If you read the caption about my ACP scores, you might have noticed that I said we are the only school in the district to "place" hispanic students before they enroll with us.

The basic facts are this:  many, many families in Dallas speak Spanish at home.  Out of that number, about half are proficient in the written language as well as spoken.  When students enroll in high school, they have "choice sheets" which they use to select the classes they want to take.  As long as the credits add up, the choice sheet ends up being the student's schedule.

As a Spanish 1 teacher, I started the year with dozens of students in my class who already speak Spanish.  As you might imagine, when I am slowly teaching the "Non-native" kids (the ones who have no experience with Spanish at all) things like uno, dos, and tres, the spanish-speakers talk, disrupt, graffiti the classroom, and generally act out because they Already Know the information and this class is an Easy Grade.

Last year our department chair set her foot down and said it should stop.  Of course I agreed because it's not fair to anyone involved: the non-natives should get instruction without having their accents made fun of by natives, and the natives shouldn't waste their language skills in a class designed for novices.  Our school offers great AP Spanish classes.  My guy-friend-teacher, who used to teach Spanish 1, said to me (quietly) during this meeting "You might want to keep those native speakers... those are the ones that help your test numbers."

Which is true, and patently unfair.  But every other school in the district is enjoying that bump in numbers.

Not I!  Thursday and Friday, we go as a department to the middle school and test the students who plan to come to our high school in order to gage their Spanish proficiency.

If you think high school kids misbehave, you have not been to middle school in a while.  Last year when I walked in, after politely declining a date with a 13 year old, I overheard the following conversation between two boys I had just given pencils to:

Boy A: "Damn she fine!"
Boy B: "Who dat teacher right in front of us?"
Boy A: "Yeeeee bro.  I'ma hit that."

I walked away before it was obvious that I heard so I wouldn't have to respond.  I'm planning responses if this happens again this year.  Maybe something like, "Really?  Can I have your number?" and then laughing hysterically for five minutes.  Might just go with the Death Stare.  We'll see I guess.