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.  :)