.ncte.org
Nancy - i agree with you. in our school we developed a class for 'at-risk'
readers, which i teach. our motivation wasn't that they were dragging the
'high' kids down, but that they weren't getting their needs met. my
teaching partner and i have made a big difference for some of them. we have
also pinpointed the problems of some kids and have gotten them further help.
we've used workshop, readers theater, performance poetry, graphic forms of
expression, SSR, etc., so they haven't been cheated.
nevertheless, the further along i go, the more i think it's not the best
solution to the problem. there's a whole cadre of professionals waiting to
give them worksheets and canned programs. they are cut off from examples of
student work that could serve as models. they feel like the 'dumb' class,
no matter how eruditely we explain that they're not. i think it would be
better to have all English classes set up to accomodate all learners, and
then to have smaller class size. (workshops, contracts, whatever).
practically speaking, i'm not sure how it would work. i'm the only English
teacher in the building using anything close to a workshop. everyone has
more seniority than i do and class sizes that are twice mine, and there's
little interest in trying the workshop approach. though i think that the
call for separate classes is motivated by the desire to get help for kids
who need it among other reasons, i still think it's the easy solution to a
difficult problem, and it's a solution which has its own problems, as we've
witnessed in the past.
mary
rasanen@worldnet.att.net
> Ok. I've been awfully quiet lately.
>
> But...
>
> I continue to be troubled by classes designed for honor students, or
classes
> designed for "low" students. We need to understand that students of
varying
> abilities can have their needs met in the same classroom environment.
When
> we sort students out like beans, we, first, often sort them by how
> teacher-pleaser-ish they are. And second, by how well they do on
> standardized tests--notoriously inaccurate measures.
>
> The current criticism for not including all students in a single classroom
> is that the "low" kids will drag down the "high" kids and in some way
damage
> their education. Does anyone else smell a rat in this logic?
>
> Nancy
>
> Nancy G. Patterson
> Portland Middle School, English Dept. Chair
> Portland, Michigan
>
> "To educate as the practice of freedom is a way of teaching that anyone
can
> learn.
> --bell hooks
>
> patter@voyager.net
> <http://www.msu.edu/user/patter90/opening.htm>
> <http://www.npatterson.net/mid.html>
>
>