September Beckons

It's August 31 and that means the school year is approaching quickly.  I went to school today to get my keys and see if I could start setting up my room (I couldn't).  I have been working on mapping out the year and detailed planning for the first few weeks.  I am excited and apprehensive and hopeful and all those standard new school year feelings.

In most ways I am sure that the new year will be better than last year.  I have one full year under my belt and I can only be better the second time around - I will have a better idea of what to expect, I will get more sleep because I can reuse some of last year's plans, and I will just plain be more confident.

There is a lot that will be different, though, even though I have been lucky enough to be hired back at the same school teaching the same subject.  One physics teacher's position was cut, which means I'll have about 30 kids per class instead of the average of about 20 from last year, so I'm a bit nervous about managing that many kids at a time, grading that much more work, and just plain physically fitting up to 32 kids into my room.  My academy's principal, whom I really respected and liked overall, is out on medical leave and I'm not sure yet what I think of the stand-in, who has shifted from a position elsewhere in the school.  And of my 3 closest teacher allies at school, only 1 was hired back for the upcoming year, so I will need to make some new friends.


As nervous as I am about the new year, I'm also really excited to get started.  8 more days until the students arrive!

Gratitude

On a more pleasant note than my last post, this week my students wrote thank you letters to the semi-anonymous donors who made our electricity labs possible. I know some of the sentiments in the letters were forced, but some were honest and sweet. They wrote about what they learned in the labs and what they like about doing labs. Next year I would like to do more freewriting or journaling or reflections whatever I decide to call it. I think it's helpful to have kids process what they did in writing outside the constraints of answering questions or the formality of a lab writeup. And also, it was amazingly peaceful to have even five minutes of class when all the kids were intent on writing without much input from me.

Parts of a Whole

Last week, for the first time, I found myself able to think about the rest of the school year all at one time. It's still blocked out into several chunks (wrap up last unit (done as of last Wed), state test review, take state test, post-test project) but I can think about all 7 weeks at the same time without my eyes bugging out or tearing up.

For me it finally feels like the end is in sight, although there is still some hard work ahead. My kids took last year's state exam as a practice test this Thursday and Friday and I am avoiding scoring them because I'm too afraid of what I'll find. And I really have no idea how to create effective review activities. For some, it's just a matter of reminding them of what they already learned - the vocabulary, formulas, and units that have slipped their minds - but for others who never fully grasped the concepts in the first place, it's hard to imagine how I'll bring them to any level of proficiency in the next 11 school days.

A leap of faith

I inherited a school printer in the fall and bought a $150 toner cartridge for it, which was in itself a leap of faith since the toner was not returnable and there was no way to tell if the printer actually worked without trying the toner. It has been worth every penny. After heavy use (including running off a full set of handouts for the days when the copier is out of order and/or features a really long line), it now says its toner is low.

As a first-year teacher in a time of deep budget cuts, I almost certainly will be laid off this spring. My administrators claim it is a near certainty that they will be able to hire me back in the fall, but I am interpreting their stated 99.9% as more like 65%.

So, the big question is, do I order a new toner cartridge? Do I really push my luck and order the $220 high-capacity cartridge?

Caught up... sort of

I am finally caught up on grading, after falling almost 2 weeks behind. I dug myself out from under a 3" high stack of ungraded work in the past 2 days. That feels good.

I also made equation posters today for the "new" equations, some of which are now a month old. Nice to cross that off the to-do list too.

Unfortunately, it's 10:15 PM and I don't really have any idea what I'm going to teach tomorrow. Not as caught up on planning. Or sleep, it appears.

Holidays

Today I got my third holiday greeting from a student by email. First two were around the 25th from sweet studious girls. Not surprisingly. Today it was from a much tougher student, P, who failed my class first term due to severe lack of work turned in. Second term he started off with a bang (and was SO PROUD to have an A after about 2 weeks) but then missed a bunch of school and stopped doing any work and currently has a low F. Anyway, the message is:

H A P P Y ' NEWYEARS missss [Pippi] - have a goodONE &' take it easyy . OH & i was suppost to tell yuu Merry Christmas but i wasnt around a computer , sorry / but i just wanna wish you and your family the best & take a easy :] !

Of course I wrote back saying thanks and wishing him well and telling him to enjoy the rest of break because I'm going to make his life miserable in January so he can pass second term. Ha.

Resolutions for school

I think I will start class on Tuesday (our first day back from break) with a mini-lesson about resolutions. I'd like to present my planned crackdown on procedures and rules as "Ms. Pippi's Resolutions" and then I will ask the kids to make their own list of resolutions related to school. At the beginning of the year I had kids write goals but I never followed up with them - in fact I think that only some of my classes actually did it - but I would like to write resolutions and then find a way to follow up with them at the beginning of each month. Although maybe that's not a good idea if I fail on my own resolutions. Not sure if I want a monthly chance for kids to gloat that they STILL aren't doing their do nows or whatever I resolve to make my priorities for January.

Anyway, I'm brainstorming ideas about what my priorities will be. There are plenty of things that aren't going as well as I'd like them to, but I need to find some that I can actually tackle, and hopefully that will give me good payoff for the effort involved on my part. Some ideas:

1. Routines to start class. Kids come late and though I have some penalties for tardiness (sign in, then you are theoretically supposed to make up the time with me after school) they are not effective and I haven't been following through very well - plus kids have started to take my 2-5 minute grace period (longer or shorter depending on where kids are coming from) as a freedom to not even try to be in the room when the bell rings. Furthermore, kids are flat out not doing the Do Now, and I spend the first 5 minutes of class cajoling kids to take out their homework and at least READ what's on the board. Clearly this area needs some work.
2. Homework. I give it every day, and some kids do it religiously, but a lot of others do it sporadically, and some kids never do it. It's 20% of their grade so this is part of the reason some kids are failing. And I often assume that kids get extra practice on this so that they will be ready for quizzes but kids who don't do it obviously don't get that practice. Also there is blatant, blatant copying going on.
3. Uniform policy enforcement. Kids are supposed to have a school polo shirt and khaki pants on all day, every day. Kids take them off throughout the day and have a plethora of excuses. I spend a lot of energy telling kids to put their khaki pants back on (usually over their jeans, since that appears to be the preferred way to wear them). I would like this to be less of a struggle.
4. Make up work. I need a better system for making kids aware of what they missed and getting them to actually do it. This is also a big contributor to some of my kids' failing grades. My existing policy of "ask somebody what you missed and get it done within a week" is not working.
5. Student participation. My school district gave out a student survey for every kid in every class and one thing I ranked low on (rightfully so) is calling on different kids. I mostly let kids volunteer to answer questions and it tends to be the same few kids doing it all the time. I have popsicle sticks with kids' names on them but I haven't used them much this year. One of my classes consistently complains that I treat them like little kids so maybe the sticks are too babyish for high school, but I need some way of calling on kids with some semblance of randomness.
6. Rigor in class discussions. I'd like to spend more time talking about lab results and the conclusions we can draw from them, but I'm not sure how to make class discussions productive when only a few kids will talk and while that is happening most of the other kids are either zoned out, doing distracting things (talking about other things, out of their seats, etc). I have more success getting kids to stay on task when I am asking them to do something productive than when I am trying to hold a whole-class discussion together, but reading and writing skills are too weak (and/or kids are too lazy) to do much rigorous science on their own or in small groups - so whole-class discussions are my most promising idea to get more in depth about the science content.
   

In reality I don't think I can change all of this. At least not this school year. I have to figure out what I can actually work towards in January and then figure out how to clue kids in about my new plans and expectations.