I went home for my Mardi Gras break. (Yes, I had a Mardi Gras break.) We had a snow day last Friday, so I drove home Friday and met my family at our favorite restaurant at home. Then I spent the weekend and came back yesterday (Tuesday). It was a nice stay - very relaxing; I did no work for school, and only a little bit for my ACE coursework.
A couple things to report today - I did ALL my lesson planning for the entire (3-day) week last night after I got home. That means that I wouldn't feel like I'm staring down a daunting amount of work to do if I had done any of the briefcase-full of grading I took home for the long weekend. Hopefully I'll have everything caught up by next week.
I have 10 of my 23 7th graders absent yesterday. I don't know if it's because Mardi Gras was too hard on them or their parents, but either way, today has been nice so far.
Two fun new ways to keep my students accountable. Instead of just give zero after zero for students who don't do their classwork, I'm going to start requiring them to bring their classwork worksheets back with a parent signature. That way they will either feel some need to do their work in class, or I can tell their parents that not only are they not doing their work, but they're then not getting your signature to at least get some credit. The other development is a little more fun (for me anyway). I have seven of my 7th graders spending PE with me this week for being extremely disrespectful and unruly last Thursday as we tried to line up from lunch to class. Not only am I making them write lines, I just had the awesome brainstorm today that their presence shouldn't interrupt my planning period. So I turned my Pandora station on (Pandora is a website that plays songs that resemble your favorite songs or artists). My Pandora mix includes country, soft rock, and classical. I cranked it up, and they couldn't say anything (unless they wanted to start over on their lines.) I'm pretty sure they hated it, and every time the songs changed, the guy in front of my desk turned around like he wanted to say something. I almost laughed out loud a few times.
Several of you have asked about my community issues. Basically, I just get annoyed but don't say anything. To avoid getting annoyed in the first place, I go to school and work. I also had plans on a few days that my community decided last-minute to do something (for example, I had plans in December for two Fridays ago, but my community decided to do something that night on Thursday at dinner). So, I was missing some events and I wasn't around much. I spent part of last night cleaning my room, and we're meeting tonight to restructure some community guidelines. I think it'll be fixed. (In my personal opinion, there's not much to fix because I have to get the work done. Now, instead of going to school, I will hopefully keep my room clean enough to work there.)
Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Thursday, February 11, 2010
My Early Attempts at Office Politics
So, there's a boy in my class today not doing ANYTHING!! He do his warm-up questions. He didn't have his homework. He didn't do his homework as we went over it (I told them that I would accept it out of the goodness of my heart...for a late grade, but still - we were REVIEWING THE ANSWERS!!!). He took the zero. He didn't do the classwork assignment - answering three questions.
I basically stood over him the entire time and asked him to start working, and right under my nose, he continued annoying his classmates around them. Talking smack at them, pointing at them, making faces at them as if I weren't there.
So...office politics. He was in a fight yesterday. At school. And back today. Want to know how it started? He was annoying his classmates a bit too much and so they fought. For a little more background, yesterday those two 7th grade fighters from Tuesday were suspended. I sent my principal a memo explaining why I had sent him to the office, and explaining that from my perspective, we had not been very consistent and that we may have even encouraged the behavior since there was literally no punishment. I just received a rather snippy reply. "I am surprised that you have such a strong opinion so that you feel it necessary to challenge a decision that was made."
How dare I?
In other news, I have "packed it in" on my community. That is the consensus between myself and our community supervisor. She suggested a "throw down" just to clear the air. I'm starting work on my laundry list as we speak. So...that looks to be fun.
And, finally, we are predicted to get 1-3 inches of snow tonight. That would effectively cancel school tomorrow. Dare I start counting chickens so soon?
I basically stood over him the entire time and asked him to start working, and right under my nose, he continued annoying his classmates around them. Talking smack at them, pointing at them, making faces at them as if I weren't there.
So...office politics. He was in a fight yesterday. At school. And back today. Want to know how it started? He was annoying his classmates a bit too much and so they fought. For a little more background, yesterday those two 7th grade fighters from Tuesday were suspended. I sent my principal a memo explaining why I had sent him to the office, and explaining that from my perspective, we had not been very consistent and that we may have even encouraged the behavior since there was literally no punishment. I just received a rather snippy reply. "I am surprised that you have such a strong opinion so that you feel it necessary to challenge a decision that was made."
How dare I?
In other news, I have "packed it in" on my community. That is the consensus between myself and our community supervisor. She suggested a "throw down" just to clear the air. I'm starting work on my laundry list as we speak. So...that looks to be fun.
And, finally, we are predicted to get 1-3 inches of snow tonight. That would effectively cancel school tomorrow. Dare I start counting chickens so soon?
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Forgive the Delay...
I started the new semester going strong, but due to a lack of reader feedback, I lost my momentum. So...let me fill you in on what has been going on lately.
6th grade are angels. We are starting our unit on World War II.
7th grade are up and down, but still very manageable. We are starting what I hope to be an awesome unit. I'm hitting the standards for political parties and branches of government, but we're going to do it by studying the Civil Rights Movement. (After all, it IS black history month.)
8th grade is still pretty out of control. However, a few have shown impressive improvement, so I'm mollified for now (notice I didn't say happy - at least with them).
Big news!!! We won our first game on January 30th!!! It went into overtime, and in the three minute overtime, we scored 7 and they were held scoreless. We resume the season after two weeks off on the 20th. Our last four games are against rich white schools. Should be interesting.
More big news...I had a meeting today at the Office of Catholic Schools, so I was not at school this afternoon. Within 30 minutes of leaving, 2 of my 7th grade boys started fighting (really fighting). Luckily two of my other boys pulled them apart and helped my sub sort them out. The great news? The two that pulled them apart aren't exactly the two that you might immediately think would be breaking-up-a-fight material. Quite the opposite on most days, actually.
Anyway...our community supervisor came in this afternoon. Her job is to make sure we're a functioning community. I've not been around much between basketball and annoyance with some housemates, so what happened on the first evening of her visit? My phone died while I was at school (where I stayed until 8:30), so I missed the memo on our community dinner outing. Yeah, doesn't look too good.
6th grade are angels. We are starting our unit on World War II.
7th grade are up and down, but still very manageable. We are starting what I hope to be an awesome unit. I'm hitting the standards for political parties and branches of government, but we're going to do it by studying the Civil Rights Movement. (After all, it IS black history month.)
8th grade is still pretty out of control. However, a few have shown impressive improvement, so I'm mollified for now (notice I didn't say happy - at least with them).
Big news!!! We won our first game on January 30th!!! It went into overtime, and in the three minute overtime, we scored 7 and they were held scoreless. We resume the season after two weeks off on the 20th. Our last four games are against rich white schools. Should be interesting.
More big news...I had a meeting today at the Office of Catholic Schools, so I was not at school this afternoon. Within 30 minutes of leaving, 2 of my 7th grade boys started fighting (really fighting). Luckily two of my other boys pulled them apart and helped my sub sort them out. The great news? The two that pulled them apart aren't exactly the two that you might immediately think would be breaking-up-a-fight material. Quite the opposite on most days, actually.
Anyway...our community supervisor came in this afternoon. Her job is to make sure we're a functioning community. I've not been around much between basketball and annoyance with some housemates, so what happened on the first evening of her visit? My phone died while I was at school (where I stayed until 8:30), so I missed the memo on our community dinner outing. Yeah, doesn't look too good.
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