Eighth Grade Again

I would like to expand on the topic of teacher-teacher and teacher-student and ties that we discussed in class yesterday, as well as how various student groupings affect learning and socialization. Jackie provided very interesting insight on how the complete separation of her eighth grade class inhibited the socialization between teams. My post will also be on my eighth grade experiences, but with a different setting.

My family moved to Israel the summer between my 7^th and 8^th grade school years and we spent my 8^th grade school year in Israel while my mother was in a temporary position there. The school I attended was a private school, one of the American International Schools (AIS). The students were embassy kids, a very culturally diverse but socio-economically similar set of students from all different countries. The set-up was very similar to what Professor Lazer discussed in class, a fact I didn’t recognize until later.

In class, we discussed a setup where all students in a school attended a homeroom class each morning that was a full half-hour, not just a quick five minute hi/bye. The homeroom class was the same set of students with the same teacher, each and every year. One particularly valuable attribute of the program was that the students in each homeroom were a diverse set. My eighth grade year met this description in almost every way. We spent a full half-hour each day. We met with the same teacher, the same students. The diversity factor was met culturally and personality-wise, but there was a somewhat clear split between the classes in terms of academics. It appeared to me that Homeroom A was the top 25% and bottom 25% in terms of academic performance. Homeroom B appeared to be the kids in the middle of the pack. I think that this split was probably an attempt by the administration to encourage diversity and mixing between the top and bottom performing students, but the distinct split made it clear the mixture was not random.

We also talked about the idea of teaching teams vs. tracks. I think that what a teaching team is probably varies by who you ask, but I think my middle school probably met the definition in many senses of the word. All math teachers (middle and high school) met to set curriculum and discuss all students. All eighth-grade teachers met to discuss student performance as well as upcoming projects and tests (we never had a big project and a big test on the same day, which was very helpful.)

One final thing noted in class that was striking to me when I reflected on my eighth grade experience was the note that being a homeroom teacher was valuable to the teacher in terms of the progression of the teacher’s career. Thinking about it, I realized that two years after I left AIS, Homeroom B’s teacher was promoted to headmaster of the entire AIS school (K-12). Her connections to students, teachers, and administration catapulted her to a position of utmost importance, especially because the following year the school moved to a new location with brand-new facilities. I would think that her connections would be especially important in keeping the cohesion of the teaching staff during such a move.