Tuesday, August 12, 2008

Good press and help

It's so nice to have some positive press about teacher surpluses and smaller class sizes in the Baltimore City Public Schools.

I have not agreed with everything I have heard or seen from Dr. Alonso, but he sure seems to be steering things in the right direction in a lot of ways.

I sure hope those smaller class sizes make their way to me. I have averaged 33-36 in the last few years, making for a very difficult grading load and a cramped classroom. According to the article, there is now a 25.2:1 student:teacher ratio in the high schools in the BCPSS. These numbers are often skewed by who is counted as a teacher and other factors that I don't understand (somehow, a webpage published our school's ratio as 18:1 last year, which, as far as I could tell, was just a little more than half as big as it actually was). Still, the fact that the ratio is decreasing has got to be considered a major step in the right direction.

Heck, I even got a return email about my certification question from last week. I have never received a return email from someone at North Avenue before. The website is still pretty unmanageable and I had to ask around to find the correct email address for certification, but, once I did, it took less than a week for a reply.

(Not that it was good news, by the way. It looks like I have to take both of those dumb reading classes, unless - and I'm hoping this happens - one of my Towson MAT courses will double as one of them. Please, Towson, come through for me. They're reviewing my transcript as we speak. Or, rather, I handed it to a harried receptionist at North Avenue in the very busy Human Resources office about an hour ago, so it'll at least be on someone's desk in the next couple of days.)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What's up. I must admit that I happy that you are teaching in Baltimore. I used to be a long term substitute, and the kids treated me like shit about half of the time. Also, I felt sorry for them. Yeah I did teach them the best I could, but many of them were in 10th or 11th grade and they didn' even know you to read/write on a 3rd grade level. Many students were failing most of their classes because they couldn't read/write on grade level. You do you deal with that problem?

Anonymous said...

usually MAT programs which are by design certification programs have the required reading courses built in? a quick glance at towson's site shows that SCED 560 and 561 would be the two secondary state-required reading courses. if you took them,i am pretty sure you should be fine. if towson let you graduate without them (accepting transfer credits instead), shame on them.