Should teachers track "their class" between grades, and
should students stay with their classmates between years?
So, my exposure to the US K-12 educational system is increasing, and I am intrigued by some of the differences. What I don't know is whether these are broadly general across the US school system, or local curiousities - a hard thing to determine, since school policies are local to districts, not States and certainly not Federal.
When I were a lad, in elementary school you had teacher - call it a "homeroom teacher" if you like, and that teacher stayed with you for several grades, before rotating back down to pick up a new class.
Further, you generally stayed with "your class" between grades, with little re-mixing of students.
This had several effects: the good thing is that the general syllabus was quite coherent, not repetitive except to reinforce previous learning, since it was dominated by the same teacher from year-to-year.
It also fostered a strong class identity - I felt part of my class, not just part of my school, and classes developed quite distinct identities. I guesstimate that we had 85-90% retention of students within the class from year-to-year.
This was the case both in Iceland, and in England when I moved there later, though at later stages much more of class time is spent with specialist teachers.
The bad aspect, is that you may get stuck in a class with a "bad self-identity", I could tell you which class in my elementary had the "bad kids" - the tone was quite distinct, on homework, behaviour and things like smoking - and the tone was set initially by a small number of students.
Similarly, if you didn't get on with your teacher, you were still generally stuck with that teacher for a long time - you could move, my class had one kid which didn't just move class, but moved from a different school, choosing a long walk to our school over the local nearby neighbourhood school - but this required pro-active and persitent parents to push through, school authorities tended to resist such moves, for obvious administrative reasons: they generated extra work.
So far, with limited data, my impression of the (local) US system is that teachers stick with their grades, so there is a new primary teacher each year, no matter what; and that the class rolls are scrambled - deliberately so in the early days to breakup cliques, and talking to older kids my impression is that there is no deliberate class cohesion, more that small number statistics ensure some groups end up in the same class year-to-year.
This at least explains to me the puzzle I have over why the US curriculum is so poorly structured in general. Even with the best structure and formal curriculum, the teacher at the start of each year will not know the students and have only vague anecdotal ideas of what they have covered.
This seems incredibly wasteful.
On the other hand, the student is unlikely to be stuck in a bad situation for many years, but converesly more likely to spend at least one year with a teacher they dislike or have bad chemistry with.
So, are my impressions broadly correct across different US systems - is this a generic feature? Am I overgeneralising the "European system" from my own limited experience?
And, does it only take one bad year with a teacher to mess students up? Is it better to risk occasional rough years for broad variety, or that many students have consistent good experience, versus a few students having a very hard time for a prolonged period?
This sounds like the sort of thing the PhD (Ed) has studied, so I suppose I should google rather than ramble, but Colbert just came on, so I'll defer and see what the knee jerk reaction is...
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I'm student teaching in an elementary school class, and our students came from several classes and schools. I've never heard the students staying with one teacher for several years, though I can imagine that this would clearly benefit some students a great deal, and would be a real disadvantage for some. In just 4 days of school, my cooperating teacher has formed her impressions of the kids. She's decided who's a good student, who doesn't do his or her work, and who is going to be repeating the grade. Some the students came from the same classes, and the students have impressions of each other. My cooperating teacher has asked students if they were in class with another child last year, and if the child did (insert any behavior the teacher doesn't like). Clearly this system of keeping the kids together and with the same teacher would really benefit certain kids. However, for the kids about whom the teacher has already formed a bad impression, being with her this whole year will be tough, and I couldn't imagine them staying with the same teacher for multiple years. Additionally, the students city I am student teaching in often move extremely frequently, so I imagine that would make it very difficult to do.
This was one of the shocks I had when I moved from Europe to the USA.
Our parents were up in arms because our school mixed us up between 4th and 5th grade. Yes, we had the same teacher for teh fist four years, then the same set of teachers for the next four years, and another same set of teachers through high school.
Then there was a huge outrage when they reformed high school in a way that separated kids into four 'tracks' in the 9th grade (language, social science/humanities, math, natural science)and then majors in 11/12th grade, which made many people change not just classes, but schools (I was lucky to stay in the same school because biochem major was offered in my school). The biggest argument against the reform was that the best friends will be separated this way. You are supposed to be with the same kids for many years.
There are a couple of people I was with in the same class from preschool through high school. We are still in touch.
Also, if a teacher, for some reason, could not finish the year's worth of curriculum in June, (s)he could just finish it in September next year - it's all the same kids with known background, so that was OK (though it happened very rarely - they preferred to rush through the last few lessons in June).
My elementary school had two classes for each grade, which those in my class thought of as the "good" and "bad", or "smart" and "dumb" classes; my junior high, and highschool, had the Home Room paradigm. For instance, a few years after I graduated Stuyvesant High High School, both Lisa Randall and Brian Greene were in the same homeroom class (and the same Physics classes, for that matter).
The high school summerschool that I taught was a mix of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. These were "bad" kids and good, but what they had in common was that they were all flunking Algebra 1. The disruptive kids seriously slowed down our progress. The principal, saying that the kids verified that I was a good explainer, and knew and loved the subject, considered my "classroom management" insufficient, and did not hire me for full-time teaching this semester.
Which is why I am in a bureaucracy-paralyzed 1.5 year grad student program to turn me into an acceptable high school teacher, by california and No Child Left behind standards. Yesterday I got my student photo ID card from Cal State L.A., and Thursday my classes begin, assuming that the UMass Graduate transcript (official version, in sealed envelope) arrives by snailmail on-time. The College of Education will not officially admit me until that arrives, nor calculate my grad school GPA from the unofficial photocopy of my transcript.
My mother's teaching (3rd grade math in inner-city Brooklyn) and (I think) my wife's secondary teaching (in US, UK, Australia, and Nassau) was also with homerooms. I am less familiar with the alternatives.
My elementary school had two classes for each grade, which those in my class thought of as the "good" and "bad", or "smart" and "dumb" classes; my junior high, and highschool, had the Home Room paradigm. For instance, a few years after I graduated Stuyvesant High School, both Lisa Randall and Brian Greene were in the same homeroom class (and the same Physics classes, for that matter).
The high school summerschool that I taught was a mix of 9th, 10th, 11th, and 12th graders. These were "bad" kids and good, but what they had in common was that they were all flunking Algebra 1. The disruptive kids seriously slowed down our progress. The principal, saying that the kids verified that I was a good explainer, and knew and loved the subject, considered my "classroom management" insufficient, and did not hire me for full-time teaching this semester.
Which is why I am in a bureaucracy-paralyzed 1.5 year grad student program to turn me into an acceptable high school teacher, by california and No Child Left behind standards. Yesterday I got my student photo ID card from Cal State L.A., and Thursday my classes begin, assuming that the UMass Graduate transcript (official version, in sealed envelope) arrives by snailmail on-time. The College of Education will not officially admit me until that arrives, nor calculate my grad school GPA from the unofficial photocopy of my transcript.
My mother's teaching (3rd grade math in inner-city Brooklyn) and (I think) my wife's secondary teaching (in US, UK, Australia, and Nassau) was also with homerooms. I am less familiar with the alternatives.
There are some places in the US where the students remain with a particular teacher two years in a row, then move on to a different teacher. A friend of mine teaches in such a place. This started because there are state-mandated tests every two years. Therefore, once the kids pass the 3rd grade test, they are in a class with the same teacher for both 4th and 5th grade, then they take a test, and so on. However, the teacher is given the option of remaining a 4th grade teacher instead of moving up with her students. So, it gets a little confusing.
Ok, the magic word is "looping" and I put up a new post on it.
It is not the same as "streaming", where you sort into the classes by academic ability or some social criteria, those are orthogonal, to "looping" as are "multi-grade classes" such as advocated by Montessori schemes.
You can mix'n'match any of those approaches, but I am very curious that looping is not more prevalent in the US since it seems ubiquitous in Europe.
I suggest you send both of these posts to the Carnival of Education and see what those kinds of readers post in the comments.