to loop or not to loop...

I looped with my 5th graders from last year to my now 6th graders who will go on to junior high in a SLD resource program. It takes a while to get to know these kids. I knew exactly where they were coming in this year and wasted no time plugging away. (Now 3 years might be a bit much. Teachers have strengths and weaknesses and 3 years might be too much.)

My own children go to a charter school that is multi-age. Students have the same teacher 2 years in a row. I love it for them. My kids are above or at grade level. The test scores at this school are higher than just about every public school in the district that I work in. Fortunately, my children have been blessed with awesome teachers, but if they had a bad one I would HATE it.

For special ed kids I like the looping idea. It has worked for me. I consistently used the same philosophy and programs and growth has occured. I didn’t have to get to know a bunch of new parents too.

It is hard when you have difficult students but I make my hardest students my challenge and find ways to get them to succeed.

Change is hard but I think you might like it. The best part of it was it was so easy writing my IEPS this year compared to last year. I already had the IEPs on my laptop saved and changed just a little data. I didn’t have to re-type all the same old stuff like IQ and other redundant numbers that must be re-reported.

2 Thumbs up from Me.
Michelle

There is only one resource teacher at my son’s elementary school so they are all stuck with each other for the entire time!!!

Beth

If you get a teacher that understands your child it could be very good. If you don’t try to get the teacher changed.

I think this would be good. I wouldn’t need to educate as many people about my son’s specific issues. That for me is the most exhausting part. Remdiating his deficits is easy compared to that.

I didn’t know there was a term for the same teacher 2 or 3 yrs in a row. Our experience this year is awesome and it will be the same awesome teacher next year.

Past experiences have been 2 yrs with a sweet, but inexperienced teacher lots of fun for the kids, next a nice teacher who didn’t want to challenge them, so very little was learned.

Another thought I can see some benefit, but the younger kids could become too attached.

Basically this is a great deal for students if they get a good teacher, lousy if they don’t.
As a teacher? I owuldn’t want to do it my *first* year teaching — and have to live wiht my mistakes in laying the groundwork for three years! — but that’s hindsight anyway. It’s a scary thought … let’s face it, in three years you’ll see the fruits of your labors. I would absolutely beg and plead for some time to meet and plan for how to keep all the other factors from ruining your harvest.
It has *huge* advantages if you have the time to take advantage of them. Special ed kids need consistency and structure. You can lay groundworks that you will have three years to build on. What exactly is your role in their education, inclusion-wise?
I could envision an “independence plan” where the kids and you plotted out what independent learning skills they wanted to cultivate and how it would get done. Would be even nicer if those skills were being taught too… rather a bummer when you have a seventh grader reading at a third grade level and in ninth grade he’s reading at a third grade level with an attitude problem, only you haven’t exactly had the resources or setting to do anything but watch the vortex suck him down…

Looping is the newest fad in education. Schools follow each other like sheep and they’re afraid to be out of step. For ld kids, looping could be a great thing. The continuity it could offer them might be very helpful.

But I couldn’t teach the same students three years in a row. I know, I did that once and vowed to never do it again. By the third year, they knew my every move and my every trick. It was the hardest year of teaching I ever had. They were seeing ‘behind my curtain’ and they were figuring out I didn’t really have a rabbit in the hat.

Yet if you were with small spec. numbers this could be a good thing for you and your students. It’s when you get the ones you don’t want to work with for even one year that three years feels very long.

Good luck.

This wasn’t in elementary school but in college, but the same point applies. I once had the misfortune to teach an advanced math class to a group of students who had mostly had the same profesor for two or three of the foundation classes. Unfortunately, this guy had a few cute tricks that made things much easier for him and his students. He gave a formula list for every test, so they didn’t ever have to actually remember anything. In fact, he was too lazy to type or even photocopy a real formula list, so he just told them to use the inside cover of their texts, thus making every test open-book. He gave a sample test and answers the class before the real test; and the real test was essentially identical to the sample test, with only a few letters on the diagrams changed. Now, one semester of this wouldn’t have been too deadly. If the students knew that next semester they would really have to know this stuff because they would have a different professor, they would at least have made an effort to get something into the memory. Even if they had been a bit weak, they would have been able to catch up on one semester’s worth, especially if they were fresh. But after three semesters, they had no hope at all. They were in the state of a Grade 4 student who doesn’t yet recognize the letters of the alphabet — just too much missing. Out of a group of seven, four failed miserably, one got a D out of kindness (and then bit the hand that fed her, going to the department office and raising a stink demanding a B, so I was not invited to teach any more classes there) and two actually passed the class. Thise two went on and did well in four-year universities. But the rest were stuck in a very deep hole — four semesters into college, wanting to graduate, holding absolutely worthless passes in three necessary foundation classes, and needing to go back and re-do all of it. A recipe for disaster.
I could list several other cases of similar situations in elementary and high schools where I have worked. I would really worry about a system that put kids in with the same teacher solely for three straight years, because whatever flaws that teacher has will be greatly magnified.

My first job was teaching in a one room school building. It was eight grades. I guess I was a looper.

Sara McName

I have always had kids for a few years in a row. I think it is a great opportunity. You have continuity, you know the kids’ strengths and weaknesses, and you cna be sure that over that time frame you teach them in a structured way so that you can cover just about all the skills they need. Yes, it makes you very accountable. I would not want to do this unless I was sure I had the very best methods and materials available. And as we all know, this often has to be acquired on our own. Now I am speaking of remediation only, not trying to keep up with the entire regular curriculum of three grade levels.

Janis