“We Need To Have More Supports and Resources Available.”

Teaching a large classroom of destreamed grade 9 science students leads to a number of challenges with one teacher in the classroom. There is a wide gap between the student achievement in the destreamed courses, students have high 90's or low 40's for their grades, showing the disparity between the students learning skills and needs.

The current situation with destreamed classes is that there are students who require extra help and further supports to be successful in the course, but they are unable to receive such supports. The other side of the situation is that there are also students who are academically stronger in the course and are not challenged to their full potential due to the lack of resources and various needs that need to be addressed in the classroom.

We need to have more supports and resources available such as education assistants and spec. ed teachers and enriched program teachers to help support the various students’ needs. The course for many students with previous learning gaps is setting them up to fail before they even had a chance to succeed.

– OSSTF
Central Toronto Academy