Progress

We have a new district SIS (student information system) and one awesome thing about it is that we now have 17 report card comment options instead of only 12.  The new comments are nothing particularly insightful, mind you, but I am immensely pleased that I can now say "Poor attendance" for the student who showed his face 0 times during the third quarter.  Previously I could only say "Irregular attendance" and that student is nothing if not regular.

You can't make this stuff up

Two sweet, well-mannered, easygoing boys from my 5th period class got in a fight in the cafeteria today, just before my class.  The rest of the class was AMPED when they came into my room, and I was shocked that D. and A. fought, so I was dying to find out the details, but clearly the right teacher move was to try to distract the kids into doing physics work instead.

Later I asked the principal what the story was, and I laughed and laughed.  Which was probably unprofessional.  Oops.

Apparently D. was telling his friends at lunch about the vein that pops out of his forehead when he is angry.  The other boys wanted to see it, and D. said the thing that makes him angriest is when people talk trash about his family.  So T. said something about D's mom, and it didn't work - no vein.

Then A. chimed in with some other comment about D's mom, for purposes of the vein experiment of course, and D. got so mad that he punched A. in the face.  Obviously A. then punched him back, and so on, until they were rolling on the floor fighting.

This is the most hilarious fight story I have ever heard.

The obvious two remaining questions, to which I may never know the answers, unless I abandon all professionalism and ask T. for the scoop tomorrow:
1. What did A say?
2. Did D's vein pop out before he threw the punch?

Compliments, some unintentional

1.  "I don't know why everyone loves you and hates Ms. A [math teacher].  It should be the other way around.  You're the one who sucks."  This was meant as a sincere insult but I took it as a compliment, since it came from J in 3rd period who has already made it extremely clear that he very strongly dislikes me.  What I didn't know is that I was even vaguely popular amongst the majority of students in my crazy rowdy 3rd period.

2.  "Only for this class, because my other teachers don't deserve it."  This was from L in 5th period, regarding her over-the-top awesome amazing projects that she has turned in for every project so far in my class.

It's the end of third quarter, the start of April vacation, 6 weeks until the big state test and 2 months until school is out.  But who's counting?

Wrong names

Things have been more than a little rocky lately, but there are still plenty of fun/funny moments.

I have a student that I'll call Teddy here.  We have a hot and cold relationship; he has been known to tell me off, but he also brought me a homemade Valentine's Day cupcake with a teeny paper heart that said "What the formula for happy V-Day" (sic).

T raises his hand for help.
Ms. P: Yes, Theodore?
T: That's not my name.
Ms. P:  No?  Teddy is your full name?
T: Yes.
Ms. P:  Oh.  Too bad, I kinda feel like calling you Theodore anyway.
T (shooting me a mock dirty look): Fine.  Ms. G.
Ms. P (laughing heartily): You have no idea how funny that actually is.

Ms. G is the other physics teacher, and last year when we were both brand new white female physics teachers, everyone, including the principal, secretary, school police, and 2/3 of the teaching staff, called both of us Ms. G.  All year.  Nobody called her Ms. Pippi, but I got called Ms. G on a daily basis (her name is much more common and easier to remember, spell, pronounce than my real name).

Bailing

I haven't written anything here because things have been too hard to sum up in a blog post.  I'm stressed out all the time and every class period feels like a battle.  I am losing more battles than I am winning.

I have been watching for job openings at other schools, and this past week I interviewed at a charter school near where I live.  I am really impressed by the students and staff that I talked to, and the school seems much more coherently and thoughtfully run than the school where I am right now.  On Friday I got a call that they want to hire me; we haven't talked salary yet, but it will definitely be a significant cut from what I am earning now, possibly $10k less per year.  Still, if I'm looking out for my own interests, the new school is certainly better for me than where I am now.

But I'm hesitating because I feel like I'm bailing on my students.  My wonderful spouse says I'm not bailing unless I leave midyear, and I see his point.  However, I became a teacher in an urban school because I wanted to work against the achievement gap that kids face.  I feel like a failure often enough that I can rationalize leaving by telling myself that students would be better off with another teacher who can manage behavior and serve them better, but in reality my replacement will likely not be much better than I am.  They'd be best off if I could stay and figure out how to be better, but I don't know if I can.  Or, I don't know if I can do it without sacrificing too much of my own sanity and time and lifestyle outside of school.  Part of me knows it's not selfish for me to want to have some free time for my family and friends, but the other part of me knows my kids can't bail out of their school just because it's not meeting their needs, so it seems unfair that I can.  And that's why I feel like I'm abandoning them, both my current students (who may or may not be moving on to 10th grade next year) but also the as-yet-unknown 120-some incoming freshmen who will study physics in room 2301 next year, with or without me.

Still, regardless of the guilt I feel, I will probably accept the new job.

Make-up work and grading systems

As I think about things that I want to improve at school in the new year, I have a bunch of ideas about things to try that might improve student participation or make group work better or let me do more productive formative assessments.

The thing that remains a puzzle is make-up work.  Poor attendance is an issue for a lot of students and my expectation that kids should take the initiative to find out what they missed when they return from being absent has not been met.  I have been slowly improving my own systems to let kids find out what they missed - this year I have hanging folders on the wall for the past week's classwork and homework, and about a month ago I reserved a small area on the board for the overview of the week's activities, including quizzes and labs and the titles of notes so that kids can see what happened in their absence and hopefully use that as a trigger to remind them what they need to make up.

A few of my students do actually find out what they missed and make it up in a reasonable amount of time.  But the majority of students don't.  It seems like part of a general pattern among my students where they say they care about their grades (and get upset when they are failing), but they don't take action to do what it takes to earn a good grade.

I have been thinking about my grading system, partly because it seems like the other teachers at my school have systems where it is much easier for kids to stay after school once or twice, or take home a packet of work, and raise themselves up to not just a passing grade, but often an A or a B.  In some ways I wish my class's grades were that easy to raise - particularly since I have over 50% of my kids failing right now, and that's not good for anyone.  But on the other hand, I don't think it's right to be able to slack for weeks and then do one burst of work and earn an A, partly because I don't believe that allows true learning that will stick with the students.

I have been reading about standards based grading (SBG) on various blogs for awhile now, and in some ways it sounds like the answer to my problems, and a clearer and fairer way to grade.  Maybe the daily homeworks and Do Now points and everything else shouldn't even be part of grades; if kids can show consistent mastery of the physics concepts in my class, shouldn't that be enough for an A?  But I wonder if I can make the retesting aspect of SBG work in my classes, where there are 30 kids at all different levels and many of them lack the motivation to come before or after school for a retest.  I also wonder about how to combine SBG with the project-based learning I've been trying to implement.  If only quizzes count in true SBG, does that mean I have to scrap the projects?  Are kids actually getting anything out of doing the projects anyway?  Even if I dump the projects I still want to have labs, so if I do SBG does that mean the labs don't count towards grades?  I kind of hate grading lab notebooks, so a system where I stop doing that sounds pretty appealing.  I don't think I have the energy or clarity of ideas to change my grading system midyear, so this is mostly a question for next year.  Although if I keep having half my students with Fs, I'm going to have to do something to get a few more kids to pass this year.

Performances

This past week my students did a project that's basically straight out of our physics curriculum that I never had the guts to try last year.  It goes with our waves unit, with an emphasis on sound (the curriculum specifies it as sound and light, but I left out the light part).  The project involves making a musical instrument and performing for the class, and also writing about how the instrument makes sound and how the sound gets to the listener.

Some of my fears about this project were well-founded.  The vast majority of the instruments were basically paper plate maracas filled with beans.  Some groups just got up and shook their maracas without any particular rhythm for the required 1 minute.  A few people refused to perform entirely.  Most of the performances were unrehearsed.

But I am glad I tried the project, and would probably do it again.  It was nice to have the kids present something for the class (although I probably should have had some form of public speaking or presenting of solutions or something before this to make it more normal and less of an ordeal).  Some of the performances were hilarious, and though they were not what I would call ideal, respectful audience members, the kids seemed to enjoy watching the performances and many said they had fun performing.  For next year I need to think about how to make kids make a better variety of instruments, and how to make sure the presenting takes less time.  I might make it an optional performance next year, so kids who are outgoing and/or creative enough to want to do it can, and the other kids can do a different set of project requirements.  I thought more kids would go with the write-physics-song-lyrics option, but I think a combination of stage fright and laziness prevented it for more groups, so I might make that mandatory next year.  The one student who did sing an actual song (Bruno Mars's Lazy Song adapted with physics lyrics, which he found on the internet) totally brought down the house in his class and won the "most creative" voting by a landslide.

Other highlights included the kid who made his own awesome-looking cardboard guitar (which unfortunately had plain old string for strings and barely made a sound at all) and asked my permission in advance to smash the guitar like a rock star at the end of his performance, the kid who made a really cool-sounding rain stick at home using a fabric bolt tube, nails, and rice, and used it as his group's grand finale, and the girls who made a beat with their maracas and had two enthusiastic (and rather provocative) dancers.