Things going WELL at work....
Okay, all you guys hear about is the pissing and moaning about my impossible hours, the impossible demands made on me, and impossible students. Time for some good stuff.
Robotics class: We cracked the seals on the Vex kits last week. It took one day to unpack, one day to inventory, and one day to build, play with, and dismantle the testbeds. We're now at the third day of building "Squarebot". I've put the students in groups of five, with one project manager, one documentation person, and three engineers. Some groups are working wonderfully well; one PM had the brains to realize that they could build symmetric halves of Squarebot and then fasten them together. They're well ahead. One lethargic group has one guy doing all the building while everybody else (including the nominal PM) mopes or gossips. They're far back. Hopefully, they'll learn a little lesson here.
Three freshmen (One black, one hispanic, one muslim. Two boys, one girl. Welcome to New America.) are doing so well in the class that I'm encouraging them to apply for the MIT SEED program. I made calls home one night to try to talk to their parents about the program. The number for one home didn't work. I asked him in class today; he said their phone had been disconnected and he didn't know if his mom had a new number yet. The kids are bright, motivated, and young. Maybe I hit one of them at a critical point, and they'll wind up changing the world because I saw their potential. I may never know.
The math classes are going okay. I use the city standardized end-of-chapter tests, and I got a fair number of 90% and 80% scores on the last exam. And some random-guessing 20% and 30% scores as well, primarily from special ed kids.
I've been holding after-school office hours in the school lounge. (Three reasons for this: My classroom is distant from the rest of the school. My setting up in the lounge makes it easier for students to drop by, if I'm where they come anyway to drop off their laptops. It removes the possibility of my being alone with a student in an isolated wing. And it's right next to the Principal's office, for extra visibility!) This Thursday, I had three students hovering around me for an hour, getting caught up on homework and getting reinforcement on the lessons. Also, a calculus and a geometry student from other classes wandered over, apparently drawn by my "The Math Teacher is IN" sign. I did my best to help them, too. Motivated students, YAY!
Robotics class: We cracked the seals on the Vex kits last week. It took one day to unpack, one day to inventory, and one day to build, play with, and dismantle the testbeds. We're now at the third day of building "Squarebot". I've put the students in groups of five, with one project manager, one documentation person, and three engineers. Some groups are working wonderfully well; one PM had the brains to realize that they could build symmetric halves of Squarebot and then fasten them together. They're well ahead. One lethargic group has one guy doing all the building while everybody else (including the nominal PM) mopes or gossips. They're far back. Hopefully, they'll learn a little lesson here.
Three freshmen (One black, one hispanic, one muslim. Two boys, one girl. Welcome to New America.) are doing so well in the class that I'm encouraging them to apply for the MIT SEED program. I made calls home one night to try to talk to their parents about the program. The number for one home didn't work. I asked him in class today; he said their phone had been disconnected and he didn't know if his mom had a new number yet. The kids are bright, motivated, and young. Maybe I hit one of them at a critical point, and they'll wind up changing the world because I saw their potential. I may never know.
The math classes are going okay. I use the city standardized end-of-chapter tests, and I got a fair number of 90% and 80% scores on the last exam. And some random-guessing 20% and 30% scores as well, primarily from special ed kids.
I've been holding after-school office hours in the school lounge. (Three reasons for this: My classroom is distant from the rest of the school. My setting up in the lounge makes it easier for students to drop by, if I'm where they come anyway to drop off their laptops. It removes the possibility of my being alone with a student in an isolated wing. And it's right next to the Principal's office, for extra visibility!) This Thursday, I had three students hovering around me for an hour, getting caught up on homework and getting reinforcement on the lessons. Also, a calculus and a geometry student from other classes wandered over, apparently drawn by my "The Math Teacher is IN" sign. I did my best to help them, too. Motivated students, YAY!