It All Blew Over

For anyone wondering how the meeting with the administrator I referenced in a previous post went, it ended up not being a big deal! I explained my case, explained how difficult it was to get as low a grade as the student had, explained how low the grade was one marking periods, and gave some whopping numbers on assignments that student missed over the semester, to explain the low grade (it was somewhere in the vicinity of 20, no joking!). I was not grilled or lectured to as I thought I might be. I was thankful.

In other news, the school year has started and is about to move into full gear. Or has already. I have what feels like mountains of work to correct already, as my AP class had a summer assignment due the first day. I was disappointed not to get some students I was really hoping might be in my classes, but am trusting that it will all work out for the best. Some movement in class makeup is quite likely in the next few days, though I'm not holding out a lot of hope there. What I am a little more concerned about are the small numbers signed up for my AP class. The roster was cut in half from the original signups, mostly due to scheduling conflicts. I'm not sure whether to blame this on school inefficiency (inability or lack of willingness to juggle teacher's schedules to accomodate the greatest number of students who want to take certain classes) or the fact that there is only one section of AP, so such scheduling issues are more likely to occur. I'm currently placing a little blame on both facotrs, though perhaps a little more on the former.

Anyway, because I have significantly smaller numbers to start the first semester (which is required for most of them in there), the current signups for the second semester (needed to prepare for the AP exam) are even smaller (the second semester is not a requirement). I've been told that, as is, the class probably will not continue second semester, so I should see about increasing signups. That I have been doing, both internally to the current class by pitching the AP curriculum and last year's success rate in desperate hopes that most of them will stay, and I've started to hunt for others currently not in the class who might be able to take it. And I am hoping that a couple more students whose schedule wouldn't allow it at first will be able to juggle things in order to get back into the course.

I see a tremendous irony in this kind of battle. While I love teaching AP, it is way more work than a typical class. My motives in keeping it are because I like working with brighter students, but also because I believe our school should be providing more AP offerings in the Social Studies. There are 6 or 8 AP exams in Social Studies, but only 2 courses besides my class are offered at my (very large) school. So it seems silly and a real shame that given our size we do not offer more challenging courses. Students benefit from such courses. And it gives them more options for classes that will increase their chances to impress and do well in future colleges to which they may apply. So I find myself fighting hard to give myself more work! Sometimes I am really attracted by the idea of just giving up on it and teaching a class that is much easier to prepare. I think the positives for ME would be more than the negatives for ME if such a thing happened. But I believe the negatives for students were that to happen would be greater. So I see great irony here. Why should I be the one to struggle with administration (or the system) to help students? But such is my state.