In which grade did you begin having multiple teachers?

[TheApprentice]

For separate subjects, 6th grade.

[AimeeM]

For as long as I can remember, I had different teachers for "specials" (art, music, spanish, PE, etc) - even in early elementary. We stayed with our primary teacher for core subjects in elementary. In middle school we had different teachers for every subject (cores included).

 

Our daughter experienced the same in elementary school - they went to different classrooms, with different teachers, for specials during her short stint in public. She spent several years in a private Catholic school, and while I believe they had different teachers for specials, if memory serves me correctly, the teachers came to their primary classroom to teach the specials.

[Carrie12345]

For me, it was 5th grade. They rearranged schools when my youngest sister went through, so it was 6th for her.

 

For my son, they started moving kids around in 3rd. Still only 2-3 teachers all day, but they did switch classrooms. No bells or anything. It really annoyed me, especially with a kid with executive functioning issues!

[Luckymama]

6th grade for core subjects (not sure when for specials----probably first grade)

 

My 6th grade school was another of those funky 1970s open concept buildings (this was 1977-8), purpose-built to hold all the sixth graders in the district. The school was separated into four pods off the center which held the offices, library, and auditorium/stage area. It was all carpeted so sound was deadened. The gym and the music classroom were attached to the back of the building.

 

Every pod was the same with an archway leading to it from the center area. There were separate "rooms" for math, science, social studies, and English---walks maybe 2/3 to the ceiling separated each section with bookshelves and storage lining the walls. One side of each "room" was open to the center of the pod where I think there was a large common space. Again, everything was carpeted, including all the walls. There were no noise issues.

 

I had a great experience that year :)

[SailorMom]

Until 4th grade we stayed in the same classroom but art teachers or specialists would come in to back up our teacher.  After 4th grade, we started moving from class to class.

[Mom22ns]

For me it was 7th grade. Here the kids work in "pods" in 5th and 6th grade. That is a group of 3 teachers and the kids move between the rooms, but the whole class stays together when they move. It is still 7th grade (Jr High) when they start having a different teacher for each class and each student has their own schedule. 

 

The larger school district next to us does middle school as 6-8th and they do full switching then and none leading up to that.

[Stratford]

We started switching in 6th grade (last year of elementary.)  We rotated classrooms for history, science, and math.  Everything else was in our homeroom. 

[Mommy22alyns]

6th grade, and it was just 2 teachers.

[LucyStoner]

In 6th grade I was in an accelerated program and we had 1 teacher for math and science and another teacher for English and history. There were two accelerated classes and one had math and science for 2.5 hours in the morin and one had English and history in the morning and we switched after lunch and electives. Outside of electives, we were with the same kids all day. The electives were taught by separate teachers and were self selected. I went to orchestra and PE one term and orchestra and newspaper club the other term. The students in the regular program changed teachers every period/subject.

 

In 7th grade we had moved and I went to a school where everyone changed each period. The accelerated core subjects were team taught. I walked out of 7th grade a few weeks in (it was a hell hole of a school) and didn't go back to school until high school/9th grade. In high school I went to a very unusual public program. There were lots of team taught classes, classes were mostly only 4 days a week and it was like college- courses were often just two days a week, there were many free hours and no one took attendance.

[Piper]

7th grade - another one here with the Australian experience.

 

It's so interesting to see the wide variety of answers to this question!

[Homemama2]

In 1st thru 5th we had "open classrooms" which was basically one huge room with a teacher (and his/her class of 25-30 students) in each corner.  Our desks had tote trays that pulled out and you carried with you when you switched teachers for math or reading.  But since all of that grade was in one room it wasn't a big deal. Art, music and P.E. were taught by other teachers, but we were taken down to them by our main teacher, so once again, no big deal.  6th grade was the first year we were on our own to get to different rooms/teachers for every subject. 

[Bootsie]

I started having multiple teachers/switching classrooms in 7th grade.  We did have a music teacher who came to our classroom occassionally in lower grades and by fourth grade we would go, as a class, to a music room for music.

 

My children went to public elementary school and had multiple teachers and classrooms in first grade; the students split up for "specials"--art, music, and PE; the entire class did not stay together.  Students were put into groups of A, B, C, D, etc.  On Monday, Group A went to one PE teacher, on Tuesday, they went to an art teacher, on Wednesday they went to a different PE teacher and a music teacher.  On Thursday, they went to another music teacher--yes it was very confusing.  In first grade a student would have at least five "specials" teachers--two for music, two for PE and one for art. In addition to the "classroom teacher" there was the librarian, the wellness counselor, the the reading specialist, and the computer teacher who taught lessons to the students.  There were a stream of student teachers coming in and giving lessons, There were also a number of other specialists pulling students out throughout the day for reading, math, speech, gifted programs, etc.  I think the first grade teacher would have the same group of students and actually be teaching all of them at most 15 minutes in a day.  It would not be unusual for my kids to come home from school in first grade having had seven teachers in a day--I thought all the "specialization" and "enrichment" was more of a distraction to their actual day than a benefit.  I think children that young respond better to fewer teachers who know them well and see the bigger picture of their education.

[abacus2]

7th grade. I went to a small K-6 school and then on to the county's larger "junior high."

[swellmomma]

Right from kindergarten.  We had our regular teacher, the music teacher and the PE teacher.  In 4th grade we had a morning teacher, and an afternoon teacher who was also the PE teacher.  7th grade and up we had a different teacher for nearly every subject

[Wheres Toto]

We had the same teacher for everything except gym, art, and music through 3rd grade.  Starting in 4th grade we switched teachers for math and reading, but it was the same teachers who taught homeroom, math and reading. (my math teacher would be another groups homeroom teacher).

 

We started switching for everything, with 8 or 9 separate class periods each day, in junior high which was 7th and 8th grade.

[lllll]

..

[NoseInABook]

6th grade for the main courses. During elementary school, we did go to a different room for art, gym, and music but for the basic subjects we had one teacher.

[daffodil]

6th grade.

[kiwik]

8th grade.... Thats when high school starts in Australia. Before that we only had a different teacher for PE and music.

Here to except until 8th grade level our primary teachers teach everything (inc. Swimming, art, music etc) except for 6th and 7th when we were bussed to another school for manual (woodwork for boys, sewing and cooking for girls).

[Holly]

We started gradually.  We switched rooms and the teachers stayed in their own room. 

4th--English class only

5th--3 subjects...I think it was science, English, & social studies?  There were 3 teachers for each grade and we had two of them for 1 subject each and the 3rd for the rest of the subjects.

6th+--switched for all

 

We always left the room for PE, music, & lunch.

[An Unexpected Party]

We began switching for reading only in third grade. In fourth grade we switched for reading again, and my teacher and the one next to her switched just our classes for science and social studies (there were always four classrooms to a grade). In fifth we switched reading and math. Reading and math in all instances were switched to allow grade-wide ability groups to be formed (I'm not arguing for the practice, just saying how it was.)  

 

Middle school started in sixth grade. We had a "homeroom" that we went to for a few minutes at the beginning of the day and did things like notes/lockers, but then we broke up into four different groups that combined with the kids from the other three classes in our team. I was in "K". I switched from teacher to teacher for each subject all day long, but with the same "K" kids. Same for seventh grade.  In eight grade we were tracked by ability again, but within the individual subject, so we were no longer traveling with the same kids. I had different kids in most of my classes.

 

The school in which I taught went to fourth grade. We were responsible for everything except the specials. The kids never switched classes until they got to the middle school, but even then they had a much, much slower introduction to switching and I think even the eighth graders switched classes mostly together as a single class.  The middle school was run very differently from the middle school I attended, which really was more like a Jr. High School by the time I got out of there. 

[ficbot]

I always had multiple teachers because I was in a religious school; we did secular subjects for half the day with one teacher and religious subjects for half the day with the other. There was no collaboration between them. We would come back from lunch recess and one would be gone and the other there instead. We also had a music teacher who came once a week and did a lesson in the classroom, and we went to another room for French.

 

French is actually a special situation here. We are an officially bilingual country and French is a required subject. It's also a restricted teaching area, which means you can't teach it (in a school) unless you have the special certification. This means that most kids do have a separate teacher for this, no matter how young they are when their school starts it, because the regular teachers can't do their own unless they have the special qualification. I myself work as a French teacher---just finished the final part of the qualification (it's in three parts) this year, and I pretty much only teach French, to the whole school. I don't have my own classroom and go to their classrooms for it. However, the children at my school do go to special rooms for art, gym and music.

[nmoira]

In high school, ninth grade. Though we did have dedicated music and French teachers who came to our classroom in elementary (K-8). IIRC, there were also remedial reading and math specialists, and a speech therapist, the latter servicing multiple schools.

[TechWife]

4th grade. Before that, we had one room, one teacher with the exception of art & music, where those teachers came to us in our room. In 4th grade we changed for one subject and also went to the art/music room for those specials once a week. 

 

 

[gardening momma]

7th grade, private, religious school. Back then it was still called Jr. High. I had never heard of "middle school" at that point. Our "homeroom" was just the first class of the day, normal length of class.

[MinivanMom]

We started gradually in Junior High:

6th - We had one teacher who taught us for 5 periods, then we went to the PE teacher for our 6th period

7th-8th - We had a homeroom teacher who taught us for 2 periods (English & Soc.Studies) and then we rotated for the other 4 periods (Math, Science, PE & elective)

9th - We started rotating for every period

 

I guess I didn't have a full rotation (different teacher for every period) until I was in high school.  I liked having a primary teacher even in Junior High.  I think it gave us a sense of stability.  Even in 7th & 8th, I really considered my homeroom class to be my "class". 

[Mena]

I went to public, Catholic, all-girls schools.

 

From K-4, we only left our classroom and had different teachers for music and PE.

 

From 5th onward, we had different teachers come in to our classroom. From 5th-8th, we might have had the same teacher for math and science, or for English and art, but by 9th grade each teacher only taught one subject. We stayed in our classroom and the teachers rotated. We left the classroom for orchestra, choir and PE, and had to walk down the street to the boys' school if we elected to take physics in 11th. We were streamed and did not pick our own classes in high school, except for choosing two out of three electives. 

[mathwonk]

In my school we had the same teacher in the same room all day, except for art, music, and gym, until 9th grade. Math was an exception for me in 8th, since they also sent me to 9th grade algebra as an 8th grader. They absurdly made up for this the next year by not offering me any math at all as a 9th grader.

[ElizabethB]

It was this innovative 1970s concept where the rooms didn't have doors or right angles. We were in these pods that were built around a central office space for the teachers that had classrooms radiating off of it. The rooms were open in the front, which faced the office space, and the back, which is where the bathrooms, water fountains, and sinks were. Each pod had less bathrooms than classrooms, so you often had to go into other classrooms to get to the bathroom. It was just weird. Usually, you didn't have to leave your pod area to switch core classes, but sometimes units (of the math, science, social studies, and language arts teachers that you were taught from) got spilt up across pods and we'd have to cross hallways to get to a class.

Same set up, a round open school, but they figured out you needed walls by the time I got there so there were walls dividing the classrooms. I think each class was slightly pie shaped because of this, but I can't remember for sure.

 

We switched for reading starting in 2nd grade. It was no big deal, everyone did reading at once and the group that left was walked over to their class, at least at first, we might have gone on our own once we got used to the routine.

 

In 6th grade, there was an advanced math group working on their own in the corner, but no separate teacher, if help was needed, the regular teacher helped out for a minute or two. This was an experienced teacher, she was able to manage several different levels of instruction at once with no problem.

 

From 7th grade on, different teachers for every subject and students changed rooms.

 

For all of elementary, we changed rooms as a group for music and PE and had a different teacher for those. We were walked back and forth for this by our regular teacher.

[froggiemomof3]

We had different teachers for art, music and PE from the start in Kindergarten, but we didn't have different teachers for core type classes until 4th grade.  Once we hit 4th grade we rotated between the 4th, 5th, and 6th grade teacher for different classes.  The 4th grade teacher taught all 3 grades their math, the 5th grade teacher taught all 3 kids their science, and the 6th grade teacher taught all 3 grades their history.  It was their attempt at preparing kids for junior high where every teacher for every class was different.

[levelopourdeux]

3rd through 5th we switched between two teachers, like one who taught math and science and one who taught history and language arts. Then in 6th we had separate teachers for each subject.

[Parrothead]

The first time I moved from one classroom to another for a subject was 4th grade. I went from my room to the teacher across the hall for reading. Then we moved. In 5th grade at the new school we had pods. A group of classrooms around a common area. We moved around the pod for subjects. The following year the district went to a split schedule. I went to a different school and was back to only moving for reading. In 7th grade, I was at yet again a different school. We moved for more classes, but I don't remember if it was all or some. 8th was at the same school. In high school we changed classes all the to,e.