The first week of school—you think you’re ready for it, but you never are. At least in my district, Morehouse Parish in Northeast Louisiana. This year the disorganization seems worse than usual—not enough desks, student schedule problems, room needs (like Internet hookup and enough electric plugs and air conditioner not working). My students have, to their credit, been well behaved, but 4 of my 6 classes are large, and the other two are my gifted students. Administrators, looking only at numbers, have once again cheated the brightest kids in our school by combining ENG I and II in one class, and ENFG III and IV in another. This amounts in teacher lingo to 6 different preps for lesson plans. Administrators must assume that any class below 20 is an easy class.

As you probably know, Gifted kids have IEP’s, thus each student is to be worked with individually, but with such an arrangement, it is very difficult to do so. I am gifted and AP certified, but even with my massive brain and problem solving tendencies, I’m going to have serious difficulties serving the gifted kids like I should and want to. I don’t know what they were thinking by such an arrangement. It’s like teaching summer school—for a whole year. If I sound frustrated, you are quite right. I must do some research on this topic. Why can’t academics receive the attention that football gets in our district? Don’t they want/see how important the gifted kids are and will be?

Probably not. But I do.