Moving up.

Last week, I decided to call K's counselor for the first time. I have watched all year, her come home day after day with little or no homework. She has told me on multiple times that 6th grade is so much easier than 5th grade was. I was teaching for an English teacher for 2 days, and the teacher next door is a friend of mine. She told me of her observations of the incoming Freshman classes of the last couple of years. They don't have any work ethic, they can't write or compose essays or papers with any quality of composition, and it seems the teachers at the middle school level have just held their hand and coasted them through. I have previously spoken with Freshman math teachers who tell me of the reteaching needed, for sometimes an entire quarter in order to get the students ready for Algegraeic concepts.

In this call to K's counselor, I inquired as to the possibility that she take some upper level classes in the core curriculum. The school offers Advanced Reading and Math. Essentially, she will be earning high school credits for these by her 8th grade year. I have confirmed this, but we are pushing for these classes for her. She does not like chaos, and prefers to work alone on most things. The biggest frustration for he this year are group projects where she finds she has to do most if not all the work because her peers drop the ball. These moves should put her into smaller classes with other motivated students, who want to learn and be productive. We'll see if she is accepted into these classes, but I have a feeling she will be and she seems to be on board with the challenge.