One of the tough things about teaching at an “At Risk†school is the turnover. In the last 4 weeks we gained a new non-English speaking student and lost 3 (almost 4) students. I’m rolling my current class to fifth grade next year and came to realize yesterday that out of my current 25 students only 14 will be with me next year. A few have already moved out of our attendance area and had to be issued a variance in order to finish out the year here, and 6 more students will be lost to the new boundaries they’ve drawn.
One of the students we lost 2 weeks ago has made a reconnection though. I woke up Saturday morning and checked my email and there was a new blog post waiting for approval and some comments. They were from Maija:
*I Miss You All!*
Hey you guys I’m here on my computer, and I had nothing to do, so I thought, hey I should go on our class blog!!!! So I did, and I started commenting people (if that’s okay Mr. Crosby?)!!! And I decided to write a blog saying I miss the good times we’ve had together!!!! And I really missed that!!! Like Mr.Crosby said “Has any of you gone to a new school?†I have and I know how it feels now!!! I was nervous, and scared! But once you get used to it you’ll be fine!!! Thanks Mr. Crosby!!!!
I’ll talk to you guys soon!!!
I guess it is about the connections.
Connections are messy?
How wonderful!
Working in an international school we also have high turnover – there are always a few students moving away and arriving every week. Quite a few of our students have asked to keep contributing to class wikis and to keep communicating on the various class blogs we have going. I have to admit that they haven’t all kept up with it once they’ve moved to their new school, but many of them have. And tons of our students are creating their own personal wikis and blogs to keep in collaborate with their classmates outside of school.
What a great feeling to keep those connections alive!