Welcome Back to Life

For those who are new to the readership, the introduction: http://lifeasprocess.blogspot.com/2007_08_01_archive.html

Last week I began my spring student-teaching placement at a Thurston County middle school we'll call "CMS" for safety purposes. My classroom is in a portable, but it's a reasonable space. I'll be working with two groups of students, 7th and 8th graders who, because of their gifted/talented designation, take Language Arts and Social Studies in an integrated Humanities double-period block format. They also work with the same content, switching subjects each year. For instance, the eighth graders began middle school with American History, studied Medieval History in the first semester, and is now studying Washington State History. The seventh graders will study American History next year.

My mentor teacher and I are, once again, an excellent fit. Social justice minded, non-proprietary of the classroom, open and flexible to allow me to do what I want. This is going to give me the freedom to try out a couple strategies I haven't been able to work with before, such as reverse-chronological history studies. The math/science instructor for this group of gifted students also has a student teacher from my program, so we'll be working on a multi-disciplinary cross-content area culminating project at the end of the year.

Demographically, the gender balance of the two classes is slightly skewed in each direction. The 7th grade group 11:18, and the 8th grade group is 16:12 (M:F for each). Ethnoracially, the group (which pulls from the entire district, not adhering to middle school boundary lines) does not reflect the diversity of the district, as is often the case in gifted/talented programs due to overidentification of white students and underidentification of other groups. Some stats below:

Ethnicity---Gifted Program (Raw)---Gifted Program (%)---District (%)

Native American---0---.00---3.8
Asian-------------3---.05---12.6
Black-------------3---.05---9.2
Hispanic----------1---.02---9.4
White------------50--87.71--63

Clearly, this population of students is very different from those I've worked with in the past in terms of age, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and ability. Of course, these students deserve good teachers as well, and are independently beginning to question concepts of race, class, and gender. It will be an interesting opportunity for me to broaden my scope of experience within a framework I enjoy using: Humanities as portal to social justice.