Tuesday, June 26, 2012

Bailing Out on Summer School

It's intersession time at the continuation high school. (Summer school.) It lasts for a week. (Their school year starts up in about six weeks, near the end of July.) They get to take one four-hour class. They need to make it count.

Intersession is voluntary. Every student at the continuation high school is there to recover credits so that they can graduate from high school. Intersession is one way to earn a semester's worth of credits quickly.

We were in our third hour yesterday. We had finished watching a biography on Mark Twain, read some of his more famous quotes, and read "The Celebrated Jumping Frog of Calaveras County". It was time for the class to answer questions about the story, so I passed out paper (as the students don't bother to bring their own).

One girl called me over. She wasn't going to return the next day. She wondered if she could leave.

Really? You got out of bed early, came to school, and after three hours you've decided that it's too much work and you're not going to bother?

I didn't say this. I just let her go. Then the girl in the seat next to her decided that she had had enough as well.

Then, at the end of the day as I was retrieving materials, another girl told me that she wouldn't be back the next day.

On the one hand, I'm glad that they're not coming back. The class was big enough. But then again, if they would just stick it out...

I wonder how many kids will still be in the class on Friday. Care to take a guess? (We started at 29, so it won't be more than 26 now.)

2 comments:

  1. It seems too sad to guess. I hope they're able to make it up some other way. And also that they're willing to do it.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Such a shame that these students give up.

    I'd stick around for a Mark Twain biography.

    ReplyDelete

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