In several posts I have described how Tom, now in sixth grade, has developed a fixed mindset. Tom feels he is on a conveyor belt moving him from grade to grade on his way to eighteen. He has given up trying to achieve much of anything in school. He is along for the ride. Tom's mom has tried to encourage him and has met periodically with his teachers and principal. Tom just seems to always be behind his classmates academically; scoring poorly on the annual standardized tests, even after extended remediation sessions. Tom's mom is despondent. Tom is disengaged. What can be done?
Tom has developed a victim's view of the world. Adults have been making all of the decisions and he feels helpless. They will continue to make the decisions. He may as well enjoy the ride; putting in time until he can leave school at eighteen, with or without a diploma. Tom is fortunate, his sixth grade teachers do not see Tom as a victim. They see him as a student who needs some help seeing the world beyond his current circumstances. In fact, that is how they see all students.
Tom enters sixth grade thinking he has school figured out. He will do poorly on tests, go to remediation sessions, then go to seventh grade for more of the same. However, his teachers do not see it that way. By the end of the first week, Tom realizes that this school experience will be something different.
Mrs. Brown and Mr. Dean are Tom's sixth grade teachers. Mrs. Brown teaches language arts and science. Mr. Dean teaches math and social studies. The two teachers are responsible for two groups of students with twenty-five in each group. School begins at 7:30 am and all of the students in sixth grade go to lunch at 11:30 am. After lunch, the students have a rotation of classes with other teachers: music, health, physical education, applied technology, and careers. It takes a day or two for Tom to get the pattern of the sixth grade school day. He readily understands the afternoon. It is like "specials" in the other grades. Tom thinks those will disappear for him by the middle of the year.
The mornings take him a few days to understand. Mrs. Brown and Mr. Dean rotate which group of twenty-five begins in each room each day. Each morning they help the students sort it out; it is just different. Another thing that is different is that they don't seem too concerned with always starting with the same subject or giving each subject equal time. In fact, during the first week neither teacher does much with any of the subjects they are supposed to teach. They seem to spend most of the morning talking about themselves, their families, the students in the class, sports, movies, TV shows, summer vacation, and the afternoon subjects taught by the other teachers. They even have those teachers and the principal come in to talk about how different sixth grade will be compared to other years.
At the end of the first week of school, Tom and his mom go out for dinner together on Friday night. It is a tradition for them each new school year; nothing fancy, just a local place run by a family Tom's mom has known forever. Tom's mom asks a few predictable questions about his day, then mentions that Mr. Dean called to set up an appointment to see her next week. Tom remembers that the teachers mentioned something about conferences. He didn't give it much thought. Hoping sixth grade is a chance for a fresh start, Tom's mom is upbeat about school and the appointment. Tom is a bit suspicious, but as they talk more about how things have gone the first week he begins to see that this might actually be something different.
No comments:
Post a Comment