Maybe I shouldn't have started this blog now, not with everything that's been going on.

The Vice Dean reminded all three of us teaching the five Mathematical Methods 1 classes for this term – or at least one who deemed to call her about one of her the classes with apparently no students enrolled - that we should have a diagnostic exam, same with all six of the English One classes.

The English One teachers though, declined because they saw no marked improvement in the performance of the students from last year when they were segregated into the supposed high scorers and those who were not.

Even one of the teachers who taught MM1 during the first term last year said that the redistribution was only used by the potentially smart but lazy students to say that it was to their disadvantage to be bunched in with the high scorers. They could not “keep up” with the “fast pace set by the rest of the class” which was why they got low marks.

I don’t know though if there is a similar mindset among those who thought they were placed in the below avarge class that affected their studies in that subject negatively.

Besides, how does one divide a bell curve evenly? After all, there was not an equal distribution of the students with regards to their score in the diagnostic. The overachievers, by virtue of their small numbers will still be in the minority regardless.

The students could complain that it is not a widespread practice anyway, because during the second term, when David and I taught the two MM1 classes that were mostly repeaters from the failed (in more ways than one, and on both the part of the teachers and the students) segregation from the previous trimester, we did not bother with separating these underachievers.

There is also a possibility that those who taught MM1 and English 1 first term last year would be asked to submit a formal report as to their findings at the end of the term before their policy of the diagnostic exam would be scrapped.

Returning to my backlog of the eventful week before classes started, during the school-wide workshop, not only did we have the combination of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of and to the institute from the integrated school, the college and the non-teaching staff, we also had to classify them as urgent or not-so-urgent.

Unfortunately, I think they were mislabeled when we were asked to call them short term (for the urgent) and long term (for the not so urgent). For me at least, describing something as short term in fact lessens its urgency, because it’s not a trait that would last. Besides, we were dealing with strengths, and they wanted us to determine which of the factors in our lists “must be dealt with immediately” as if they were weaknesses or threats. How the heck does one deal with a strength – or an opportunity for that matter?

Anyway, we enjoyed the second part more, where we had to formulate strategies based on having strengths to take advantage of the opportunities present. I guess teachers are more used to thinking immediately on what must be done.

Session 604 concluded. Class dismissed for now.