In the trenches...

[Student Quotes of the Week]
1. Student: "Why do we always learn more in the summer than in the regular school year?"
Me: "I don't know - what do you think?"
Student: "I think it's because we have Teach For America teachers in the summer who make us work hard."
2. "Mister, we learned good today."
3. "Mister, is this really my grade??" (Grinning) "I've never got an 80 in a class before."
4. "I hate cheesebugers because of the cheese, but I LOVE double cheeseburgers."
Another Student: "That doesn't make any sense at all."
5. "Can you put colors in your beard if we get our goals on the final exam?" (I am growing out my beard until we reach our class goal on the final exam)
6. "That was your boss? I hope we don't get you fired!"

Another week down. We covered a lot of material this week, and the kids hung in there pretty well. I am seeing a lot of growth out of everyone - so much so out of a couple of them that I'm going to have to start challenging 3 or 4 students more because they keep acing my assignments. There is still such a wide range of levels in my class that it is challenging to meet the needs of every student, but this is something that will be a challenge for as long as I teach. I am continually trying new things in class that will help me meet the needs of each kid. I truly believe that a couple of my students are ready for college, and I need to start pushing them to think about different schools, applications, campus visits, etc. On the other end of the spectrum, I need to keep pushing my students who struggle with English in order to get their confidence up. I think the #1 thing holding back a couple students is that they just don't have any confidence in their English abilities which affects their ability to get as much out of class as possible.

My school director observed my classroom on Wednesday. I didn't know beforehand that he was coming, but he walked in during the first couple minutes when I was performing a mock "closing argument" from a made-up murder case in order to introduce our topic for the day (using evidence from text to back up an argument). For the first 25 minutes, class went really well, the kids were getting the material, and I was on top of my game. 25:41 into class, two of my kids walked in late. As they walked in, they were talking to each other and were generally disruptive. I decided I would sternly tell them that they were too late to be counted tardy, that they would be counted absent for the day, that they were taking learning time away from others in the class, and that they needed to quickly sit down in the first row. They continued to be mildly disruptive for the next five minutes -- each time, I would give them a "teacher look" or use proximity to get them back on task. I thought to myself that all days to have a minor problem in my class that has run so smoothly up to this point, this was not the day.

After class I saw my school director and was nervous to hear what he had to say. He told me that the way I handled the situation was exactly how he would have, and that he was really impressed with the personal relationships I had built with my students. He said that he has observed the two kids who walked in late in other classes and that they do much more work in my class than in the others. He said that telling a kid to leave your class should always be the last resort. So, that made me feel better about things (although it is absolutely unnacceptable to walk into my class 25 minutes late...I just won't tolerate it).

We have turned in the majority of our lesson plans already, there are only four school days next week, and only three school days the week after that before final exams. So there aren't a lot more days to push my kids even further forward, but we're going to work like crazy to get them ready for their final. I passed out midterm grades on Friday - 2 A's, 5 B's, and 4 C's. Everyone is passing right now, but I challenged the kids to raise their grades even higher during the next two weeks. It's going to be hard to just get up and leave them on July 10. I pray that I'll be able to stay in contact and follow their progress while I am teaching in St. Louis. All of them deserve nothing but the best.