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Article: Left out in middle years Too many students, too little time for undertrained junior high teachers
- Article from:
- The Boston Globe (Boston, MA)
- Article date:
- November 30, 1995
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 1995 The Boston Globe. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Susan Gerstein lost her illusions about middle school the day she
stopped by to tell her daughter's favorite teacher how much the
11-year-old enjoyed her class.
But the teacher, a sixth-grade science instructor at Brown Middle
School, in Newton, didn't know who Gerstein's daughter was.
"She was embarrassed," recalls the Newton mother of four. "She
said, `I'm sorry, but I've got 75 kids, and you just can't know them
all.' "
The problem wasn't just too many kids per teacher. Gerstein's
daughter -- like most students in middle school or junior high school
-- was changing classes five times a day, seeing more teachers for
much briefer periods than she had in elementary school.
While this ...