Things I love about third period

1. They know I mean business when I don’t want to hear anything else about the fight Joseph got into in the hallway. And when I tell them how upset I am over Joseph’s suspension, they know it and start to check each other when the subject comes up again. “Hey man, she doesn’t wanna hear that.”

2. Shecoriey (who started out the year with a dirty mouth and an inability to keep her mouth shut) calls out, “Y’all cuss too much!” “Y’all too loud!” This is the one class that actually attempts to curb their cussing in my classroom.

3. Their investment in my SAT “Word of the Day.” The class likes to see who can come up with the most sentences using the vocabulary word. Dernard comes in every day (including the days he doesn’t have me) to ask me what the word of the day is and use it in a sentence that exhibits his knowledge of the definition of the word. Do they do it for the jolly rancher I give them for it? Most likely. Are they learning new words and retaining them? Yes. Dernard used 2 of them correctly in his essay. WIN.

4. They break out into song when Al Green’s “Love and Happiness” starts playing.

5. They break out into dance when I play anything by Michael Jackson.

6. …Yet they know when it’s time to sit down and do work.

7. …And they actually do the work.

Made it through October!

Happy November!

So obviously, I haven't been doing such a great job maintaining my blog. What have I been doing instead?

1. Teaching 151 tenth-graders.
2. Dealing with the emotional issues of 151 tenth-graders, ranging from pregnancies, breakups, and fights.
3. Grading the papers, quizzes, and work of 151 tenth-graders.
4. Trainings and professional developments.

In other words, Ms. Chen has no life.

Even though I am super excited for Thanksgiving to come, and then Christmas, the quick passing of time has also gotten me super stressed. There is a graph they showed us at the before we started teaching:


Yep, I seem to be just right on schedule. Deep in the pit of disillusionment.

Between the fights, suspensions, and wasted learning time, our big goals seem harder and harder to attain. Looking at my data, my students are nowhere close to 80% mastery of concepts. We took benchmark tests a couple of weeks ago that I judged to be rather simple. What was the class average?

About 62%.

While my first response was to chalk it up to general unwillingness to try and the students not taking it seriously (come one, 4% of my kids put "E" as an answer for the multiple choice test..."E" wasn't even listed as an answer option!), I can't help but remember that academic impact model we learned about at institute.

Teacher actions directly influence student actions.

As a teacher, where am I failing them? How can I invest them? Why are they not learning?