It's that time again. Time to sort out the students for the class lists. This year we had to condense six second-grade classes into five third-grade classes. As you know, this is not always as easy as it seems, and we had our own share of problems this time.
First, one of the third-grade teachers will be out on maternity leave until December. We were asked to pay attention to the students because there are a few in second grade this year whose teachers have been on leave in much the same fashion for their kindergarten and first-grade years. So this year has been sort of a catch-up year for them.
Add to that the fact that there are two classes that will have no less than six learning support students in them. (We group them by class so the aides can be available to help instead of having them run back and forth between the rooms. We follow a push-in model for special education, so the students are only pulled out of the regular education rooms if they are in a life skills class. Even then, the students still visit the rooms for socialization purposes.)
Add to that the fact that there are a lot of immature students in the grade level this year. Immaturity often leads to behavior issues. It was an interesting process getting all of those students split up between the classes. Even so, each room has about three students that still have some social growing to do.
Mixed in with all that, we have to make sure the students are grouped heterogenously by rank (low, low/medium, medium, medium/high, high, gifted). Then we have to make sure the balance of girls and boys is as even as possible in each class.
Needless to say, it was an interesting meeting, but we managed to get it all sorted out. All is well.
...As long as parents don't submit special requests to the office...
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