OK, I need activities for low level kids. Think middle school mentality. They like to move around and do hands on things, but their comprehension is low and you can just about forget analysis. Friday we did chain reaction and discussed cause/effect. They had 16 slips of paper that told the story leading to the American Revolution. After they got them in order they had to make a chain. Worked well, but they struggled with the order. Sadly, I reviewed it before we started. Today we did gallery crawl and they completed graphics by going from station to station around the room. It was another cause/effect activity, but this time they were identifying it in the passage. I don’t know how much they got out of this happy little review, but they were quiet and working. I call that progress. No one threw anything at anyone else. I only heard shut the f* up once and it was not directed at me. He was trying to help me get them started. Ahhh, how kind. I did have to have security remove one individual. He was “excused” Friday as well. After speaking with his ROTC Major I don’t think it will be a problem again…and if it is Major will be called and not security. I smile at the thought. It won’t be pretty for the young man.

You know, one on one these kids are really good. It’s collectively that they turn into gangsta thugs, frontin’ and representin’. Ugh. Every single one will greet you in the hall and speak with respect when you call them out for a conference. In class, different story.

Anyway, I hate the bureaucracy and paperwork. Up until today I was catching up and not having to spend as much time in prep each evening. I found out today that I have to do a minimum 43 day study on a class or target group. To top it off, it has to be started by Friday. This means I have to create a pretest, get it approved, administer it, grade it, and then determine specific learning goals for each student in the data group. If the students meet growth over this minimum 43 day study I might receive a bonus. I will have to totally redo my plans for this week and still work in the goal test by Friday. Ridiculous. So after I found out about this happy little project I found out that I had to attend training for it after school. Again, no notice. Look, I know I am bad about not getting all the info I need out of emails, but this one did not arrive until today. Fortunately, I have good colleagues who will help me through and we will collaborate on the goal analysis.

Besides, what are they going to do, fire me? Really? Trust me, no one else wants to teach here. Think serious inner city. Yep, we have the students that cling to the underside of the bottom of the barrel. Oddly, I like them…most days.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 8th, 2010 at 8:45 PM and is filed under Ramblings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.