Friends, Teachers, Ninth Graders

Over the weekend we were invited to a party to celebrate the 50th birthday and the 25th wedding anniversary of some friends. As is often the case we met people we didn’t know and caught up with friends we hadn’t seen for a while. One of the fun things about this family is the mix of cultures and personalities: Mexican, Irish, Immigrants, second generation, on and on. That’s a topic for another post.

One of the very interesting people we met is a 24 year-old teacher of ninth graders in one of those high-risk schools in the Los Angeles Unified School District. He teaches ninth grade English and English as a Second Language. This new teacher, finishing his first year of teaching has some interesting observations.

(1) Students from immigrant families or who are immigrants themselves are often more highly motivated than students whose parents and themselves were born here. Immigrant children are motivated because they know they have to study hard to succeed here. They apply themselves. They learn. Some of the US born students feel that they don’t have to study too hard because if they fail the test, they can just take it over again.

(2) Student who began their schooling in Mexico are likely to be better prepared for ninth grade than the American students. This teacher believes that stricter classroom discipline and better teaching is available for elementary grade students can be found in Mexico.

(3) This first year teacher discovered that when students are challenged to learn with high quality academic lessons, they rise to the task and achieve.

(4) He found that his teacher colleagues at this school were also highly motivated, young, and well prepared to teach the next generation of students. I was amused that he said he could relate well to these students because he was so recently in high school himself.

Thanks for reading. It was such a positive and genuine conversation; I wanted to share it with you.