Response to Help for New Teachers by Elise (3rd blog post)

I have found my experience at the Next Step Charter school to be very different than what Elise described. The past few times I have been to Next Step, when I arrive, there always seems to be some sort of adjustment or ‘special activity’ such as portfolio preparation or standardized testing. Basically, before I arrive, I never know what to expect and the teacher I’m meant to work with, Claire, has sent me to different classes before, so I’ve actually had the chance to observe a lot of teachers there. The teachers at Next Step seem to be very taken care of in terms of materials they are supplied, and as far as I can tell, there are no new, younger teachers who stumble through their work. I think because it is such a small school, and only occupies one floor of the building, the school is able to spend more money per kid and on materials. There are computers in most classrooms, and there is always a white board, books, notebooks and pencils for all of the students. The instructors seem to be very familiar, both with the students and their behavior and the way in which they need to operate the class. Since it is a school that targets mostly Hispanic or Latino students, all of the teachers know English and Spanish. I wonder why, at Elise’s school, there is such a severe lack of supplies and aid for the new teachers. When I looked up the bilingual school online (I think that’s the one Elise and her group go to) on the local school directory website (which, in my experience is not very good at all but I couldn’t find the statistics I wanted on the main site) it said that there was an average of about 80-90 students in the lower grades. I saw a parent’s review on the site and the parent claimed that her daughter had 7 teachers in one term and they also complained about the lack of organization and competent teachers. It sounds like the school has more students than it can handle. I think that size is one of the issues that, weather you are for or against charters, is hard to address. If the schools are very small and specific like mine, the funding can be used effectively to have supplies and good teachers. The tradeoff to that is that schools like mine only help a select group of kids and that they will effectively improve public schools in the long run is questionable. However, as we have seen with Community Charter school, if the school is bigger, it runs into the same problems that public schools do.