The first few days of summer school went pretty well. I had just about gotten all of my students names down, and I had figured out about where most of them were in terms of levels. We were given books, but with only three weeks left, I knew we wouldn't be able to cover the whole book, so I asked them to vote on which three units they wanted to cover and decided we would do one unit a week. They chose the units on food, fun, and milestones. I was a little surprised at their choices, but figured I had the weekend to plan, so no problem.
On Sunday, I introduced our first project, a recipe and story about why it was special to you. We spent the first day reading sample stories and choosing a dish. They all seemed really excited about putting together a recipe book. I was excited too! I'm getting pretty sick of spaghetti and Raman noodles, which is pretty much all I know how to cook. I would finally have some new recipes to try out.
Also on Sunday, we got to discussing how our classes were all pretty mixed in ability level. I suggested it was because the test was only for reading and vocab, completely leaving out listening, speaking and writing, so of course it was hard to judge the level. Sue suggested that we all write down what we thought the levels of our students were now, after three or four days of teaching. She said we should put them in three groups, beginner, intermediate and advanced. I said I didn't think it made much sense to switch the students now that we were already a week into our four week summer school. She said we weren't necessarily changing the classes, just seeing how the levels were.
So I divided my class based on comparative ability level. The most advanced girls in my room, the middle of the road girls, and then the ones who were lower as beginners. Everyone else also did the same, using the other students in their class as the yardstick for comparing levels rather than one empirical standard. Sue then presented this great variety in class levels as evidence that we needed to re-organize the classes to better reflect the ability levels. Although I knew that Sue wanted to switch the classes up, I didn't know she had gone to Chris, and I didn't know that the official decision had been made to remix summer school.
So there we were, two days before our project was due, working in groups on peer editing when Sue walks in with my class list. She tells me we are changing classes. Instead of looking at what level I already had written on the list next to each girls name, she starts saying each name in turn and asks me to say out loud what level the girl is. I was so embarrassed for the students. I hadn't even warned them that this might happen since I didn't know it had been officially decided. So now, not only were they being told they were switching their classes, I was publicly announcing their level in front of the whole class. The advanced girls were taken to one room, and the beginners another, and I was left with the intermediates. Suddenly my class of 19 was down to about 8. After everyone left, we all just kind of looked at each other with deer in the headlights expressions. What had just happened?
We recovered a little and re-assigned groups and did what we could, but since new students were trickling in the entire rest of the class, it was hard to accomplish anything much. It was all I could do to get down the new student's names. I was so relieved when the class finally ended. My relief didn't last long though, a bunch of my students who had been switched rushed back to my class during the break and begged to be let back in the class. I wanted my class back as much as they wanted to come back to it, but I figured I had better not stir up any trouble. After all, there was only two and a half weeks left at this point. I told the girls they could ask Chris if they wanted to switch back, but that I couldn't say yes or no, I didn't have the power.
I'm not sure if they ever did check with Chris about switching classes. I do know that from that day on, my attendance roster was never the same from one day to the next. Some of my old students did come back. I decided I wouldn't press the issue and ask them if they had gotten permission or not. Other students drifted in and out again, coming to my class some days, another class other days. Some girls left for holidays in Turkey or Egypt and stopped attending all together. Other girls showed up so late every day they might as well have been absent. All in all, I had over 40 students, but probably never more than 20 at any one time. And the level problem? Well, turns out is was twice as bad now than it had been before.
It went like this. Each person divided her class into three groups; beginner, intermediate, advanced. They did so based on the comparison of all the students in their class. So in my class, which apparently had been a "high" level class to begin with, the beginners were the girls who maybe knew most of the vocabulary, but weren't successful at using the grammar yet to form more or less coherent sentences. But in another teacher's with an overall lower level, the beginners were those who were still learning, "hello, my name is..." While her advanced students were just mastering the present tense, my advanced students were using subjunctive clauses and transitional phrases. However, when we switched it up, my beginners were sent to the same class as her beginners, and my advanced to the same class as my advanced. As you can imagine, this had somewhat of the opposite effect of it's intended purpose.
From the beginning we didn't know much about the summer school. We didn't know who was coming or when, and we also never found out why. I'm still not sure what the program was designed to do, or what they wanted the students to accomplish in those three and a half weeks. I'm pretty sure many of the students themselves didn't know why they were there. But I do think (hope) they got something out of it. I know I did. At the very least, I now know about 40 Arabic girls names. Anyone need any baby naming advice?
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