8am, the seventh day of school, and I was off to a faculty meeting. Although I was not excited about the meeting, my mind kept rolling over the issue I have had with one of my chemistry students. Planning to meet with him at some point this day to discuss the need to either decide to take the class and do the work or drop the class before tomorrow, I sat to listen to our special services department. Pouring through the pages I had been given I found the name of my non-productive student. Aha! I need to talk with his case worker.
Fortunately, as I left the meeting ,I walked with the case worker of my student. I told her that he had not done any homework, was acting more like an eight grader than a 10th grader, and that he might benefit from a year at BFA before taking chemistry. (This is his first year here.) Taylor promised to look into the situation and send me an email about next steps.
After my first class I checked attendance lists to see who, if anyone, might be absent from the test that I planned to give today. My questionable student just happened to be on the list. No way to talk to him today. I can only hope he is in attendance tomorrow.
Needing to make some copies, I walked upstairs and into Taylor's office. She greeted me and explained that in checking up on the student she found that he was not qualified to take chemistry! He would have struggled all year just to do the ubiquitous math. Oh, boy! Arrangements will be made to get him into a science class more appropriate to his skill set.
I left the guidance offices feeling such joy. In all my years of teaching I have wanted to be two things for my students: a teacher who inspires students to life-long learning and a teacher who senses the needs of her students in order to meet them where they are to encourage them to new places. I believe that for my student, today, I was the latter. Such a precious and fragile gift is teaching. For today, I was blessed to use my gift with success.
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