Starting 2nd Quarter

The bulk of science fair is now over, grades are in, and second quarter has started. Here's a summary of how it all ended:

The science fair papers were mostly terrible. Like I was mentioning before, it is a struggle to convince these children that the whole point of "research" is to then include what you learn in your paper. Sooo many of them thought that just writing three paragraphs about what they just kind of know because they heard it on TV once counted as good research. I did have several bright students who wrote fantastic research papers, though, and I am so proud of them.

Now my after-school science fair competition club can really get under way since only those students who are truly participating, about 15 of which are my students, will be completing the science fair projects. That is a huge weight off of me now.

Grades were due last week and we had a teacher work day that was supposed to re-vive me, but totally did not. Grades were due at 2:30. I finished grading at 6:00. I also failed about half of my students, so I had to figure out how to write comments other than, "Your child is smart, but LAZY."

Which brings me to what I'm very disappointed about now. I feel like I am doing a pretty great job teaching this year. I could improve still, especially in making my notes more accessible to 14 year olds and generally making the class more fun, but overall, I really do believe I am a good teacher this year. So why has there been such a minimal shift in my class average? I thought I failed about 75% of my students last year in DC because I was an unpracticed first year teacher and it was the ghetto, basically. Failure was the norm at the school. It really wasn't odd to fail that many kids.

Now I'm in a very diverse community where maybe half of my kids are still in poverty and living in broken homes (or homeless as is the case with one of my students). The other half of my kids are in stable households, though. Add that to the fact I am a better teacher in a school system that actually works and I thought it was inevitable that I would only be failing a handful of my students. The only thing I can hope right now is that it was science fair that brought all of these grades down and that it'll be different this quarter. So far, though, it's not.

We've got two grades in the gradebook right now and the class average is already super low. I collected one homework and maybe 40% didn't do it. Then we took a post-quiz with a class average score of 63%. Now, this was a post-quiz, which in my class this year means that it is the second time the students took this quiz in class. Also, it means students had full access to the pre-quiz, which is the exact same quiz, on our class website. Students were supposed to go back and practice the pre-quiz and essentially memorize the answers. And a few students in each class did. The rest didn't even study or look at the pre-quiz once. I mean, seriously. Is there any other way to pump up the grades in my classes? I am literally giving them the answers to the quizzes and most are still failing.

They'z Lazy!

Anyway, it doesn't help to focus on the negative. I'm actively looking for solutions. I'm going to be changing the way students take notes in my class and have them type them up now. I sort of hate that idea because I think that the physical act of writing notes helps it stick in your brain, but the kids are begging me to type up their notes on the laptops instead of writing them by hand, so I'll give it a shot. They all told me in a survey that the class needs to be more fun, so I'm trying to make it more fun for them. At the same time, I am working hard to also instill a sense of needing to study on their own. They are far too reliant on Jeopardy games and study sessions after school. It's time they mature to actually doing the studying their own selves.

Oh, and my field trip. I was talking about how difficult it has been to get my old school in DC to actually run the field trip that I set up for them. Long story short I heard back from the science teacher there and she seems amenable to rescheduling, but is afraid to take the students on a field trip. I explained that I know exactly where she is coming from, and that's why I set up for guest speakers to come in first to introduce the idea. Then, I suggested, only the students who were respectful to the guest speakers would be allowed on the field trip the following week. I think that's reasonable, right? Hopefully she'll think so, too. I tried to make it very clear to her that the last thing I want to do is put extra work on her plate and that I am willing to do all the ground work on this. I hope it works out.

That's where we're at now. The past few days, though, my mind has been stuck on Thanksgiving break and is not focused on school. I am so looking forward to seeing my family in Florida next weekend :-) I'll have much happier stories to tell them all, this year. Last Thanksgiving, I was clinically depressed thanks to working in DC public schools. This year, despite me complaining about things this whole blog, I actually do love my job. I love my kids, my school, my profession, everything. I think my family will be relieved to see how much better I am doing, too. It's continually amazing to me what just 10 miles can do.

Have a Super Happy Thanksgiving everyone!!