Post 2004-2005 School Year

Yippee! It's summer (though it's raining outside and doesn't feely summery this Saturday morning). Wednesday was the last "official" day of kiddies. Thursday we had to go in and go through our signout checklist and attend our last staff meeting. Friday I went to Barnes & Noble with a fellow teacher to map out our SAT workshop we'll be giving next week. Today I'm one of about 60 teachers helping with graduation. Tuesday and Wednesday, SAT workshop. and THEN I'm done ..... (except for the occasional meetings over the summer for our new "smaller learning communities" shift next year). Oh, and the book(s) I'm wanting to write ... and the Spanish I'm still learning ... and the teaching books I want to read ... and my files I want to go through .... But good golly, I don't have to get up in front of little kiddies every day and "perform".

WooHoo.

Yippeeeee

How excited am I that tomorrow's the LAST official day of school (for the kiddies). WooHoo! I celebrated by leaving work early (for me) and going out to dinner at Whole Foods, then going to see "Bride & Prejudice". Can I tell you that I was the ONLY person in the movie theater? How fun is that. I had the best time. It was a great movie for me to see - the India shots were intriguing, the clothing was colorful and beautiful to behold, the singing/dancing was fun and funny, the story line was entertaining.

Today I gave only one final, so I had time to catch up and put all my "marbles" into place for tomorrow. Yesterday (Monday), I gave 2 finals. Some of the kids I have had for 2 years in a row, and I got hugs and cards and sweet memories. One of the things that makes it worthwhile. Today I had my 3rd period class. My one with the knitter (though she redeemed herself by recommending a good book/series for me to read ... Anne of Green Gables. Love. It.), the cell-phone addict (who had a funny "my cat peed on my pants last night and it smells and I CAN'T concentrate" incident today), the football player who could NEVER sit still and who to no one's surprise turns out to be ADD (today he was drinking a LARGE (64oz?) drink during the 2 hour final. The final in which we can give no hall passes. The final during which he REALLY had to go.)

Whew. I made it through a tough year. Yippee.

Mere Days

You KNOW it's almost over when you can calmly smile at little "rascals" and quietly think to yourself: pretty soon, I don't have to deal with your sorry ass behavior any more. Nya Nya Nya. ... My finals reviews went peachy in all 3 of my preps ... I don't know if I can hold out hope that they'll still be engaged by Friday. But, I'm making it worth points for EVERY ONE, and I keep stressing that finals are worth 1/4 of their semester grade, and I'm reviewing in little bites ... Hopefully, this will keep them working for me.

Poop. I just remember that I forgot my plan to cart a little bit home every day this week, so that I wouldn't have a big haul next week. Note to self: do this tomorrow oh forgetful one .... On the personal side. I had a great time after school by going to a trail nearby and rollerblading for an hour. Fun and exercise at the same time.

Review Week

Okay. One full week of review. I anticipate a lot of off task behavior and giggling and yearbook signing with the occasional look at the review problems. That's why I'll make it worth homework points to finish (even for the exempt kiddies). I'll just have to remember to relax and take it with a grain of salt and a big sense of humor and to remember ONE MORE WEEK WOO HOOOOOOOO.

I was reading in another blog (Marcia's Science blog?) about various ways she has her kids "take notes". That excited me because it seems the kids NEVER seem to realize that they can use their notes to study (except for the "good kids" who will succeed regardless). I did buy a book that had to do with "foldables", so I'll have to whip that out this summer and make plans for "note taking" next year.

Yup all sorts of grandiose summer plans for the NEXT school year. Hopefully, there'll be no flaking out. Oh yea! Did I also mention that I have ideas for 3 math "books" to write. Hmmmmm. Check back with me to see which ones get written.

Activity Success

Yesterday for a (small) part of my math classes, I had them do 2 activities that seemed to really engage them and had hilarious results. First, through a series of happenings, I've started drawing one-eyed round people (literally like a smiley face but with only 1 eye) ... and these critters have arms and legs and give you directions on how to complete assignments and such. Then sometimes on worksheets, they are sunbathing or talking French or holding signs .... so anyway, I asked them to let loose and draw me some new critters (small) so that I could cut and paste them on future assignments. They came up with some cute ones (well except for the one or two inappropriate decapitated or keg-looking ones!). The second assignment was to either write a Haiku about math or a math topic, or to write a letter to math, "Dear Math, ...". Oh my goodness did they have me laughing (which is not good since I seem to STILL be getting over a cold and practically everything sends me into a coughing fit. Especially laughing). ... How silent were they while they were drawing and composing. Sheesh, channel some of that focus into math, people.

In other news. I love that every day is a fresh start, and maybe some little kiddies that you snapped at the day before are all happy and bantering with you the next day, when all (seems to be) is forgiven.

Patience

Yet again I was reminded of the fact that if I am not well rested .... in fact completely unrested (to bed by 11 and up by 4), then my patience wears thin and I'm a crabby snappy puss with kids that are not doing what they need to be doing .... and then they're jerks for the rest of the period because I loudly told them for the second time to put their yearbook away ... and kept hammering at them until they did .... maaaaaaaaybe could have been more politic in how I approached it, but I'm tired, and it's the end of the year and this particular child is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO needy and (crabby alert) slow and shouldn't really be in my PAP class. Whew.

In other news, had lots of moments of kids making me laugh today, so I will bank those times.

Just in the Nick of Time

Usually I am in a situation in the classroom, and something will come out of my mouth, and THEN I realize that I probably shouldn't have spoken so quickly without thinking first. ... For example, that time when I quickly responded to a student who asked, "Do you know what's fun-----" And right at that point, I assumed he was going to finish the statement with "---funny?", and so I quickly responded, "me!". ... Well in actuality, he finished the question with "--- fun to do?". Yes. My face was red, and the class busted up laughing.

Well, today, we were talking about asymptotes in my algebra 2 classes, and I had them graphing various shifted versions of the parent functions: y = 1/x. I'm walking around to assess their knowledge, and I see this one student's graphing calculator screen, and he has tons of graphs on it, and it looked, well, furry. ..... So the thing I'm proud of myself for NOT saying even though it was ALMOST out of my mouth is, "wow, you've got a hairy asymptote there."

Friday Fun

Had dinner with a friend after work today. I looked forward to it all day ... all day of quizzing my little monsters .... all day of semi-relaxing because I didn't have to be "on" ... all day to contemplate all the grading I'm going to have to do real soon.

Dinner was tasty and the company was great. I love when you can just have a big laugh fest. Puts everything else in perspective. Viva Amigos!

Better and Better...

Does it always happen this way, and I just forget year to year? I'm actually enjoying my classes again consistently. The kids are more pleasant, time goes by quickly, we have laughs together. Even the nudges I have to deal with because of TMC don't bother me so much (late kids are *supposed* to be locked out of class, and then teachers with a prep are supposed to sweep them to the cafeteria). ... Of course now I've sealed it -- it's going to be hell on wheels for the next 2 TWO dos weeks of school that are left (plus finals).

In other news, I'm getting paranoid about my smelly shoes ???? Are they really so smelly that if I stay in my classroom with the door closed on my prep period, then the next class that comes in says, "ew, it smells horrible in here. It's making me nauseous." .... Or am I paranoid? Or am I using that as an excuse to GO TO THE OUTLET MALL this weekend and buy all new shoes. Hmmmmm.

Rituals ...

I guess I sometimes do things for me in the classroom (they make me giggle or smile or whatnot), and I don't know that the kids start to expect or look forward to these things, too. Most always (always?) I stand at the door at the end of class and say, "bye tall people; bye short people; bye weird people; bye normal people; bye giggly people.... and whatever else pops into my head when I see my various students walking out.

Well, today I was feeling kind of sick and didn't feel like using my voice much, and I didn't do this. I overhear one student after she's out the door, "hey, I miss her saying, "bye so-and-so people ...."". That made me smile.

Precalculus Success

Sometimes I love when at the last minute I get this "light bulb idea" about how to teach a particular topic. That happened today with my precalculus class's first exposure to a derivative. We've been working on limits and left and right limits and then moved on to the calculating of the slope of the tangent line to a curve, and today, Aha. Instead of just telling them the standard "shortcut" form of derivative for f(x) = ax^n ...... I had each group use the formal definition of derivative to calculate it for f(x) = ax^2 + b for various a's and b's, then as a class we looked at all the derivatives, and they saw the pattern. Yea. Tomorrow we'll do 3rd power and also maybe one ax^2 + bx + c one and we'll be off.

Field Trip

It was so nice to have a break from the little kiddies yesterday ... I helped chaperone a day trip to a local college for our AVID kids. They all behaved so wonderfully that it was a refreshing treat to be reminded how good some of our kids are. They were polite and thoughtful and well behaved. Yea. Then, since I had an all day sub and we got back at about 2pm (and school ends at 4:15), I "snuck" away to do some "chores". I went to my quilt shop and had a great time looking over all sorts of gorgeous materials and daydreaming and planning my "starter" quilt .... that will help me learn this technique I'm enamored with. I also bought blocks to make a "practice" quilt on which I will learn to machine quilt. Ka-ching ka-ching. This is getting pricey if I stop and think about how much I'm spending. Eh. Life's short.

Communication Breakdown

Remember how I'm making all my algebra 2 PAP (!) students learn how to manipulate fractions (simple adding, subtracting, multiplying, dividing) ... and if they don't get all 4 problems correct on the quiz, they have to keep retaking it (new version) until they do? Well, today was one of those days where it was convenient for the kids, one at a time, to step right outside the classroom and take the short quiz while everyone else was working on other practice (simplifying rational expressions, yea). Of my 3 periods, I had numerous retakes for the first 2 periods, so to make it fair, I tore up paper into about 1.5" x 1.5" square pieces (size IS important in this story :) ), and write their names on it and fold really small and then I would pick names one at a time to determine order of quiz taking. .... The quiz is on a 1/2 sheet of paper (8.5" x 5.5").

Well. During my 3rd session of doing this, I went into my spiel about how they should raise their hands if they want to retake the quiz, and I proceeded to pass out the small "name" strips and as I'm doing this, I realize that there are only 2 people who want to take the quiz. So I forgo collecting the little bits of "name" paper, and I just call this one girl out to the hall and give her the quiz.

She's out there for a while and finally she knocks on the door to indicate she's done. She hands me back the BLANK quiz, and she has all her (4) answers and work shown on that 1.5" x 1.5" of paper. I looked at her in question, and she said she thought I wanted her to do her quiz on that paper and that's why I gave it to her. Boy did we both have a laugh. (She's ESL and polite, by the way).

That was a nice comic relief to the day.

A Way Around It?

I think I hit upon a way around the crappy thing our admin is trying to do to this one teacher. This teacher and 2 others of us teach "upper level" courses, and an e-mail was to be sent around that we will also pick up a freshman class that guides the kids who are doing poorly in algebra 1. Their intent was to make this person quit without actually firing them (this is my 2nd hand information and is most likely true). So the 3 of us are going to meet and come up with constructive suggestions about this class (that was not necessarily successful this year). We'll (hopefully) come across as team players and if we have to teach such a class, maybe it will be a good one and not another canned, half-baked attempt at a solution. (the e-mail was sent around later that morning ...)

Not Again

TAKS week is finally over, and all in all it went well. I'm tired, but it seemed the kids really put out an effort. But then my crappy "after lunch" period had to happen, and then I got 2nd hand news about another crap ass situation brewing that put a pall (sp?) on the whole week.

First of all I have this freaky bizarro kid in my afternoon class. He's immature and a "rebel" and it's always something with him. Fine, I can deal. Then I have this other senior in class, who sometimes comes and sometimes doesn't. Bad attitude and general bad ethics. I'm back at the computer checking grades on some kids and all of a sudden I hear this senior get up and walk across the room and basically threaten this other freak kid. Jerk(s). I dealt with it after class, but what an ass.

Then on my afternoon prep period, another teacher comes in to tell me of how the admin is trying to get rid of this math teacher in an underhanded sort of way. They've in no way ever told this teacher that there's a problem. There's probably no paper trail. There've been no attempts to help this teacher out of whatever problem they think there is. But now it seems they want to brew up this scenario to make this teacher resign without them having to fire the person. What a load of crap crap crap. That's one of the reasons I left my old school because of just such a situation with another teacher. I'm in an ethical (moral?) bind now, because the particular teacher just the other day asked me if I'd heard anything about next year and how they didn't know from year to year if they'd be rehired because kids are dropping out of this persons class and there've been complaints. .... Now that I know information, I feel I should in some way share it with this person, or else I'm also contributing to this devious crap.

CRAP.

5 weeks and counting

What does it say that I am SO counting the days until summer. .... Probably just that I'm a modern teacher and am tired tired tired. Yesterday was the first day of TAKS, and it went pretty well. Of course my afternoon classes were shocked. SHOCKED I tell you that we were actually doing anything. Of course some of them didn't bring their supplies. Whatever. We muddled through the day. ... I'm still struggling with a few students, but nothing major. .... I looked back on some stuff I'd written about last year's class, and I guess I forgot how trying they could be. It must be that way every year, and I forget, and maybe that's a good (bad?) thing because I can start fresh. Who knows.

In other news, I'm totally enthralled with all my new-ish hobbies that actually give me a life outside of school. Tap dancing once a week is great. My occasional quilting classes add to the mix. Then top that off with learning Spanish, doing yoga, and honking on my harmonica, and you have a teacher that can tune out of the school stress into other fun stuff.

fractions are your friends...

I thought it would be a pitiful shame if my 9th-12th grade students graduated from H.S. and could not add, subtract, multiply, and divide fractions without a calculator. For this reason, I made up a fraction song and we practiced, and before the end of this last 6 weeks of grading, they have to get 100% on a fraction quiz ... or keep retaking it until they do ..... even one smidgeon of a problem wrong or if they do not reduce properly, they get a 0% and they need to make it up. ..... Well, the first round of quizzed were graded, and I have to say I'm pleased. Most all of them knew what to do, and the majority of mistakes were not concept ones, but careless ones .... hopefully, they'll get it eventually.

Also, I think my goal for my last period class of the day (9th and 10th graders) is teaching them good manners. We've started already with the "sit up straight" and "don't sass" awareness talks. Let's see how that goes.

On another note. Sheesh. These kids can't for the life of them follow directions. It was fascinating last Friday to watch. I wouldn't have thought it. I had this tesselation activity for them to do. It was a rotational tesselation that they had to create. The instructions were all layed out on the sheet, and they simply had to read it. Some of them just started in doing what they thought they should do without verifying it with the instructions, so of course that didn't work. Some tried to read one sentence or so of the instructions, and then gave up and did what the first group did (above). Others just immediately raised their hands and wanted me to hand hold them through everything. Blach. I haven't processed yet how to teach this "following instructions" thingie, but I think that's next on my agenda.

TAKS TAKS TAKS

I'm tired. We've been ordered from up on high to stop teaching our content now and ONLY prepare for the TAKS test that's to be given in 2 weeks. Blach. Can I tell you how excited the kids are to be reviewing for a whole 2 weeks for this state exam? .... I'm trying to make it palatable by doing probability and hands-on types of activities, but it's only been 4 days, and I'm tired ..... or maybe I'm tired because I haven't been getting my normal 8 hours of sleep a night. Hmmmmm, correlation/coincidence?

A funny thing: One of the days, I had the kids do something with a partner, and they were to turn in only one paper for the 2 of them. We did the activity and then it was over and we were milling around, and one of my students comes up to me to ask an English-type question: "Miss, is it 'perpare'?" ... "No," I say, "it's prepare: p.r.e.p.a.r.e.". ...... "No, miss, is it perpare?" .... "no it's spelled p.r.e". .... this went on for a bit, and we are both looking at each other like the other person is slow. Then it dawns on me, and I start laughing and answer, "yes, it's per pair".

Differentiating Instruction-ish

In the old school I taught at, the kids were tracked to death in basically 5-6 different math levels. We had the (not the appropriate names, of course) sub level, average kid, regular kid, honors kid, gifted & talented kid. Like it or not, each class was pretty homogenous in ability, so you could feel comfortable teaching at a certain pace/level/speed. At this school, we do have 2 different levels - regular and preAP, and supposedly, the kids are (or maybe I'm wrong) supposed to be grouped according to ability. Well. In my preAP classes I run the gamut from kids that shouldn't be in there (work ethic issues), kids with great work ethic but need extra time digesting things, kids appropriately placed, and kids that should really be in a faster paced more challenging class because they're bored and finish all tests in 1/4 the time it takes other kids and they still have a 100% in class.

So. I've never successfully figured out how to differentiate my instruction. Because what these kids really need is a separate class all together where I can teach at their speed. I haven't figured out how to teach the other 30 kids (at their varying levels) and then concurrently/on the side teach these 3 brainiacs at their level while still running around and helping everyone.

I had a brainstorm about an upcoming (now passed) quiz that I would give these kids a different version of the quiz (logs, ln, e ...) that is more challenging. So the test time comes around, and I pass out the different versions on the sly and on the tops of their quiz (the hard version) I put that they'll get 100% if they attempt all problems and check their answers and explain explicitly what they're confused about if they were confused.

I didn't know what to expect back from them. I didn't know if it would be too long, or too easy, or too hard, or if they'd even step up to the plate ..... we're talking a total of 11 kids from 3 classes totaling about 87 kids. I haven't graded the quizzes yet, but I'm so excited. They worked bell to bell (all but one), and seemed to be thrilled to be challenged like that. I prodded some along with hints. I reassured one that she'd get 100% no matter what, that I just wanted to see what they'd do. I had one kid say to me afterwards, "that was fun". I had a revelation that in my 1st class, I only handed it out to 2 boys. Then when one (smartie) girl finished her "regular" quiz in 10 minutes .... I gave her the other one. Then in my next class, to 2 boys again (on hindsight, I could have tried it with maybe 2 girls there) .... but I was going by memory and by their average in class .... THEN by my 3rd class, I actually looked at their class averages and gave it to all the kids that have over 100% in my class (plus to surly pregnant girl even though she doesn't but she could) .... that was 5 girls (woo hoo) and 1 boy.

Funny side note. By my 3rd class, before I handed out the quizzes, I had one girl say to me, "I heard the quiz was hard and that the smartest kid in class didn't finish" (talking about the regular quiz). I had to smile and then I told her that there were different versions of the quiz. Who knows if I'll have to have some explanation to the whole class or if they can figure it out.

Let's see how it turns out ..... should have done this sooner .... oh well, at least it's a new tool in my tool box.

Revelation

In my precalculus preAP class, I have about 50% seniors, some of whom find it difficult to actually put in the effort to learn the material, and some of whom find it difficult to get to class on time after lunch. And since we have instituted the new policy of no late people admitted to class, these kids often skip. .... Okay, I'm thinking of one boy in particular. Smart (bookwise) kid, but he has a major case of senioritis.

So anyway, he's failing my class, and he's finally figured out that he has to actually put out an effort to pass, so that he can go to college. He's been diligently coming to class lately. Today we had a quiz, and HE WASN'T THERE. Ach. Then after school, he comes rushing into my room, out of breath, saying he wants to be sure to make up the quiz. Fine, I hand it to him and am busy grading other things.

He looks up about halfway through the quiz, and says, "man, this is easy if you actually go to class." To which I had to smile and reply, "do you think other people know about this secret?" I don't have a good enough take on him to know if he was poking gentle fun at himself, or if he was actually amazed at the coincidence.

I've gotta love these kids. It's never boring.