At the start of the semester, I'll admit that I strolled on in to
my first meeting with my cooperating teacher angling for a chance to work with
his honor's classes as soon as possible. I have always felt that my strengths
lied with educating gifted students and while teaching the bright,
supposedly-more-invested kids around our lovely town remains a great
interest of mine, I now have a more realistic appreciation of said group, as
well as a more practical outlook as to how to properly challenge an honors
class.
My mentor teacher (and a felicitous schedule) gave
me the chance to work with 2 classes everyday. 6th hour is your typical English
9, while 7th hour is devoted to Honors English 9. At first, I was overly
eager for 7th hour. They were going to be ready for the most
philosophical of debates! They would want to do the reading! They would be
ready to smoothly transition to AP eventually without too much extra
assistance! Okay, perhaps I was not quite that gung-ho but believe me, that is
probably not too much of a hyperbole.
About a week in, I realized that 7th hour would be a very
complicated class overall. 6th hour was fun-loving, with a great mix of
personalities and few behavioral issues. They are a class that just
naturally seems to face and complete most tasks at about the same pace. The
Honors kids were also energetic and lovable, but there were more classroom
management concerns and a huge difference in the rate at which individual
students completed tasks. One kid would complete a sparkling essay meeting the
bare minimum requirement in half the allocated time, one kid would dive into
too much detail and do a wide array of extra, unassigned research that left
them far from starting their conclusion the day the paper was due. This reality
certainly required a certain readjustment of my formal stereotypes concerning
Honors kid. They were not quite what I had imagined and that has made my
semester all the more valuable, interesting, and at times overwhelming.
The biggest shock was a girl named Maria*. Maria is likable
as a person, but she likes to test that label as a student at times. She is
curious, smart, brash, wild, and can not seem to detach herself from her cell
phone for too long. Maria will distract me with questions to get me off on a
tangent but it is hard to blame her; she seems genuinely interested and I did
allow it, after all! Maria makes me laugh. She will spout off inappropriate remarks, talk at the
wrong times, dart over to her friends groups, and question everything. She has a history of not being truthful and on time. As my
proctor put it she 'doesn't know how to play the school game yet'. It is my job
to ensure she does get there, however. It has been difficult and I am sure it
will continue to be.
Wolpert-Gawron, H. (2010). The Challenges of Teaching Honors Students. Retrieved November 5, 2015.
* Name changed.
* Name changed.
