How do students get assigned to classes?
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Anonymous
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I am looking for insight on how students are sorted into classes for the following year, ideally from people with experience in ES in MCPS. Do the teachers from the current and rising grades get together? Is the principal involved? Does it happen during the summer or before the end of the prior school year?
(And yes, I'm interested in how to potentially influence this process to a particular outcome, including both getting or not getting a certain teacher) |
Anonymous
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Yes
Yes Yes Can make a teacher request for a teacher you think your kid (you) DOES want. The school will try to give the complaining parents to new teachers (if there is one). If no new teachers, spread out the complaining parents. Also, done by demographics, boy-girl ratio, has older sibling/s or younger sibling/s, home family factors, students who may need more assistance can't all be put in same class - each class will have a mix of high flyers, medium flyers, and low flyers. |
Anonymous
| OP if you want a better placement, have a high- profile role with the PTA. PTA presidents in particular get good placements for their kids. |
Anonymous
+1 If you’re just now thinking about this for next year, it’s too late. Need to put in the work buttering up teachers and staff before they’ll pay attention to your requests |
Anonymous
| How does this work for high school? |
Anonymous
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OP you don't get to choose the teacher. You can make a request but it will be ignored and you'll be marked as demanding.
They make the assignments over the summer and send out a postcard or other notification a week prior to school starting. This is ES. In MS and HS due to the fact your kid is going to be taught by multiple teachers, you don't find out who they are until your kid gets their schedule. Again, you cannot request teachers or changes based on liking or disliking various staff. Time to get over it now. |
Anonymous
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My son had some informally documented learning issues. Long story there. Regardless, the principal and I would talk occasionally about how he could best succeed. The first year, I said "It'd be awesome if he could be with Teacher 1" (who was highly desired in the school). He was not with Teacher 1 but with another teacher, who had a very good reputation.
The next 2 years, I described the teacher I wanted without using any names. "Has a highly structured classroom" was one of the phrases. He got the teachers I was hoping for both years. (And, before anyone says all teachers are highly structure, there were definitely teachers in those grades who ran things more like by the seat of their pants.) |
Anonymous
| When our kids were in ES, the counselor was helpful for this type of thing, as she was actively involved in this process. We never requested that our kids not have a specific teacher, but I did request that they not be placed with certain children. Our school also always sent a google form at the end of the year that asked about your kid's learning style, etc. I don't know if all schools do that, but it was a good place for us to describe the type of teacher we thought they would work well with (one of my kids needed more structure, the other needed teachers who were more nurturing, etc. ). You can give that type of feedback to the counselor and even say, "I heard that so-and-so has teaching style X and my kid does better with Y." |
Anonymous
| Our ES said you could make requests based on your kids learning needs rather than a specific teacher. So you could say your child needed a well organized class room and clear boundaries. You could not say Mr Smith would be a good match for my child. |
Anonymous
| Can you make a request for your child in MS to not be placed in classes with certain kids that bully them? |
Anonymous
Have you filled out any bullying incident reports? Cite them. |
Anonymous
| If I'm remembering right, we were told that at our ES, the teachers from the current grade get together before the end of the year and come up with groupings for the upcoming year. Then over the summer, the principal assigns those groups to specific teachers, and sometimes makes some switches based on feedback from the parent forms (parents can't request teachers by name, but are allowed to weigh in on the classroom environment they think best suits their child.) |
Anonymous
| In our ES all the teacher teams get together snd form the classes. However teachers are not always assigned before summer so its. Ot always know who will take which class. Until 3rd they balance classes. Then our ES does home room and breakout classes for math and english and those are a little more cohorted. In 4-5 they do compacted math so those classes are formed by ability. |
Anonymous
Do your son a favor and get those learning issues formally documented. Elementary principals are alot more flexible than middle and high school principals |
Anonymous
| I also had a lot of success with teacher assignments by describing the desired classroom environment. For example, saying my kid does best and feels less anxious in a quiet classroom environment. That might best describe a particular teacher I wanted. |