Do any of you all teach in public schools that wait until the Friday before school starts to post teacher assignments for students? I haven’t seen this in any of the public schools we’ve been in,we always had meet the teacher time the week before school, often with a pta picnic function, but DODDS waits til the last minute to assign teachers, I can kind of deal with one teacher in elementary but in middle school all my son has is his advisory teacher and won’t know until class on Monday what his entire schedule will be which will probly include at least 6 teachers. I did go in last Monday to ask about meeting the teachers, 6th and 7th hadn’t even been scheduled yet. I just think this is a lot of hooey and bugs the crap out of me. Especially since it is my middle schooler that has academic issues. Mostly I am venting but I just wondered if this happens with other schools.
By the way, before school ended I was asking how to approach requesting a teacher, I ended up not asking because the alternative teacher is a new teacher from outside the school, so I felt ok about the choices then. We got the teacher we wanted though, my son is real happy about it.
On the subject of requesting a teacher, I have found that the principals do not like this. They have stated this. They take input from teachers but not parents on specifics. Way to get around this…write a note describing the attributes in a teacher that you feel would be beneficial to your child. This will usually describe one specific teacher but it is requesting a personality/teaching style not a particular teacher. You aim them in the direction you want but they make the decision.
Often they make a decision on teaching assignment that you may think is wrong but yu may be pleasantly surprised later on.