Week 3/4 - Changes afoot!

Already this week, we have had quite a few drastic changes to our three classes.  It's Monday.

Essentially, a long term substitute teacher was relieved of her Math post, and so all of her students were dispersed to the remaining Math teachers.  What this meant for us is a slew of schedule changes, which amounted to about 10 new students per class.  Just when I was starting to get names down, they throw this wrench at me!?  To be honest, not much good has come from this whole scenario... I'm trying to look for positives, but I can't find any:

• We have just enough clickers for each student to have one, but many of them are unreliable, or downright non-functional.
• The rooms are now at complete capacity.  It feels very crowded, especially with 4 adults in the room.
• We lost a few of our most pleasant students.
• We gained a few problem children.
• We have to essentially start over introducing the procedures in class.
• Grades are now a mess.

On top of all of this, I have great sympathy for the substitute who was relieved of her math post.  She has been hired full time, but for subjects that she was assigned this morning!  Good on her for having work, but damn that has to be nerve wracking to not know what subject you are teaching until the first day you have to do it.

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Last week, there was a young man who was brought to tears on consecutive days.  This is sad, yes, it was brought on by his own lack of effort up to that point.  I personally worked with him as he struggled through learning the basics of solving for single-variable, linear equations.  I offered to him on Friday for us to come in early to work with him before school on his homework (at least I told him to think about it over the weekend).  Much to my delight, he was sitting in our classroom when we arrived.  I worked with him on a few problems, and he got most of it done before his class met in 3rd hour.  I wish we'd have had more warning so we could've gotten there earlier.  I'm proud of the little guy for showing some initiative.

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As for everything else classroom related, things just keep on moving forward.  Teaching my unit looms on the horizon, and I'm just worried about how I'm going to have time for it all.  I have confidence with being in front of the class, and don't seem to have any issues handling disciplinary issues as they come up, but I'm not sure I'm yet comfortable with planning to teach a unit.  I guess we'll find out soon enough!

Also, I'm sort of confused by my boundaries as a Teacher Assistant.  I often see kids misbehaving in the hallways, but I'm not sure how much intervention is within my right, nor the best way to handle it.  Mostly it's just kids playfully pushing and shoving, but it's clear that they are not being respectful.  Today we had to move as a class through the hallway, and I watched as one of our students struck another student in the back with his folder.  I pulled him aside and sent him to the back of the line, but nothing came of it.  I feel like I should have been more strict, but I'm not sure.  Ah!

Well, I've begun to ramble.  It's spirit week, so I'm excited to wear red and white on Wednesday!

Cheers.  :)

Week Two - In the Books

Now that Week 3 is officially underway, I thought it'd be a good idea to reflect back on Week 2.  Be wary, I'm long winded.

Getting down student names is still a struggle.  This has always been a huge barrier for me with personal and professional relationships.  As soon as someone says, "My name is...", my brain melts.  I've had someone introduce themself to me, and upon mentally telling myself that I need to remember the name given, I've forgotten it.  It's not pretty.

This mostly only happens when the anxiety of forgetting a name causes me to forget.  Ironic.

I think that at its core, I have trouble with facial recognition.  I seem to be able to remember spatial distribution and physical appearance (where the students sit and what they wear), but the faces are the issue.  I can remember names, I just can't match them to their owners.  That said, I'm not completely hopeless... I think I have most of 1st and 3rd hours down, but 2nd hour is elusive, damnit!

Those obvious deficiencies out of the way...

Class if going well.  We have done more to get involved in running certain components of each day.  We alternate between doing clicker questions, which ultimately take half of the class period.  These clickers are used both to give students practice with concepts they already know, as well as to introduce them to new concepts.  It's being used formatively to gain instant feedback on student strengths and weaknesses.  If a certain concept or question is observed to be misunderstood by a large portion of the class, we cover it in more depth.  Sadly, we tend to get bogged down with these, and we wish that we had more time to give students to explore nuances and make connections on their own.

Realistically, though, we just don't have the time.  I get caught asking students, "Why did you X?" or "What did you notice about the problem that suggested Y?"  These are nice techniques to check for student understanding, but they take soooo much time.  Thus, we are only allowed to use these questions sparingly, and must race through other things.

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Homework is fun, too.  Many of them don't do it.  One student got a less than stellar grade on his homework because he joined class late, missing out on some notes and a lesson.  He left most of it blank.  I gave him the opportunity to finish the problems he left blank so he could earn some extra points.  He declined.

Really, how little do these kids have invested in their learning.  You can lead a horse to water...

It's frustrating sometimes.

Thankfully another student took me up on the offer.  Her grade improved quite significantly, and I was relieved to see that they hadn't all given up.  It's quite the roller-coaster ride.

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Lastly, I really don't know how to teach students how to do story problems.  They simply don't get them.  I've read that teaching them to look for keywords is bad practice, but I just can't think of any other way.  They read a question (most of the time), and just pick out the numbers.  They haphazardly choose a strategy, which is often based on no specific reasoning, and is often wrong.  Most of them have figured out how to use a guess-and-check method when doing the clicker questions.  This is a fine test taking strategy, but it really fails to show any learning, nor does it do them any good moving forward.

There are talks of us covering the answers for all but the last 30 seconds of their time.  Let's see how well this goes...

It's now 9:00.  Bedtime!

Reflections on My First Week

One week down.  [Marks tally on wall]

What an interesting week it was...  The biggest struggle throughout my first week was trying to remember names.  The, err.... interesting names that these students have does not speed up the process.  Mr. Martin uses a method of greeting the students at the door each day to learn their names.  Due to having four adults in the room for the first three hours of the day, I've resorted to listening in on these greetings (the students really don't need to shake four hands on their way in) as well as taking attendance from the seating chart to practice their names.  Thank God for seating charts!

I have most of them down by now, but I really don't feel shame in asking them to repeat their names.  I hope to have it down pat by the end of the second week.

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On day two, we had the students fill out basic informational cards.  These essentially included their names, where they were born, something fun they did over the summer, something they remember from Math class last year, and a goal that they have for their future.  This last one was emphasized because, well, it was the most interesting.  It was not specified what "the future" meant, so the students were given a few liberties in that determination.

The male responses were overwhelmingly of the nature: NFL player, NBA player, to play college football.

At first glance, one is wont to chalk it up to the dreams of a young mind... until you stop and think about the situation in which these students live.  (Warning: Sweeping generalizations to follow)  The students in my classroom are predominantly African American, and many live in families with less than ideal circumstances.  It is about this age (sixth and seventh grade) when students tend to shed their childish "fantastical" dreams, but I fear that these students lack the positive role models and influences to move beyond these dreams.  Compounded with all these "uplifting" stories of poor, African American athletes rising up from impoverished situations to become heroes in their respective athletic areas, these males may be of the state of mind that the only way to become something is to become a star athlete.  Who do these stories uplift, anyways?  Surely, they aren't doing anyone any favors.  Note: this could be total BS.  [Gives grain of salt].

The female responses were much less centralized on any specific goal, ranging from passing sixth grade, to going to college, to becoming a lawyer, to becoming a teacher, and so on.  One interesting young lady indicated that she wanted to be both a lawyer and a hairdresser.  More power to her!

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Otherwise, my first week was pretty nondescript.  Most of the time was spent establishing procedural practices.  I have pretty strong opinions regarding the Responsible Thinking Process line of questioning to address behavioral issues, but I'll save that for a later date.  I've said it before, and I'll say it again:

The biggest struggle for my students this fall isn't going to be the new material, but the basic Math that they should already know.  When one cannot confidently add single-digit numbers, algebra is going to be a blast!

-Matt

Ah. Fresh starts.

I just blew the dust off of this blog after not touching it for three years. After passing out from the excess of dust in the air, I think I may have hit my head. No bother... I'm back!