All week I've been really struggling to get my students to get on task at the beginning of class. I have a drill on the overhead every day for them to get to work on when class starts, but this week they have taken upwards of 2-5 minutes just to settle down and get on task. So I busted out a marker and started putting checks on pages of students that were on task during the first minute, and it worked well. I didn't even have to tell them what the check meant, I think students are conditioned to just want something on their page. In the future I'm going to get some sort of stamp to use - or maybe incorporate marking students off as I take attendance.
Two girls in my 2nd period honors class told me I reminded them from Kip from Napoleon Dynamite. I did a quick impression of Kip where he says don't be jealous cause I've been chatting online with hot babes all day, and they erupted in laughter.
On the 11th, one student suggested that we have a moment of silence in honor of Sept. 11th. It was really powerful for me, to be standing there for a minute in complete silence - not only because of the emotions I feel about Sept. 11th, but just to be there teaching - responsible for so many students understanding of the world and how it works. I couldn't help but slightly tear up and one student noticed and it was a good humanizing moment for that class to see how that day and moment of silence would impact me.
I assigned them a project over the weekend to make a Guns Germs and Steel children's book. They did not like the idea and I could have cared less. I have a feeling like some books might suck.
On Friday afternoon, we had a BCTR final meeting. It was great to see everyone, even though I was completely drained mentally and emotionally. Best of all was my conversation with Jon Michael. As we were talking I realized how terribly alone I've felt these last 3 weeks, and it was so nice to just talk to someone who knew what I was going through. Not to mention he might be able to get me a full year of world history lesson plans, which would probably have the most dramatically positive impact on my life for the next 10 months.
1 comment:
I'm student teaching this semester (I try to picture myself out there floating all alone and it's f-ing scary.) My naive husband is applying to the BCTR program. Anyway, what is working for our HS classes is to have a seating chart and when they are talking when they should be working, or misbehaving some other way we give them a warning and then put a dot under their name. Each dot equals 5 points deducted from their weekly grade, which starts at 100%. We also do a journal/starter and it's supposed to be silent, but it's very difficult to get them to settle. If they behave better the next day we can give them points back. I'll try to withhold from comments, but look forward to reading more about your experience. I'm curious to know how parent's night went/goes.
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