Subject: placement process
From: <[email-masked]>
To: <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 12:34:36 -0400

Dear 5th grade parents,

As we begin the placement process for next year, I thought it might be
helpful to give you some sense of how we work in the Middle School.
Homeroom teachers spend a number of meetings building effective groups
of students, and their work is both careful and thorough based on the
close relationships that they have with your children.

In making placements into sixth grade homerooms, we seek to build good
groups rather than assigning students to a particular teacher, which
would limit our ability to build effective working groups. We want an
even mix of girls and boys, we want to take into account the newly
accepted students and where they fit best, and we want to consider
students who have - or who have the potential to have - good working
relationships with each other. While we do believe that it is important
for children to have friends in their group, we also want them to be
open to forming new friendships, especially in this grade when a large
group of new students enters the School.

Teachers spend a good deal of time with the students and know well who
works well with whom. However, we invite parents to offer their
perspective on friendships and good working relationships with other
students. Under no circumstances will we entertain requests for a
specific teacher. I have the utmost confidence in all of our teachers
and have seen over the years that kids and adults are able to form
strong academic and personal relationships in all sorts of ways.  It
might also be helpful for you to know that students sometimes rotate out
of their homerooms for Language Arts or Social Studies, in addition to
math, so the structure is somewhat different from that of the fifth
grade.

Your input by email or hard copy to me is optional, and teachers will
not schedule conferences specifically to discuss placement. Finally, let
me remind you that we will take into account the information that you
send us but that final decisions rest with the School. 

Send letters by hard copy or email to me by Friday, May 4th.

Sally Selby