Finally Friday

Leaving for school this morning, I knew it would be a rough day. I went out to my car, got in it, and tried to shut the door. Of course, the door would not shut at all. Not even part way enough for it to latch just a little. The latch simply was not working. So, in a semi-panic, I called my mom to see if I could borrow her car for the day, since she works from home. Nope, not possible because this is the one day a month that she has to travel to the in-center location for her job. She was, however, heading the same direction as me, and able to give me a ride there. Funny thing is, when she picked me up, she got out of her car to try and fix my car's door, was unsuccessful, so she got back in her car and then her door wouldn't shut. We've decided that I'm no longer able to touch cars because I break them. So it was a lovely start to a day that has just gone downhill from here.

Period One:

H went over the agenda because I was running late, but I started the class by checking homework. As I was going around checking the homework, I realized I don't know most of the names in that class for some reason. All of my others classes I know, but period one I don't, so I'm making a mental note to get their names down soon. Then they spent some time on their acad. vocab quizlet in preparation for our discussion/review of them. They were mostly quiet during this time and transitioning them to the next part of the lesson was fairly easy. For the most part they were focused while I reviewed the terms with them. Then H did her point of view mini-lesson with them, but it ended up taking longer than anticipated, so we didn't get to everything in the lesson, but that actually worked out in our favor because period two did not go nearly as planned.

Period Two:

This was probably the worst class I've seen so far during the week and a half I've been here. Checking their work went fine, getting them on quizlet was fine, after that though, things started to fall apart. It was a bit of a struggle to get students to close their laptops and focus their attention on me. I started going through the terms that they had just reviewed and I was constantly interrupted by two students in particular, who were sitting next to each other. I spoke to them multiple times while I was talking and while others were talking. The entire class also kept trying to talk over one another when I asked them a question. They were reminded by both myself and H about raising their hands multiple times. When H was acting out the meaning of evoke and then explaining how that meant evoke, the students started to get off task. H spoke to them numerous times but it continued to get worse. She eventually stopped the lesson, had a stern discussion with them, and tried the silent treatment strategy with them. It focused them a little, enough for H to pass the lesson back to me. I continued going through the lit terms until we got to the PoV mini lesson, when H took over again. This was when everything really fell apart. H was teaching them about PoV, but the students were getting off topic constantly, not paying attention, and talking over each other. H got frustrated with the class, sent everyone back to their seats and asked them if they knew why she was so disappointed. Then she asked that those students who were responsible for distracting everyone and getting off topic would own responsibility for their actions and create a plan to fix their behavior in the future. Out of the students that responded, about half of them were sincere in their plans. It was easy to tell which students weren't sincere, and they just happened to be the ones who were the main cause for the disruptions. H and I talked about it after class and I think that we need to talk to the parents of one of the students to see what's going on at home that might be affecting his behavior.

Period Four:

Seniors. Same as usual. Still getting resistance from half of the class, so I'm just working with those students who will listen to me and trying to remain nice and friendly to those who don't seem to like me. One student seemed to open up to me a little more, so I guess I'm making some progress with them. 

Over all, this week has been absolutely crazy. I'm hoping next week is a little smoother at least. There aren't any classes on Monday, so it will be interesting to see how that affects the students on Tuesday.