>On opening day of school, teachers stand by their door
with a clipboard to sign-up students for their class.
Teachers who do not have anyone signed-up by noon can get
the newspaper want ads free as they leave the building.
1) So, if there are two "cool" math teachers, kids signs
up for two math classes and has no courses in social
studies?
2) There is a finite (or almost finite) number of students
that can fit within a room. There is no way 100 students
would fit in a room designed for 25. So, they would have
to be rearranged to someone else. Who would choose the
kids that should be turned away?
3) What if the whole school wants to be in particular
teacher's classes? They can't.
4) What if the schedules overlap? The student can not be
in two rooms at the same time. What if the only way such a
schedule can be made is where students from widely
different grade levels are supposed to have different
courses at the same time in the same teacher's room?
5) How do the students know who is the best teacher for
them if they did not already have them? What happens to
the new teachers? They probably get judged by the looks
only.
6) What if you have the misfortune that kids think you are
the "cool easy" teacher (because it happens that the other
teacher is the harsh-grading yeller) and all the
discipline problems sign to your classes?
I think the answer to many of these questions would be
some kind of election process, where the teacher
candidates present their platform to groups of students;
but it would be difficult to arrange before the first day
of school.
>If a student dislikes a class and wants to transfer, s/he
is free to leave, taking his or her share of the state’s
daily attendance allocation fund to give to the new
>teacher. Teachers aware that every kid in class could
>walk out permanently at any time would have a different
>attitude toward their teaching responsibility.
As I am not in the USA, I know nothing about "state’s
daily attendance allocation fund". I know that over here
we are paid by the number of classes, not by the number of
students. I had a class of 16 and a class of 26 and I got
paid the same. So this part wouldn't matter at all in my
area.
On the other hand, if it comes to the point when a student
wants to transfer from my class, I think that we are
comparing the benefit of a few dollars to the benefit of
not having an energy-consuming power struggle that
disrupts the whole classroom dynamics over and over again.
I would be very happy to see such a student placed in
another classroom so it is a gain-gain situation for
everyone (including the other students).
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