Who's Responsible for This, Anyway?
I taught in a middle school for almost 30 years. The last year I was there, I ended up teaching a class called Enrichment, which was code for Kids Who Are Falling Behind. The students in my class were compelled to give up one of their elective courses, and were placed in Enrichment in order to "catch up." The theory was that once all the uncompleted assignments were done, the student could return to gym class, happily part of the educational pack once again.
Why I ended up teaching Enrichment is a long story that usually requires an adult beverage--but suffice it to say, what I was doing in Enrichment didn't have much to do with expert instruction. It was about compliance, an adult standing over kids who were chronic homework avoiders, dangling the lackluster carrot of that elective class while breathing severely down their necks. The goal was never about mastering content. It was about filling in empty boxes in the grading program.
There were a handful of kids in the class who were genuinely struggling with the content and assignments. I was
