Snow Daze

We ended the first semester last week, and the second semester has not officially started because of the snow days. I knew that CPS has not taken days off of school, even though other school districts have fairly when needed, since 1999. I'm not going to lie, it was awesome having those days off. It was a break that I needed. Unfortunately, not everyone that worked CPS had off, the principals and other higher up personnel had to make it to the schools, and I have no idea why they decided that! It looked to brutal out to go anywhere.

Something I heard about all of this is that this was the 4th snow day or snow session in 18 years for CPS. Yes, CPS has some kinks to work out. It starts later than the other schools, so it ends later than the other schools, I am afraid with these snow days I took, the school year will have to end a couple days later. I wonder how many people in the system are against moving up the school year a week or two? It sounds better than trying to keep the kids settled in the middle of June. The first week of June is fine to end it, but there is probably some strict reason why they don't change it, oh well, I digress.

The new semester is underway, I have a good outline setup, and then there is ACT hanging over my head. I feels like im in the front line of an army when it comes to this. They do have a plan to improve on their scores by working on specific strands. I get lost with how to improve their strands basically because of the selections of strands, and the majority of the attitudes of the students continually destroying their abilities to try to do better.

The strategy to get them to do better is something I would back up all the way. It's like fantasy football, only the teachers pick students to play for their team and then coach them to do better on the ACT, it's awesome! My team was tied for first but hopefully we can win out to get back up there. Now we are at .500. I want us to end with a winning record, but the factors of attendance and student self control always get in the way, bummer.

This week has been nice, I have a black history project plan where the students submit a podcast poetry slam on an inventor they picked. If I knew how to deliver an assignment like this to them, I know they would do awesome with it. We'll see how it goes.