It's been a while

It has been too long since my last post.  I have been busy as normal and face merely the same challenges since I eased into the place.  It might not be a good idea to have so much time pass in between post, or else what pretty much will happen is an explosion of information that would be meaningless or nonsense to read because everything would have been bottled up and my innocent readers (whoever you are and thank you for being a reader by the way) wouldn't know what hit them.

It is a couple weeks into the fourth quarter and I have the chance to relax a little more, but I still must keep myself from easing on my students.  I swear they will get the best of me if I let my guard down.  The last couple days I have been running out of stuff to go over for the lesson, but I have been keeping them engaged.  I am planning a big day for wednesday with having the students show their creativity.  It's like a magic show and I need to plan little side tricks before the big event.

I used excel to grade everything last quarter which wasn't too awful for me, I have experience trying to figure out functions to perform on a spreadsheet, there were a few creative moments too!  This time around I found an online gradebook the students (as well as parents, which is important) can have access to.  This is nice because they can contest a certain grade, hopefully a participation grade, and I will point out to them why their behavior reflects that grade.  They shape up, things get easier, and life goes on.  Their parents may do the same as well.  They find out about their daughter's behavior, they punish them, the student shapes up, things get easier, and life goes on.  A key idea that I have been told before and I will tell anyone, "Make things easier for you."

I have reached an interesting point with the "teach-as-you-go" curriculum:  some of the topics I want to teach with some classes have already been taught to them in a different science subject.  I was going to teach wave mechanics to my seniors, and they told me they learned that in chemistry!  They did nail most the common parts of a wave, so I was thrown off.  I did find some new territory for them to go into by the end of the period, so they are back on track for some despair!  I will show my froshman and seniors the same thing that I have going on for wednesday just because I am in awe of what they can do at the end.

Overall, I think I am slightly losing my touch, I have no clue what I can do to do better.  The only new thing I have going is the make-shift new-teacher induction meetings that happen almost regularly after school with the other new teacher who started a little after I did.   I read in a classroom management book that it is a really good idea to look into being part of a new teacher induction program with whatever district you work in.  You share and build off one another to keep the spirits alive and prevents you from being burned out. As for us, this sounds like bad news: we have the same students who give us the same issues!  As long as the veteran teacher still has the same issues with them, we know we are doing alright.  The only rubbish they throw back at us is that they are not cool with their teachers being changed up.  They have no choice, and we cant help that.  You get a job, and get a new boss, you better sing to their tune.  I hate ending talking about that, so let's figure out something positive...I have my chemists in the lab for most the week, they just figured out how to make Molarity solutions so now I can trust them with making stuff on their own.  Only how they do it is the next challenge.

Still swinging

Yesterday, all of my classes had lab. I think it was wonderful to get them engaged and see science concepts in action.  My froshmen have labs to work on for the rest of the week, next week I will hit them with a test.  My physics class will be wrapping up a magnetism lab, and I will hit them up with a test, and my chem class started electrolysis, and I will hit them with a test.  Despair, I know.  I feel evil but it must be done.  It looks like im getting some of my students to come around to how they should be working in the class, I wish I could say all of my students know how they are suppose to be working when in the classroom.  Today is the last day of the 3rd quarter, I started here at the second week of this marking period.  I am having a good ride so far.

There should be two ways to reflect on how I am doing,  one mode of reflection is for daily, the other is for overall.  This might be like summa and cumulative grading.  I need to start doing better so that I have a good record overall.  I'm told the first few years of teaching might be rough.  So if I think I am having a hard time with something, I just think, "I'm still a rookie teacher then this is suppose to be difficult!" and then I feel better, no really I do.  Some bad news, I have not officially planned out what the next couple of weeks look like for my students, but I do a mental map of what will happen.  So when crunch time happens, i just pull out resources that will guide their learning when the moment occurs.

Still hanging out here late as ever only almost every night, not every single night like the last few weeks.  I leave, and it's nice, only the disastrous area remains.  Tomorrow night I'll spend time in there, I feel like leaving early today.