Last year (2006-07) I taught a student named Luke in my GT English 9 class. Luke wasn't "GT material" on two counts: he lacked analytical reading/writing skills, and he didn't work very hard. Even when he began to apply himself more, he did not have the foundation to do well. He scraped by most quarters with Cs and Ds.
When he had a D as a final average at the end of the year, I spoke with Luke's father about Luke dropping down into Honors English 10 for the following year. He didn't like the idea of his son not being in GT English, but he agreed that it was better for Luke to not continue drowning. He had, however, made a deal with Luke that they would not go on their family hunting trip to Montana that summer if he didn't pull at least a C for the year. Luke's dad canceled the trip.
Whenever I ran into Luke in the hallways this year, he seemed to ignore me whenever possible. On Tuesday, however, he came into my classroom brandishing a stack of papers. He said, "Mrs. Casey, I knew you'd want to see this."
Luke handed me the papers: they were his placement test score results for the community college. His English scores were high enough for him to enter English 101 as a junior (whereas many students need to take more remedial classes first). I told him how proud I was of his accomplishment, and even emailed his mother about it later that day.
Before he left, Luke said he was really glad he took Honors English 10 this year because he was actually able to keep up with the work. I'm sincerely pleased that Luke has matured (academically and personally) enough to realize that he needs to establish goals and do whatever he can to reach them.
No comments:
Post a Comment