The warm weather uniform is golf shirts in various colors. He came to me the other day with the list of colors to tick off what he doesn’t already have. He has the celery, the peach, the pale blue, the gray, the black, the purple, all three blues. But he asked me for the white. I almost choked to death laughing. So we compromised on the cranberry but decided against the mustard. </p>
<p>I am still laughing at this. Can you imagine? Sloppy pig boy worrying about his golf shirts. I can’t get over it. And yes he is in heaven because the French chef (no, I’m not kidding) offers breakfast every day, involving things like baked oatmeal, omlets and other breakfast food all day. My son loves breakfast food. I always tell you that my son is a little king and he is very much enjoying the royal treatment. However, I did have to restrain myself from knocking him out when he turned his nose up at a relative last week. There will be none of that in my house.</p>
<p>Poor kids wouldn’t be choosing lunch. Kids who need a hand on their shoulder (is that allowed anymore?) won’t get that. Kids who need more than a smiley face at the bottom of the page, when they do well on a test, won’t have that. </p>
<p>My kids had a fascinating chef at one school. An ice carver.</p>
You know him entirely too well. It is pizza every single day. Thankfully it is gourmet pizza. The chef cooks entire meals with entree, vegetables, etc.</p>
<p>The brat gets pizza. But it is thoughtful pizza with veggies on it.</p>
<p>The ties are a very sore subject in my marriage. He started freshman year with zero. Now he has more than three dozen, with a preponderance of pink and lilac. Guess who picked those? The Halloween, Christmas and Valentine’s Day ties are just too cute. Also the ducks playing clarinet and the tie that is an almost life-sized clarinet painted on a plain black tie.</p>
<p>Raise your hands if you wonder why my son is a bit of a mess.</p>
<p>Maybe we just shouldn’t bother educating the poor at all. They can go work in the fields or something. Maybe the garment industry would move back here from SE Asia. ;)</p>
<p>I’ll bite. To some extent, yes. If the math class is only 12 or fewer students, the teacher only teaches 3-4 class periods a day, has open office hours each day to one on one with students and to talk to parents, that can make a difference.</p>
<p>Add to that, if the school is small enough to actually know the ability of the student and the teachers of different grades interact with each other, the student who is a math brainiac gets the educator with the phd in Math who runs the Math club who can stimulate that kid and mentor his quest while the others students get excellent math teachers who can work them through until they grasp the subject matter.</p>
<p>^It’s probably a lot easier to teach to fewer students and it’s certainly beneficial to the student, imo, to be in a smaller class setting, as there is no place to hide. But, I am of the mind set that the vast majority of teachers are, in fact, good teachers - if allowed to teach.</p>
<p>Some online courses are excellent. Some involve real time online interaction with a teacher and/or classmates while others don’t. Some teachers make excellent use of technology. A student able to work at his own pace can often go through the material much more quickly, so you cannot necessarily gauge the time it would take on the computer based on a traditional classroom. Also, an AP test is an AP test, whether you prepare for it in a classroom, in an online class, or self-studying. And you have to take it yourself.</p>
<p>When my oldest started high school, my initial reaction (which has stayed with me), is that the model is all wrong. I cannot think of a worse environment to try to teach kids than putting thousands of teenagers together on a contained campus with limited supervision. My instinct was that high schoolers should be segregated into small learning groups (say, 25 - 30) with a teacher that they stay with for 4 years. Either the teachers should be trained in all subjects, or could rotate among these groups. This way, the teachers get to know the students intimately (strengths and weaknesses), can tailor teaching to their specific needs, and it doesn’t take any more staff than currently.</p>
<p>The year my oldest was a senior somehow due to scheduling issues one AP Chem class had 8 students and the other 30. My son had the fortune to be in the smaller class and he said he never thought class size made a difference until he saw how much faster they went through the material than the larger class.</p>
<p>“My instinct was that high schoolers should be segregated into small learning groups (say, 25 - 30) with a teacher that they stay with for 4 years. Either the teachers should be trained in all subjects, or could rotate among these groups. This way, the teachers get to know the students intimately (strengths and weaknesses), can tailor teaching to their specific needs, and it doesn’t take any more staff than currently.”</p>
<p>They sort of do this in a lot of middle schools with the house system - though that is on a larger scale. Our middle school created 3 houses (which at the time they touted as a new model though my middle school in the late 60’s was on the house system.) Then, for some reason unknown to me, they changed it to two house a few years ago. I am sure they gave some “educational” reason for it, but in my experience - whenever there are changes like this it is normally for economic reason. Just like in the middle 90’s when they started doing multi-aged classes for a few years. It was touted as the next best thing since sliced bread. The real reason, of course, was because the didn’t have enough kids in each grade to add an additional class. Then, a few years later when enrollment went up again, no more multi-aged classes.</p>
<p>Not in our school system. They introduced both multi-age classes and looping because teachers wanted to do it. As long as there was sufficient interest from parents, they continued. I’m not sure about looping at this point, but multi-age is still going strong in the elementary school.</p>
<p>My S was in a 1/2 multi-age class, and then in an extraordinary 5/6 multi-age program–4 classes working together with a 2-year curriculum-- that was the jewel of our school system. Unfortunately it was dismantled when we went from a jr high to a middle school, and the sixth grade became part of the MS.</p>
<p>I know it was economic reasons in my district because they do this stuff all the time when numbers fluctuate - though they never admit it. They even built a 10 room wing on one of the elementary schools when they decided it was a good idea to have all of kindergarten together in one place under the guise of some new theory which escapes me at the moment, but they really built it because it was less expensive then adding new class rooms at every elementary. This was right before my kid entered. So kids from 5 elementary were bused to one school and back for a 1/2 day program. </p>
<p>Right before they built it the district put a vote for full day kindergarten on the ballot and it was defeated so it wasn’t built with enough classrooms for full day. Then, a few years ago they decided on full day and lo and behold it was suddenly better for the kindergartners to be back in their home school.</p>
<p>^My kids had 1/2 and 4/5 classes. Both were similar to your 5/6, with two teachers collaborating on two classrooms of kids. They were fantastic.</p>