Chanting OM with Bellringer Meditation
This past summer I had a lot of things to look forward to as a second year teacher: the upcoming completion of my master’s degree, twice as many classes in my prefered content area, and the opportunity to collaborate on a new RTI venture. The plans that I had made in the summer were largely in response to this RTI class. During one hour of the day, four teachers have a section of Freshmen English scheduled. Normally, these four teachers would have a class full of 20 kiddos that range in ability form Pre-AP bound, to on the edge of an IEP qualification. Those periphery kids -- those that don’t qualify for services with an IEP, but are falling through the cracks and end up failing English 1, or moving on to English 2 sorely behind their peers -- are the focus of the RTI program. Our goal, as administration explained it, was to catch-up these kids’ ability up to their peer’s ability (keep them from failing English 1) so they could be successful in English 2 and the EOC their sophomore y...
