Reply To: Dealing with the School System

[blackdog]

The school chooses the class schedule? That seems really strange to me. So does having the parents choose it. I chose my own courses. But then I wasn’t labeled as a special needs student. I guess that is different, now that I think about it. My brother mentioned how the school keeps trying to shove his son into basic level classes and they have to go and fight with them to get him moved up.

Which reminds me, I was planning to comment on the subject of mainstreaming back at the beginning.  Believe it or not, it is a good thing, if it is done right. I wrote a paper on it when I was in college. I can’t remember much of my research now or what my sources were, but there have been a lot of studies done that have shown that it is beneficial in many ways.

One of the strategies that can be used to mainstream younger children is assigning them a learning buddy. I can tell you from first hand experience that this works extremely well. In my grade 6 class we all had learning buddies and I got straight A’s that year despite having one of the worst teachers ever. (seriously, she was bad)  My buddy didn’t do quite as well but he was very happy with his C’s and B’s, which were a dramatic improvement for him. He might have done better if I had been harder on him when I edited his English assignments but I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. It’s weird that I remember all of this but somehow it’s always stuck with me. I did the same thing in high school on my own, employing two of my fellow nerds who excelled in math to help me learn enough to get my credit so that I would never, ever have to do it again.

Anyway, the point that I was trying to get to is that if your son has any friends in the classes he is struggling in that he could ask for help it might be a good way to get his grades up a little. Sometimes it’s easier to learn from another student than from a teacher because they’re the same age and can communicate with each other better.

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