Back-to-School Night

Hello again! It's late and I'm tired, but I really wanted to document how happy I am right now. I got back a short time ago from Back-To-School Night which was a success. I'd say I had about 6 parents per class and they all seemed to like me - and that's the whole point, right? Seriously, though, I can hear how much more confident I sound, not just because I'm better at public speaking, but because I know my class is just organized better this year.

For instance, last year when let students re-take quizzes, they kept the highest score. That ended up in a lot of students re-taking quizzes hoping they'd get lucky and score better. There was no connection in their mind between studying and succeeding, so it kind of defeated the whole purpose. This year, they keep the re-take score better or not.

I'm starting a club this year that I'm really excited about. It's going to be based on the eCyberMission competition hosted by the US Army. I couldn't come up with a non-nerdy name for it, so my homeroom students named it for me: Mi$$ion Impossible - win cash with your science fair project. Basically, its a separate competition but similar enough to the science fair that I can help students tailor their projects so they can submit the same work to both competitions. I think science fair is a huge waste of time, but I really like this eCyberMission thing. Instead of focusing on things that students find so boring, it focuses on asking the students to propose a real solution to a real problem in their community. Talk about relevance.

And the rest of my first week and the beginning of this week have been great. I'm not going to say easy or stress-free. I was at work until 6:00 every day and until 7:30 on Friday. I'm still a slow lesson planner. But it occurred to me today that I haven;t put a single check on my clipboard yet. I have not once had to move past just asking a student to stop. They always did the first time! Glory Glory Hallelujah! I love these kids! I can't wait until their personalities really come out, because the only down side right now is they are kind of boring. It's like they are too easy to teach. And by the way, I'm not the only teacher at the school who has noticed this. I heard another one saying the same thing; that we must have gotten a really good crop this year.

And I am so missing some of my babies from last year. I'm emailing with one of my favorites and I get phone calls once in a while from another. But some other kids I am just dieing to know how they are doing. I want to ask them how they're doing in school. Basically I'm thinking of my lunch crowd. By the end of the year I had a group of about 15 students who ate lunch with me every day. I miss them. But you know what, of course, there were certainly that many students I hated to see every day in class. I can think of about 5 students I truly hated on a personal level. Hopefully I won't be hating any students this year. That was really the main reason I left. How could I possibly teach if I actually hated some of the kids. That's just so wrong. It's against teacher code, and even my own personal values. I clashed with that culture. I think switching schools will mean that culture is not quite as pervasive.

Tomorrow we stop doing review activites (metric system, latin roots, etc.) and do our first lab. I'm doing the same paper towel lab I did last year. The only thing is I ran out of time to assign lab groups. Oops. Maybe just have them count of by four this time and assign groups next time? We'll see.

So in summary, still love my new school, but can't make any real substantial judgements yet. I'll get back y'all later. Until then, have lovely days.