My perspectives on grade-level work are somewhat skewed

...as anyone who went to school with me would know. I came up gifted and talented, 3rd through 12th grade. This can make it difficult for me to relate to learning differences, or even average learning curves.
All of which makes the current situation even more frustrating for me. I supposedly have the "middle" class, while O and L have the "low" and "high" classes respectively. These classes were arranged according to reading level. SDP measures reading level according to the Guided Reading scale, which uses the letters of the alphabet, A being an emergent Kindergarten reader and Z being somewhere in the vicinity of eighth grade.
The "appropriate" level range for second grade is J through M. Now, I was under no misapprehensions that all, or even most of my class would be starting the year at a level J. I was also prepared to deal with the fact that few or none of my students would have made any advances in reading since June,.
What I was not expecting was for them to have slipped two to three levels over the summer. One student who was apparently reading at an F last year is now reading at a C. Another supposedly F-level student is at a D. One of my new admits is reading at a C.
These are kindergarten levels, people. I haven't finished doing my DRAs yet, and honestly I'm a little afraid to. It's not like it matters for leveling purposes anyway (gotta keep those homogeneous groupings, don'cha know) since unless they've dropped more than three levels they're staying in my class... but I do need to know what I'm dealing with. If nothing else, I need to go back and redo my 100 book challenge book selections, since 1 blue and 2 blue are obviously beyond us at this point.
I do not know how to cope with this. Activities I plan as independent work are way beyond them. They can't write complete sentences. They can't spell. They don't all use vowels consistently (as in, at least one per word). I'm going to have to drastically scale back my ideas, and it's difficult and frustrating and not what I was hoping to be in for. I always have a tendency to aim high... which I suppose is laudable, but there's a difference between "aiming high" and "going totally over their heads." Argh.

There's also the question of the core curriculum. We have topics we are required to cover... but if they can't do the work, what good does it do us to give it to them? It's setting them up to fail and it's gonna make me crazy. The middle years learning support teacher has this problem a lot worse than I do... at least there's not THAT much they're already supposed to know by the second grade. She's dealing with eighth graders who can't add 3-digit numbers, and she's supposed to be teaching them geometry -- is required to, in fact, lest she be written up. It's not even the second full week of school and she's already got a look of resignation on her face that's heartbreaking.

The other fun part, of course, is that whole "leveling" thing I so cavalierly mentioned a few paragraphs ago... along with the new admits who keep appearing every day. We've lost a few kids too, to transfers and interstate relocation, but not nearly enough to give us a reasonable class size... Or to allow us to feel like we've got any kind of stability. And my class is going to change by at least a third once we finish DRAs, regardless of new admits, because of the whole homogeneous-grouping trends. Gotta keep the percentile ranges together, apparently... so I'll probably trade three to L, and four to O, and get back probably twelve kids in return. Kind of makes one wonder why they bother having the kids in class for the first few days. Can't we just have them come in, do a day of diagnostics (DRAs, basic math skills, writing sample) and THEN put them in a classroom? It makes me feel like I just wasted the two full days I spent on routines and classroom procedures, since half of them won't need it anymore and half my new class won't have any fstarking idea what's going on.

In other news, I got a warning about not being outside by 8:30 this morning. If I was late (of which I am not certain) it was by like a minute... but at the same time it's nice to know that there are administrative types actually doing their jobs. Just like they tell us about the kids: consistency in consequences makes for a safe learning environment. Funny how it works for grownups too.

How did it get to be 10:18? Jesus. No wonder I never get anything done. This has been quite a rambling journal entry... maybe one of these days I'll actually have time to sit down and organize my thoughts into headings, and write a separate journal entry for each one. For now, though, I need to write my emergency sub plans, so rambling is what you get.