So what's the plan?

After several years of teaching foreign languages and reading at the middle school level, I moved to a high school English position.  My first year I taught 10th grade, 11th grade and 12th grade English.  I noticed that my 10th grade pre-ap class and my seniors were okay.  I mean that at no point was I ever worried about them.  Even the kids who didn't speak English were hard workers and did what they had to do to survive.  The regular 10th grade and 11th grade classes made me want to cry.  Many students had the reading and writing skills of a 3rd grader.  What happened?  How was it that so many students were prepared while others were so unprepared?  I just let that year go by.  I enjoyed my successes and lamented my failures.  As the 2010-2011 school year rolled in, the 11th grade students from last year plus a whole slew of new faces entered two of my classes.  One class was AVID or via Individual Determination and the other was senior English.   

So just some background information...  This year's seniors were part of a cohort which had followed these students for the past six years.  The whole purpose of this cohort was to provide opportunities for success while running interventions for those on the brink of failure.  Well, half the cohort has dropped out.  What is left are those who have an interest in finishing school.  And of those students, I would say based on the fifty I see regularly in my classes, many will go to the local community college and a few will quit after the first semester while a few more will quit when they realize that they have two years of remedial classes to take before they can even get to their "basic" freshman classes.  There of course will be those who will continue and navigate through remediation classes and will complete the freshman "basics" but I would like to know how much of them will really do that.

Then there are those who will be in the same situation at our local universities...

Then there are those who will succeed...  They will have that BA/BS...  They will go on to further their education...  You will always know who those kids are the second you walk into class on that first day of school.

So, here is the plan.  After learning that I will be teaching four sections of senior English for the 2011-2012 school year, I decided that I would do what I could to get these seniors into freshman "basic" classes. 

How am I going do this?

Well, I have been studying the placement exams at the local universities and community colleges.  I have also studied the syllabi and course outlines. 

In the next few weeks, I am going to start preparing what I think is what the students will need to enter freshman level classes.  

Let's see if this works!

XOXO,

Mrs. G

Arthur looked up. "Ford!" he said, "there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us about this script for Hamlet they've worked out."