I had a date... with Data

I think I had my first "regular" week of school. Nothing terribly interesting happened aside from my projector bulb dying at the start of the week thus ruining any chance of higher-technology being used in my teaching, and nothing incredibly drab happened either. I taught, my kids learned and worked, but they also got off task, needed to regain focus, and missed assignments. We covered theme for two days, then brought back summaries, voice, and text to self connection. I taught some solid lessons even though the kids were confused that there was no powerpoint, and the students produced a good amount of writing. Thankfully, my students' work seems to have improved for the most part, as grading the essays was a lot less "decoding" and more of just reading

Speaking of grades, I gave up yet another weekend. Saturday was spent at the second of three "Gifted/Talented" training sessions, which was about as fun as watching paint dry. Actually, less fun than that, because if you watch paint dry, you can probably comment on it as there is no expectation of you to listen and not create excess chatter. I was smart though, and took some work to grade while listening, which burned up maybe 2 of the 8 hours we were there. Our group was supposed to be at the training for 10 hours, but I managed to ruffle some feathers and get us out early by occassionally mentioning that the conversations were going off topic. And boy, if some of those other teachers got angry. I don't really care about that though, because they were trying to hijack the meetings to discuss their own situations that had absolutely nothing to do with "Gifted/Talented" students or information that might be pertinent to the rest of the group. I wasn't that much of a horrible person though, as several other teachers thanked me afterwards for taking the bullet and getting the gabby teachers to hush up. Heck, I didn't even get out early to go do random things, as I quickly got back home, graded some more, and then went to UTPA, (University of Texas-Pan American), for their annual HESTEC (Hispanic Engineering, Science and Technology) conference. The MythBusters were there along with Billy Ray Cyrus, (don't know what he had to do with Engineering or Science), and several of my students. I'm happy to say that out of 49 different high schools, ours managed to get first place in the robotics competition. I had not one, but two students on the winning team. Woo hoo!

Sunday was again ruined by grades. My students' Six Weeks exam is coming up as well as their Progress Reports, and I wanted to get a jump on grading. Since many of my students neglect to turn in their work and I'd like to not fail them unless they really try at not succeeding, I'm giving them this week to turn in some of the key assignments. I've already given students zeros on assignements that they've had weeks to complete, but since a few of the larger assignments (namely rough drafts) will be used in the coming weeks, I wanted to make sure they get them in and for a reducedgrade. Hopefully my kids will take me up on my generous offer, turn in their work, and make sure to turn in the rest of their work on-time.

Who am I kidding.

Student Gems

When asked to make a "Text to Self" connection with a story called "Oranges" by Gary Soto, a story about a boy who is forced to pay for his girlfriend's chocolate with an orange when he doesn't have enough money, a student wrote:

"That reminds me of back home when we would buy stuff with tacos."