New Semester

The new semester has been interesting already. First, I have lost a few students who moved back to their home country. I thought some students had moved but then they show up a few days later. Also, I still have a few students who have not shown up yet and no one knows anything about them, if they are coming back or not, that includes fellow students.

I also have several new students in my classes. Its amazing the variation in levels of these students who arrive in my class. Some of them are well beyond the level of the rest of the class while others are well behind. One example is a student from Korea who is actually on a one month break from his school back home. From my understanding, he used to go to ASB, and every break he comes back and goes to school for the month, then returns back to Korea when his school starts up again.

The first day I had him in class, I was moving at my normal pace for the students, and he was answering questions without any leading questions, sometimes as I was writing the problem on the board. I felt happy that I finally had a student who was able to think at a higher level and was willing to talk in class. I do have a few students who can handle this material, Algebra in 8th grade, but they do not say much unless I pry it out of them. This guy is smart and he does not mind answering questions in class. I just chuckle every time he answers my questions because I know it would take the rest of my class about 2 minutes to process what I am saying.

As I say that, I still feel the school is doing these students a great disservice by offering only Algebra as an 8th grade math class. I remember when I was in 8th grade, Algebra was the advanced class and there were two other classes below that. Some of these students cannot handle Algebra at this grade level and no matter how slow I go in the class, they will not understand the material. I am pushing for two tracks starting in 7th grade, but I am not sure I will get it. I think the school is too small allow that and they feel that having two classes which are so small is unnecessary. I can see that a little bit, there is no use in have a class that is very small, but the kids who understand are suffering by going too slow and the kids who don't understand are struggling with the material.


Aaron