SES

This is another of the "reflective or informative entries regarding technology and/or teaching."

This was something I took note of last Friday as I was observing my 7th grade language arts class.

I mentioned in a previous blog that, in 2nd period, there is a high-cap and low-cap class in the same room. On Friday, I joined the low-cap class as they went into a separate room to take their vocabulary test. After they were finished and returned to their main room, my cooperating teacher, Mrs. P, and I had some time to talk.

Mrs. P thumbed through their vocab tests as we talked. "A student," she'd say. "C student." (She exaplained that she found a strong correlation between the students' first semester grades and their current tests. She could tell, by looking at tests, which grade the student had gotten first semester.) After looking at a blank test Mrs. P said to me, "This student failed last semester." The fact that the test was blank was particularly sad, as she had given them 1 of the answers and instructed them to fill it in.

Perplexed, I asked her why there are some students who don't even make an effort. Mrs. P said that some who continually get D grades actually do try. They come in for the voluntary Tuesday and Thursday study hall, they stay extra hours, and they still do not succeed academically. "But some," she added, "have parents who are not involved at all. This student," she continued, looking at another paper, "I have tried to contact his parent several times; she never calls back. If I had a kid who was failing, I'd make sure he was in study hall. But some of these single-parent homes just don't make time for the kids."

I then asked Mrs. P how Northshore Junior High School was split up in terms of socio-economic status. She told me that they were getting more and more lower students, and that that was key. Parents who have a low income and who are single often work long hours to provide for themselves and literally do not have time to pay attention to their kids' schooling. "It's not that they don't want to be involved; sometimes they just can't be," she said.