Teachers - do you get to pick some of your students?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the spring we meet to put together classes for the next grade level, but in 30 years I have never chosen students from the grade level below.

ES Teacher

If you could would you pick the cool kids? or the quite kids or the just okay kids?

Well, I can’t pick and I don’t want to.

The question is odd. How would one define a “cool” or “ok” child?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the spring we meet to put together classes for the next grade level, but in 30 years I have never chosen students from the grade level below.

ES Teacher

If you could would you pick the cool kids? or the quite kids or the just okay kids?

What the F is a “cool kid” in elementary. You understand we the teachers don’t think that way about kids right? they’re kids, they’re not cool to us.

Seriously.....parents are ridiculous with the "Cool kid" nonsense. Parents engineer friendships to create the cool kid group and it starts in ES. Very sad.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I've noticed a pattern in our school of teachers who move up a grade level that end up having a lot of kids from their previous class in their class the following year, or of teachers getting the siblings of their favorite students or not getting the siblings of troublemakers, or experienced teachers getting the better behaved kids. Is this a thing? Do you have a choice or are they assigned at random?

Sometimes if a teacher moves up a grade, we loop the students from their previous class with them, so they teacher can capitalize on their existing relationships with the students and their familiarity with their needs. It’s also not uncommon for parents whose older child had a teacher and did well with them request that their younger child have the same teacher. The family knows how the teacher works and likes their approach.

In my school the experienced teachers get students with challenging behaviors, but at this point “experienced” can mean “did student teaching.”

Our teachers do class placement at the end of the year. The teachers who receive the students have no input. If there are any special concerns the admin makes those changes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the spring we meet to put together classes for the next grade level, but in 30 years I have never chosen students from the grade level below.

ES Teacher

If you could would you pick the cool kids? or the quite kids or the just okay kids?

Well, I can’t pick and I don’t want to.

The question is odd. How would one define a “cool” or “ok” child?

+1 they’re children, they aren’t cool. Also it’s impossible to tell which students will drive you nuts, sometimes it’s the “easy” kid

[Anonymous]

Former FCPS teacher. I could and absolutely did pick a few students if I had had their older siblings or I was requested. Groups were balanced but you can absolutely move a kid easily to another group after explaining. I was able to advocate for a few I wanted this way. And once I was even able to swap a new incoming kid to the school for a sibling to my group. That ended up working in my favor because the new kid turned out to be a nightmare!!!

[Anonymous]

Parents can request a teacher or if the sibling had the teacher a few years ago they are more likely to be paired w/ the same teacher.

[Anonymous]

I wish I got to pick my students! I would spend a lot of time picking the perfect class, all with different unique skills and attributes. At the end of the year we will have formed a rock band and will win a competition.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:In the spring we meet to put together classes for the next grade level, but in 30 years I have never chosen students from the grade level below.

ES Teacher

OP here - so if you are a 2nd grade teacher, your team makes recommendations for the kids who will be in 3rd grade next year?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Does FCPS do cohorting? In my district ELL and gifted students are in cohorts so it would make sense if a teacher had some of the same students if they moved up

OP here - my kids' school has a large ELL population and definitely groups them together. There are typically 4-5 classes in each grade and two of those classes have far more ELL children than the others. This is our 6th year at the school and it's been the same every year (with two different principals).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:In the spring we meet to put together classes for the next grade level, but in 30 years I have never chosen students from the grade level below.

ES Teacher

OP here - so if you are a 2nd grade teacher, your team makes recommendations for the kids who will be in 3rd grade next year?

Yes

[Anonymous]

My school used to give teachers siblings of former students (unless the teacher asked to NOT have the sibling). Schools typically try to balance out boys and girls, high/med/low achievers, behavior kids, etc. Once in a great while I would ask for a kid or two to be in my class because I knew the family one way or the other and had fallen in love with their kid. Only once in 30 years did I ask to NOT have a sibling.

[Anonymous]

OP here - my kids' school has a large ELL population and definitely groups them together. There are typically 4-5 classes in each grade and two of those classes have far more ELL children than the others. This is our 6th year at the school and it's been the same every year (with two different principals).

Yes, it is common to group ELL and even special education students in certain classes due to staffing--if a special education or ELL teacher has students in 4, 6, or 8 classes, it means they either have less time in each class or end up pulling students out of the classes, which is not ideal. so you may see special education students grouped in three classes and lower-level ELL students grouped in three classes, with the respective teachers teaming up with the classroom teachers for most of the day.

At my school the students are grouped by grade-level teachers at the end of the year, and at some point over the summer the administration assigned the next year's classroom teacher to the grouped levels of students.

[Anonymous]

The problem is when a difficult class group has been assigned to an experienced teacher, but over the summer that teacher moves, or changes grade level or whatever, and they hire a new teacher and still give her the tough class. I saw this happen where I taught and the new teacher had to leave at the end of the year, because they were going to fire her. She had some awfully hard kids.

They also put so many kids with IEPs in one elementary room that it is really no longer a gen ed room. The special ed teacher for the grade level, or an IA, is in there for most academic periods, but the kids with IEPs who need just a little support are often overlooked because there are so many who need more.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The problem is when a difficult class group has been assigned to an experienced teacher, but over the summer that teacher moves, or changes grade level or whatever, and they hire a new teacher and still give her the tough class. I saw this happen where I taught and the new teacher had to leave at the end of the year, because they were going to fire her. She had some awfully hard kids.

They also put so many kids with IEPs in one elementary room that it is really no longer a gen ed room. The special ed teacher for the grade level, or an IA, is in there for most academic periods, but the kids with IEPs who need just a little support are often overlooked because there are so many who need more.

I saw this happen! The class was originally assigned to a teacher who had been there for years. That teacher left a week before school started and they managed to hire a teacher that just graduated. She had a horrible time with tough students and I felt really bad for the teacher. She left as soon as the school year ended.

[Anonymous]

At our es the newest teachers would get all the challenging kids at their classes (the newest teacher at each grade). We didn’t want to take risk to be with a certain teacher we’ve heard not so good things about and requested not to be in her class (in a polite way when school ask parents to give optional request in advance), and DC was placed in the class with all the changing kids. Fortunately the new teacher was wonderful and DC loved her so much.