Another Diagnosis

Today at my school the 6th grade team had a CAST meeting. CAST stands for Collaborative Something Something Something. Anyway, at the beginning of the year I attended a CAST meeting with the 5th grade team, because I like them better, but this time I had been scheduled to meet with the 6th grade team. So, we met.

Our focus was on those kids who are failing. They failed the WASL last year, and are continuing to fail in class. We started with math. I looked at my class list, and identified five sixth graders who consistently fail their chapter math tests. I was then told to include any student who scored below 400, a passing score, on the math WASL the previous year. That brought my list to eight. Keep in mind that as a 5/6 split class, I only have twelve 6th graders. That's 2/3 of my sixth graders who performed below passing on the WASL. Oh, well.

My principal moved on to the next teacher. He began to look at his list of students, and only identified about 5. Out of a whole class of 6th graders. I'm beginning to feel like I was dumped on with the low achieving students...Anyway, he then pauses over one student he had mentioned.

"No," he said. "I can't send Bobby to Mrs. Helper for math help. He has a disability where he can't hear women."

What?

"What?" I asked.

"It's the tone of the female voice," he explained further. "He can't hear it. That's why he has me for a teacher."

"I've never heard of that," I said.

Then, out of boredom, my mind began to wander. And I said, "I can just see him one day when he is married. His wife will say, 'Why didn't you pick up the gallon of milk like I asked? Weren't you listening? I swear, it's like you can't even hear me...'"