Reply to APS MS Class size - do teachers know all students

Forum Index » VA Public Schools other than FCPS

Reply to "APS MS Class size - do teachers know all students"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]We are 5th grade parents and wondering about the middle school experience at APS in regards to class size and how well teachers know their students?  Our DD really thrives when she has personal investment from her teachers, and when she has had more aloof teachers she has struggled to stay motivated.

It’s a bad dynamic I know, and we are working with a therapist on building her executive function and motivation outside of having a nurturing teacher — the real world is certainly not full of people who care about how you do.

But at least for now, if you are a quiet kid, how well will your core subject teachers “know” you. Like English, math, history?  I’ve heard there can be 30 kids in a class, and that each teacher can teach 6 class — so that’s 180 students?  Is there a lot of discussion in class, to engage quiet students? Small group work or projects where teacher floats around and works with them?  Teachers are really good at knowing a lot of students, but this sure seems like a LOT of kids. [/quote]

I think this experience differs by middle school, especially because some are more crowded than ours. Our oldest is a very quiet and studious kid, and we noticed at Swanson every year that he would get put in a section with the ESL kids and then he would be ignored by the teachers while they focused on the kids who needed extra help. We did feel like Swanson was intentionally putting the straight-A, extremely quiet kids with the ESL cluster because the straight-A, quiet kids were so low maintenance. I don't think that exact situation would happen now with the intensified MS courses offered, but it doesn't change the overcrowding generally. We did end up moving our oldest to private for high school, in part because we worried that he would get even more lost in the shuffle of the large APS high schools. He's thriving in private high school and I do somewhat regret that we didn't move him earlier. APS is a challenging school system for introverts, especially if your kid is also not a stellar athlete. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics