Thursday, July 23, 2009

Another Update + Kristy's Great Idea New WTF???

In the past almost two months I've moved from Texas to the little town east of St. Louis...moved into my apartment...got settled in...registered for classes... and had my computer die.
Classes start the 24th of next month, anxious and nervous to get started... all music plus one math class... (math for liberal arts, thank god not college algebra)... including theory/lab III, some music culture thing, advanced keyboarding, choir, applied voice, and some other stuff I really can't remember at the moment because i need to get a new schedule... since I got mine a month and a half ago and of course I lost it.

Anyway, because i"ve had a dead computer, I've been doing a lot of reading of my baby-sitters club/little sister books (even though I should really be reading the million library books I checked out.), and today I started reading the first one... Kristy's Great Idea... and it struck me.

THERE IS ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION OF THEM HAVING MORE THAN ONE TEACHER IN THE SEVENTH GRADE.

I don't think I've ever seen this mentioned before in various posts on the book, or discussions. (I might be wrong.) Claudia states Stacey being in her class... not one of her classes. (and they're all in the seventh grade, so that doesn't make any sense.) Kristy turns in her paper to Mr. Redmond at the beginning of school... and then goes to take her seat... when she was in his room at the end of the day the day before with the whole decorum thing.

Kristy also mentions that Claudia's TeacheR (no s) wouldn't let her wear her hat inside.

Now, I thought it was a little odd that they called it recess after lunch, but when I was in middle school, we were able to go outside after lunch, and I just assumed they had a wider area to hang out in.

Seriously, wtf Ann? What middle school (at least in the United STates, I can't speak for other countries) that's ONLY grades 6-8 (or 7-9 for that matter... and not K-8) do the kids only have one teacher throughout the day and don't change classes?

Has anyone else noticed this? Is it apparent in any other books when they're in seventh grade? i know when they're in eighth grade they definitely change rooms... yet another inconsistency. The only other seventh grade book I have in book form is Mary Anne Saves the Day, I'll have to go through that next to see if there are any clues to this bewildering mystery. (For me anyway.)

6 comments:

Unknown said...

I can actually answer this one! I just reread books 1-5 last week, so this is fresh in my mind. I didn't notice what you did, but Claudia says that her Math teacher is Mr. Peters in book #2. Mr. Redmont was Kristy's Social Studies teacher. But you're right...interesting how things were worded there.

nikki said...

Claudia saying Stacey is in her class, could just be her saying she's in the same grade. You know, like "class of 1995" or whatever.

But yeah, in general you start switching teachers for different classes in either middle (6th) or junior high (7th).

I actually always thought the concept of these books would work better if Ann M. had had them in Jr. High as opposed to middle. The older girls in 9th and Jessi/Mallory in 7th.

Anonymous said...

I went to Catholic school, so we had basically two teachers every year (one handled math and science, the other handled English and Social Studies, both taught Religion and Art) and switched off subjects by classroom from about third grade on.

We also had "lunch recess" until we went to High School in the 9th grade.

Donica said...

Nikki, I don't think so, she would have said "our class" instead of her class if she meant they were in the same grade... I think she meant they had the same teacher.

We rotated rooms in fifth grade, we all had a main teacher, but went to different rooms for social studies, math and science, as a class... but they were all the fifth grade teachers, and we had the same teacher for everything else. (I had the science teacher).

Lemur... was your school a K-8 school? (or 1-8). I had friends that went to a catholic school for 8 years (they later added on a kindergarden) and they didn't really switch classes either, but it was a smaller school... same with the k-8 school in our district.... it wasn't an actual middle school or junior high.

Emily said...

It does make it sound like they only have one teacher in the first couple of books, but it's not completely clear. I noticed it, too!

Anonymous said...

@Donica -- Yeah, 15 kids a class, 30 total in the grade. And we were K-8. By the time I went to Catholic HS (9-12) I felt like I was related to all of those people. Really put a damper on HS romances, when you've known everyone since forever, and have even known the kids from the other parishes since 5th grade.