Donate Now

At the end of last school year, my AP came up with a proposal to take 15 then-sixth-graders who had been held back at least once and continue to have behavior/academic issues and put them into a special class called “7+.” The class would be taught only by the most veteran teachers (including the AP himself) and would cover all of the 7th and 8th grade curricula, with the end goal of having those kids catch up on one of the years they missed. As a nice little side effect, those 15 kids – who also happen to be some of the most disruptive students in the grade – would not be in classes with the other students, and would graduate from our school a year earlier. Basically, it was the best plan ever, but because of all the budget cuts it ended up not being possible to staff it. Until…

Okay, so I’m actually not entirely sure what the “until” was, but some money and schedules got moved around, and God smiled down from Heaven and performed a divine miracle, and now the program is happening!! I’m trying not to get too excited because I’ve been burned before by awesome things that are supposed to happen and don’t, but at today’s faculty meeting both the AP and the Principal said it would be happening by the end of the week! Why would they both say it to the whole faculty if it wasn’t a sure thing, right? I really think I need to go sacrifice a lamb or something, because this is the best thing that has ever happened to me at my school. No more Sidewinder! No more Krystofer! No more boy-who-refuses-to-wear-his-pants-above-his-ankles-and-stop-breakdancing! No more scrapping fun lessons and activities for the 27 good students because 3 students are so explosively misbehaving! And I don’t even have to feel guilty about it, because those 15 students are still going to be receiving quality instruction, and are even getting a leg up on their chances of graduating high school!

I know there are still some rough students who aren’t in the program and will probably try to step up and fill the power vacuum left by their overaged peers, but seriously – if someone had asked me what I would do to have the worst-behaved 15 students removed from my class for the rest of the year, I think I would have offered a kidney. I cannot overstate how great this is.