🚀 go-pugleaf

  One problem with the year-round school where I volunteer is that
the same students end up in the same class together year after year,
in order to avoid synchronization problems.  (Since there are four
different tracks with staggered vacation times.) When I was in school, I
remember that each year the students were randomly (for the most part)
assigned to different classes.   When the same students are together,
they make fewer friends and become more cemented in their roles.  It
is especially bad for the "at risk" kids with low motivation or disruptive
behavior patterns who feed off each other and build up very set routines.
A class that has developed a culture of being very disruptive gets
a very bad reputation among the teachers and usually the class seems to 
only get worse year after year.

  I seem to recall that as a student I looked forward to having a kind 
of "fresh start" every year in that I would be with a (somewhat) different
set of people.   It gave me some hope that perhaps I wouldn't have the
exactly same label/role (e.g. brain or nerd) or have to put up with exactly 
the same class bullies from one year to the next.

  Another result I've noticed with keeping classes together is that
entire classes seem to have obvious higher or lower relative achievement 
levels.  I assume this is due to which previous teachers they've had 
and because of a class's culture that has become ingrained over the years.