A Five week Six weeks

So our school has six separate grading periods, which are called "Six Weeks". Last year, this worked out perfectly, as each grading period had six weeks, with two of them having six weeks plus a few days here and there from holiday-shortened weeks. However, this last six weeks only had five weeks. It seems ridiculous, but I just spent several weeks telling students that our six weeks only had five weeks. For students struggling to read, I can only imagine how their minds dealt with such an abstract and inane concept. Clearly our establishment couldn't cope as progress reports reached parents the week of our finals testing, and as such parents were trying to drop students from classes in order to keep them from failing. It doesn't really help, but I guess they figure they should be doing something because their students are failing, and heaven forbid the kids actually try to make up work and bring up their grade the proper way.

Nevertheless, I had 6 new students the last week, and as such I need to figure out how the heck I'm going to calculate their grades. My common sense radar started blaring after I noticed 3 new students in one class, and promptly e-mailed the counselors asking for no more schedule changes to be made until next week. It's absolutely baffling how people expect the new teacher to get a kid up to speed and PASSING with 1-3 school days left in the grading period, testing being conducted, all while attempting to navigate the grading system and merge the student's new grades with their old teacher's. It's actually brilliant work on the part of the parents, as I'm sure most teachers just give the student a 70 so that they are passing. It backfires quite a bit though, as I know several teachers who refuse to give the student a passing grade, and they are forced to come to Saturday school to make-up their grade (something the kid would have been forced to do anyways).

Anyways, I should get back to grading. Wish me luck.

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At least I'm conducting diagnostic tests tomorrow and Tuesday. That's right, I said "diagnostic testing", and it's almost halfway through the year. More on that story in my next post.

Name one way to ruin a weekend

-Have a major project due the same week that grades are due. Added bonus: bind said project for all classes into "class anthologies".

It worked out great for the kids, but if I didn't have help from Alexia with correcting papers, formatting anthologies, and binding them, I would have pulled a few all-nighters.

I'm really looking forward to next weekend when I can actually get some rest.

Be on the lookout for "highlights" from the projects.

Monologues
My students began writing monologues this week. They created their own characters, conflicts, relationships, and settings, and genuinely came up with some impressive stuff. Whereas at the start of the year students needed their hands held for a good 20 minutes just to come up with character traits, just about everyone took to the project almost instantly. I'm really happy to see that they've come this far (or, at the least, have become accustomed to the assignments). With 6 weeks left, I'm starting to see my students as actual high schools and not "newbies" or freshmen. The majority of the students are stepping up in class, becoming more confident, and caring about how they do in class. I can't wait to see how they do when they perform their monologues for the class this next week.

Grades
Since it's the end of the 6 weeks, I just submitted grades. This is the highest passing rate I've had all year, and I'm stoked. I tried something new for this grading period, and gave each student a free 100 point assignment to start off the 6 weeks. In the end, this counted for less than 2% of their final grade, but it got the kids hyped because they saw really high grades and wanted to keep them up. I can't tell you how many students came to me and said, "Sir! I've got an A? I've never had an A in this class before!" Eventually, the grade would decline, but instead of the students taking it as an inevitability of school, I had a surprisingly large amount of students asking to make up work and ACTUALLY TURNING IT IN. I could attribute some of this new interest in work to the end of the year, wanting to pass to 10th grade, and TAKs, but I'll still count it as a victory for my grading system. Homework for this 6 weeks also had the highest turn in rate for all classes. I decided that I would give the kids an assignment every Monday and make it due on Friday. It's a supplement to what we do in class, not too much effort is required, but the assignments always allow for creativity so the kids can get invested and turn in some real gems. It's working.

I'm happy.

Softball
I'm putting this in as almost an afterthought, but I'm coaching our faculty/staff softball team. Our first game is in two weeks. It was great being on the field again. I didn't even realize how much I missed playing ball, but dang... I'm going to have some fun weekends coming up, as long as I remember to wear sunscreen. :)

Gimme a break, Gimme a break, break me off a piece of that ...

This last week, including the weekend, was less than stellar. I took my first sick day on Friday since I had not been feeling well and needed a refill of my allergy medication. The doctor was very helpful, and gave me a couple prescriptions, so I was finally able to use my new medical plan that certifies me as an adult. Unfortunately, the sub again had problems with the class, and I really am starting to believe that I should only give worksheets when a sub is needed. It wasn't even that tough of a class... The students were supposed to take a quiz, then work on their revisions of their drafts. Apparently, many of the kids complained that they did not have their rough drafts even though I specifically told them that they would be given in class work time and needed to bring them. Maybe it's a testament to my teaching that I don't have these mishaps, or maybe I do and I just downplay them. Eh.

To be honest, I was glad I got a sick day. I really needed a break, if only to recharge. That might be the stress talking, that might be the sinus infection (or the E-coli that I could apparently have from contaminated burgers I bought at Sam's CNN Article here). Two of my kids got in a fight in class on Thursday. It was my smallest class too, and I even have an aide, but neither of us saw it. It happened in the last 5 minutes of class. The two boys were horsing around, just pushing each other a little bit, and one pushed the other one in the face and cut the kid's lip. The victim promptly punched the offender in the eye. They were both REAL quiet about it too, as the punched kid quickly put down his head and covered his face with a hood. I honestly don't know how only ONE other student saw this. I constantly move about the room, so the whole altercation must have taken at most 30 seconds. But nonetheless, it happened right under my nose. After telling the class what they needed to do before they could leave, I looked back to the kid with his head on the desk and his hood pulled up. I tapped him on the head and asked him if he heard what I said and if he was going to take his work home for homework (he had done next to nothing in class). He muttered something, so I said again, "You didn't do much in class today. Are you going to take your work home?" He looked up as tears streamed from his eyes and I quickly sat down to see what was wrong. The bell rang and the rest of class left, as he finally managed to say that the other student had punched him. Sure enough, he pulled back his hood and he was going to have a pretty nice shiner. I immediately told him we'd go to the nurses office and get ice, and that I would be writing up the other student (both of them ended up getting written up since they were egging each other on). I found the other student in the hall near the office after dropping off the punched student with the nurses, and told the quick-fisted child to come with me. He instantly knew what was happening, and had the gall to say, "You're bringing him in too, right?" Didn't really care about his own situation, just wanted to see the other kid also punished. Yeah, ok, you have a cut lip now. Why the heck did you punch him in the eye in response? Needless to say, I was frustrated, and it put a damper on my already dismal day, which was peppered with sneezes, reports of bad student grades, and many schedule changes for athletes.

We got our six weeks grades back on Thursday as well. My students performed almost on all categories below the average of any of the other English classes. Aware that I'm a new teacher and realizing I probably have not put in the amount of effort I should, I was worried. I ended up talking to my department head/mentor for an hour or two after school about the scores. Maybe it's not that bad. They were only off a couple of percentage points (averaged) on one 20 question test, and many of the other teachers have more than one Pre-AP class. I also have the greatest number of "mod students" (special needs that usually are lower performing. I say usually because some are VERY bright in certain areas). I felt better after the meeting, but I'm still not really happy.

I don't know what my main problem is. I'm happy when I'm teaching, and it's great to be with the kids. I just get extremely frustrated when they just decide that they want to not do ANYTHING at all. When they don't really care about their lives at all. I dunno. Maybe I can relate to them, because that's how I felt this whole weekend. I didn't want to do anything and school/work was the last thing on my mind.

I'm pretty sure that I don't want to teach after my two years are up. I really despise getting up before the sun, I feel like my creativity is really confined (thank goodness I got to design the school website), and I don't really see a long future of teaching in my life. This isn't really news, per say, since I joined TFA with the intention of getting two years of an experience out of it and then going on with my life. I'd help out for two years, say I did my part, and see if it changes anything about my life. I can already tell that it's going to keep me organized differently, appreciating solid teaching skills, and able to explain myself in as few words as possible. Time will tell. As for now, I've got a splitting headache and I don't plan on taking tomorrow off since I have nothing ready for a sub, so I'm going to bed.

Grading

Progress Report grades are due tomorrow at 9 AM. I spent a few hours on Saturday working on the grades, and the greater portion of today grading as well. Luckily, Alexia was willing and eager to help me grade as well, otherwise I would be up until the middle of the night getting all these grades done. I'm convinced that English is the hardest subject to grade, at least down here in the valley. I tried to put comments on all of the papers, circling spelling mistakes, crossing out unnecessary words, putting in all the correct grammar markings, and giving comments on the papers. Normally, you wouldn't think that this would be a big deal. However, the majority of my students do not know how to write correctly and spell phonetically, or not at all. Sometimes I would just circle words because I didn't recognize them in English or Spanish. Those made it quite the challenge to understand the essays. Fortunately, these were just rough drafts, and it is the start of the semester.

I'm quite nervous though. If it took me THAT long to grade a few weeks worth of work, and the student essays were between 1 and 2 pages a piece, how long is it going to take me to grade their much longer assignments?

All I know is that I'm tired, I'll update more tomorrow, and hopefully I'll have pictures later this week.

Oh, and next time the students write drafts, I'm having them peer edit.

Any ideas or suggestions from all you other teachers out there in internet land?