In my experience, kids want to be in classes that move at their pace, including the low-level kids. In my school, we currently have three levels, called honors, C1 (College Prep #1), and C2 (College Prep #2). (AP is a second-year course.)
Honors chemistry is advertised as an accelerated course that makes significant use of math, particularly algebra. Honors courses cover all of the topics from the entire state curriculum in greater depth than the state requires. I try to cover everything that is likely to appear on the SAT subject test. Generally, students who believe themselves to be academically in the top 25-30% take honors chemistry (including some students who should be in a C1 class but the students and/or their parents refuse to believe it).
C1 chemistry is the course for the average student—students who would put themselves in about the 30th to the 70th percentile academically (plus a few lazy honors students and a few students who should probably be in a C2 class but refuse to believe it). C1 classes cover all of the topics in the state curriculum, though they’re usually a little rushed at the end of the year, which means equilibrium and acids & bases tend to get short shrift.
C2 chemistry is advertised as a slower-paced course for students who have difficulties with math. These tend to be students who would put themselves in the bottom 30% academically, including a large percentage of students with learning disabilities and behavior problems. Roughly one-third of my C2 students have IEPs, and there are three or four who have learning disabilities but were taken off their IEPs last year in preparation for graduation (and also because students on IEPs are required to take a study/organizational skills class, which means students who want the extra class period for another academic class need to be taken off their IEPs). C2 classes get through most of the state curriculum, but without a lot of depth. Most C2 students never end up understanding topics like stoichiometry that require multi-level thinking.
I teach all of my classes, honors, C1, and C2, with a strong emphasis on understanding the concepts. I avoid mnemonics that make it easy to avoid thinking and just get the right answer. For my honors students, I focus on high-level thinking and the process of breaking high-level problems down into lower-level steps that they can then execute. I leave pretty much the entire problem of execution up to them.
My C1 students struggle much more with high-level thinking. I give them high-level problems so they can see how what they’re doing fits into the bigger picture, but I can’t reasonably expect them to be able to break the problems down on their own. I have to remind them how to do variable substitution, and I need to teach them how to use the units to determine which property is being described, but once they have a representation of which quantities are involved (such as P, V, n, and T for gas laws problems), they’re capable of determining which kind of problem they’re dealing with and setting it up correctly.
My C2 students are pretty much completely incapable of thinking and working on multiple levels. Most of them can’t do the algebra necessary to solve for V2 in the equation V1/T1 = V2/T2. I have to teach them and heavily scaffold how to do variable substitution and how to determine properties (and the variables involved) from the units. My C2 students need to have lists of properties, units, and formulas at hand. However, with practice they’re able to learn how to solve very straightforward problems and retain a decent understanding of what’s going on.
However, my C2 kids really do enjoy learning for the sake of learning, and I regularly see their faces light up when they learn something interesting and it makes sense. Probably 75% of my C2 (low-level) class consists of good, motivated students who genuinely want to learn and do well. However, they struggle, especially with math, they need a lot of scaffolding, they get lost if I try to go into too much depth, and they get discouraged easily. During the eight years (grades 1-8) when they were in heterogeneous groupings, they got used to being lost and confused, getting poor grades, and feeling like they just couldn’t be successful in school. Whenever things get challenging, they know they’re going to be unable to keep up, so they just stop trying. I think the years of heterogeneous groupings did more damage to these students’ self-image than tracking ever could have.
My C2 students like my class, and I’m one of their favorite teachers. This is largely because I keep everything on a level where they can understand what’s going on and why, and I scaffold the problems enough so that the math doesn’t obscure the chemistry. I also try to use hands-on activities and manipulatives as much as possible. About half to 2/3 of the kids in my C2 class are finding for the first time in their academic careers that they are generally able to understand what they’re doing, generally able to do the work, generally able to answer the questions on tests, are able to get good grades in an academic subject, and are able to feel pride in having actually *earned* those grades. These students love their C2 class, and none of them want to be in a heterogeneous class instead.
The fact that being successful in a major academic subject is such a new and foreign concept to my C2s fills me with sadness, and the fact that I’ve been able to get so many of them to experience that kind of success for themselves brings me a huge amount of satisfaction. True, they try my classroom management patience on a weekly basis, but I wouldn’t give them up for the world. The pride and excitement these kids have in their voices when they say, “Wow, Mr. Bigler, I actually get this!” brings them back to the way they felt in kindergarten and elementary school, when science was all about the amazing things there were to learn about the world around them. I occasionally see this excitement in my C1 students, especially the ones who are motivated but who struggle and have to work hard. I almost never see this kind of genuine, unbridled excitement in my honors classes except when I blow something up or scale their test scores by ten points.
My conclusion: I think the idea that heterogeneous groupings protect kids’ self-esteem simply doesn’t hold up; my experiences suggest exactly the opposite. I think the notion that kids with limited academic skills (such as my C2s) don’t want to learn is completely wrong. I think the notion that we need to stuff these kids’ heads full of mnemonics and teach them how to just plug numbers into equations so they can get the right answers is entirely the wrong approach, and is doing them much more harm than good. I also think that as we travel farther and farther down the path towards heterogeneous classes, we end up teaching our honors students those same mnemonics and plug-and-chug skills, and this is how I end up with a class full of AP Chemistry students who can perform mole conversions, solve mass-mass stoichiometry problems, write electron configurations, and earn an A+ average in honors chemistry I, all without any real understanding of what they’re doing or why.
Originally posted to the ap-chem discussion list.
