According to wikipedia, the demographics look something like this: Native American 1%; Asian 10%; Black 14%; Hispanic 52%; White 22%. My classes are pretty consistent with the aforementioned demographics, although I swear it seems like the Hispanic students are more like 80% of the class. I have butchered an embarrassing amount of Hispanic names during attendance. I'm still not quite hip to where teachers find demographic data about their schools. Or where teachers get their information in general. With the recent software upgrade we haven't yet figured out which students are ELL and which are special ed. We are pretty much guessing at this point based on our observations of individual students.
The school is also trying out a new schedule. It's a different kind of 4x4 schedule. Rather than having 4 classes one semester and 4 different classes the second semester, they have 8 classes with 4 on "A Day" and 4 on "B Day." Eight classes. This is insane to me. The teachers are already feeling anxious. They have gone from having 120 students at a time to 240. Twice as many papers to grade. Twice as many student names to learn. And what about the students? I can't remember a time when I took more than 5 classes at a time, and even then the workload was demanding. As teachers we should be concerned for our students and do what we can to help them succeed. Will the teachers re-evaluate how much homework they are giving? How will students simultaneously taking chemistry and physics keep their heads from exploding? Should the structure of the class be re-worked to accomodate the new schedule? I'm curious to see how my master teacher and her colleagues will adapt. For now it's been pretty chaotic with papers and syllabi flying everywhere. Here's to hoping we can adjust so our students can succeed.