Teen Ranch Essay

Dispersal Week

            About one out of ten grade seven students would not go to Teen Ranch according to the teachers and students in my school. I am one of those people that did not go. While the grade sevens went to Teen Ranch; a few other grade sevens and I did not go or could not go to Teen Ranch because of various reasons. Over my dispersal week I had lots of fun and interesting experiences.

            It just so happened that I was dispersed into my old class that I had last year. My old teacher Mr. Stamcoff had not changed one bit from last year except for the fact he had more grey hairs than before. He also decided that it was totally alright to teach the new class more than my old class. I have to say though; the artwork this year was not as good as when we did it and their poetry was not rhythmical as ours. But you cannot blame them because we were very artistic and poetic ourselves! Even though a lot of things stayed the same as last year a lot of things also changed quite a bit from last year. Two examples of huge changes are the desk positions and the back of the room. I remember there were only about three or four groups of people with five to seven people in each group. Now there are six groups but with as low as four people. In the back of the room there is nearly nothing compared to last year. There are fewer dictionaries, fewer thesauruses, fewer bibles and way fewer extra textbooks. Also, what I think is very different is that last year our French teacher made us learn the Notre Pere (Our Father) prayer which you learn in grade seven but by we were in a split grade we had to learn it. The same French teacher this year instead let the keep saying the Hail Mary. But I actually should be thanking her because it helped me for this grade.

            During our dispersal week specifically on Tuesday it was announced by my old teacher that I was going to be dispersed to another class. I thought to myself and realized that I was getting double dispersed Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. Unfortunately during the time period of Wednesday and Thursday I got a terrible fever and could not attend school those two days. The wait between Wednesday and Thursday was an eternity alone inside my mom's room with only water, dry crackers and T.V. I know what you are thinking, T.V. that was not a bad day but only baby shows come on at that time. I got back to school on Friday and when I got to my double dispersal class I realized I had my old grade two teacher again. Something really funny happened that day too. When I got back to school my friend was literally steamed because while I was gone he had nothing to do by there were only three grade sevens not going. What really made me laugh about it was that he did not even acknowledge the fact that I was sick those two days so he rambled on and on. Plus the look on his face made the moment just priceless at the time. Even when that happened it still was one of the most boring days at school but the two other people and I figured out something to do. During recess me and my classmates had no choice but to play with the grade eights who were really tall. We amazingly survived a couple rounds working together. Inside our class we would just help out our teacher with extra stuff.

            Based on the fact that I could only attend to three of the dispersal days he really tried to keep us busy. When I got back on Friday it was practically a whole book of homework. Most of it was math which was reasonable because I remember from last year he said when your noisy you have nothing to do and he would photocopy and then hand out extra math pages for the whole class. The ratio of math pages to language pages was probably about 4:1. Not to say that we did not get a fair amount of language but we got a ton of math in comparison. The work was kind of fun though because there were brainteasers and puzzles that you needed to do trial and error. To make Friday even busier our double dispersal teacher had extra work to do afterward. First of all she gave us five scholastic books each containing thirty magazines. She wanted us to rip twenty from each for her class then staple them in groups of two and others in three. After that she wanted us to help people in her class read by she was a grade two teacher. It was a big challenge to get them to read and listen and it was kind of surprising that they did not know how to read. Clearly I was not busy enough because I still got bored at the end of the day even though it is much easier doing work in a dispersal class which is why I do not have much homework.

            Overall I would say I did have lots of fun and interesting times during my dispersal week. I met back my old teachers from last year and grade two. It is fun when they ask you questions about this year and relate it to last year and it just makes me feel me nostalgic. Although I regret not going to Teen Ranch I am sure there will be many other opportunities to go on trips and spend time with my friends.

By: Sean D