The First Class

Millikan Middle School
Ms. Poncin’s Class, Per. 3
01-25-07

. . . " One thing that struck me was the way in which some of the kids – after being instructed to read a paragraph of the syllabus – couldn’t read their paragraph. One girl, Jasmine, had the hardest time sounding out the words, and I had to help her very frequently in her reading. But after she was done with the drawing assignment, she could read her painting without any mistakes. I was amazed at how far she took the assignment in comparison to the peers in her class. Her creativity is very pronounced. Ms. Poncin has also told me that she is a crack-baby, and does not have a normal, stable life at home. She also reads at a third-grade level. This is frustrating to me, because it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that those are the students who shouldn’t be stuck without a chance to choose and take an elective… I think it does more harm than good to have students like Jasmine take all reading and writing classes. I understand that this is where she struggles the most academically, and I understand that she is reading way below average. But the solution isn’t to bombard her with more reading classes; it is really just a wasted opportunity to foster what she is really good at. Ms. Poncin told me that they have to go over what a noun is, what a verb is, and what an adjective is before every single class, and that they’ve been doing that for eighteen weeks, because the kids always seem to forget. All I kept asking myself was, ‘why is this happening when it is obviously not the answer?’ "

(Excerpt)