Ugghhhh

I'm pretty certain that today is secretly Friday. At least the kids seem to think it is. Green days are usually a little more chaotic than black days, but today seems especially worse. If it were the Friday before break, I would chalk it up to them being ready for vacation, but where it is the middle of the week I don't know what is causing it. I think part of it is still anticipation for vacation, but Monday wasn't as bad. I also think that some of it has to do with this week being winter carnival and kids are starting to get more excited about it.

Period one went well, considering. I went over the work that I was missing from students so that they can turn it in to me. Instead of giving them zeros for everything, I am giving them another chance to turn their work in. They now have until the Monday after vacation to receive credit for it. After that, any work still not turned in will receive a definite zero. There didn't seem to be any complaints from this class about this. They were all agreeable and I think some of them were thankful for the opportunity to turn their work in still. I know there are some students who will not take advantage of it, but that is their choice. After that they had time to finish working on the posters that they started last class. I had three students who were absent last class, so I had to modify the assignment for them on the fly, but considering the amount of time they had to catch up to the rest of the class, I was impressed with the progress they made. After giving students more time than I had originally planned, I had students present their posters to the class. Once all groups had presented, we moved on to the next activity. This was a little challenging, but I think we got through it well enough. Trying to teach students about point of view isn't as easy as I originally thought. The  Springboard text has some excerpts that students need to transform to different points of view. I should have looked at the activity again before teaching it, but I thought it was more straightforward than it actually was. So period one found it a little frustrating, but I was able to make changes for period two.

Period two was...a challenge. This class is consistently difficult, and it hasn't actually gotten any easier since I've started teaching. To start the class today, we had a new student, so I had all of the students introduce themselves to him, just as they did on my first day. I thought this would be an easy task for them, but most of the students struggled with it. We muddled through the introductions, then I gave the students the list of missing work. Two or three of the students have not turned in any of the assignments, and I highly doubt that they will. One of the students never has his book or his laptop with him and now that I have figured that out, I can make sure to photocopy the activities he needs, but even if  I give him copies, I don't think he will do the assignments. The other student brings his book and/or laptop, and does his work in class, with occasional prodding, but asking him to do anything outside of class is wishful thinking. It's too bad really, because he is a bright student, all he is missing is a strong work ethic. Next, I got the students working on their posters. We had one student who had been absent last class and the new student, who had no background knowledge about what we were working on. By some strange miracle, these two buddied up and I was able to partner them up without any difficulties. I had the student who was absent explain the story to the new student, and then together they drew a modified poster because of time limits. They didn't exactly do the assignment right, but we talked about it and I explained where they had changed the story and how it was supposed to be. I also had to deal with two members of a group who could not work on their poster because it was at home with a third member. I asked them to explain to the class what their poster looked like, but they had not helped the other member at all, so they were not able to do that. Instead, I asked them to act out the ending of the story, which they did, horribly. I know one of them had been absent when we read the story together as a class, but the other was in school, and last class they read through the end of the story as a group, so I know that they both have read the ending. They also had plenty of time while the other groups were finishing up to review the ending and plan out what they were going to do, but they chose to play games on the computer instead. I caught one of them once, and told him to put it away, but when I came back later he had his iPod out instead. So again, I told him to put it away, which he did. During the presentations, I sat near these two, and once more, caught the student on his iPod, which I then took away from him. Throughout the entire period, H and I both spoke to him multiple times about his behavior. It is becoming a concern, and I might have to take my actions to the next step. H says this was not his typical behavior during the first half of the year, so I'm wondering if there is something going on at home that is causing the changes. I'm going to talk to H about possibly involving guidance and the other Freshmen teachers to see if we can get to the bottom of this.

Winter carnival sign ups are a maddening disaster.

During third period, we have prep the first half and then study hall during the second half. H's rules for study hall are simple: work on something for school or read, and if you have your laptop open, the screen needs to be facing her. Two of our students were not following the rules, and when H went to check on them to see what they were doing, she found that they were attempting to bypass the proxy to do something not school appropriate, like playing a game or something. She asked them to own their behavior and tell her what they were doing, but they wouldn't, so she eventually just chose to confiscate their laptops. I then delivered the laptops to the office, where the principal handled the situation. Like I said, it seems more like today was a Friday than a Wednesday.

Based on how the other classes today went, I was expecting our seniors to be even worse. I was pleasantly surprised when they weren't. Were they the dream class? No, but they worked mostly independently, and most of them made some sort of progress. I was able to work and talk with a few students who typically aren't receptive to me, which made me happy. One student in particular made me really happy. I've been in the classroom for about 3 weeks now, and during the entire time I've worked with the students, this particular student has said maybe 3 words to me. In 3 weeks. H gave me a heads up about him, so I knew that he wouldn't open up to me right away, and I handled things accordingly. I had hoped that he would eventually open up to me, and today seems like it's the first step towards him doing so. H and I have both witnessed this student working one on one with different classmates, much as you would see an ed tech do. However, this student doe snot realize that he has any kind of gift. Last class, we witnessed another interaction, and H and I were able to communicate about it using just facial expressions as we watched it happen. After the student was done helping his classmate, H took him into the hallway to talk to him, and told him that he has a gift for working with special education students. She was brought to tears when he told her that he has always wanted to be a special education teacher. When he came back into the classroom after talking to H, he had an actual smile on his face, which I had not seen from him before. I'm hoping, as is H, that down the road, he decides to act on this because he really does have a natural gift and the patience to go along with it. I'm looking forward to seeing how his awareness of this influences him throughout the rest of the semester.

Now for the fun stuff! Part of the winter carnival activities is a scavenger hunt that takes place after school. I had been planning on helping supervise after school today anyway, but I was thinking more along the lines of helping the students with the hall decorations. I was not expecting to get roped into the scavenger hunt, but when I did I totally got hooked. As a teacher, I was given a list of the items that our team needed to find before the students were able to look it over. At 2:30, I had students hounding me for it, so we made copies, and since the Freshmen teacher who was in charge of the scavenger hunt for our team was at South Campus, I took the role of coordinator for the students at North Campus. This gave me the chance to get to know some of my students better as well as some of the students in the other Freshmen classes whom I don't have. I thought I would just stay at North Campus for a little while and coordinate, but I ended up actually running around town helping to get a few items, which I then brought back to the South Campus where our headquarters was at. We had a small group of Freshmen show up, but I think we had more than any of the other classes, which I was really proud of. I also think that a few of the students were surprised to see me there considering it wasn't part of school. I really enjoyed being at the final round of the scavenger hunt because not only did I get to interact with more of my students, I also got  a chance to talk with a couple of the other Freshmen teachers who I hadn't really been able to form a relationship with. Even though I was exhausted after a 13 hour day, I smiled to myself the whole way home. I'm excited to see what Friday's activity day looks like now!