The past few days have been a whirlwind. After a three days of standing for four hours straight due to state testing, I was able to sit down and do some grading and TFA work on Friday at school while my kids entertained themselves by playing cooperative games or making Teacher Appreciation Week cards. It was wonderful! I also had a chance to talk one-on-one with some of my troubled students about the issues they are facing in their lives. Honestly, I still enjoy the role modeling, mentoring, and counseling aspect of my job more than teaching science content. I wish I was afforded more time for these crucial conversations. Moreover, my homeroom was one of three classes who won a pizza party. I’m not really sure what we did to win, but we’ll accept on behalf of being awesome ;-P
I also had my “TFA Graduation” of sorts; more on that…
Our state testing cycle, the MCT2 (Mississippi Curriculum Test 2nd Edition), is officially over! Not including the test for my class, the 60-question 8th grade science test taken last week, these three multiple-choice tests consisted of 43 language questions, 40 writing questions, and 60 math questions. Unsurprisingly, students struggle most with long reading passages; at…
read more »It makes me so sick. To think no matter how quick. This race, we won’t win. In my rest and relaxation following one of the last Monday’s of the school year, I sought to read some uplifting local news. I saw on Twitter a link to a track meet in Mississippi. As a former…
read more »Recently, a report came out claiming the KIPP charter network spends significantly more per pupil than comparable traditional district schools. The report is fairly straightforward but it’s conclusions highlight a disturbing paradox about the policy position a high-performing charter network such as KIPP and Achievement First find themselves in: “These findings, coupled with evidence from…
read more »Mariah Carey once sang, “if it’s over, please let me know” and I share her sentiments today. My 125 students took the 8th Grade Mississippi State Science today. It is a 60-question, multiple-choice exam consisting of questions from 30 objectives spanning Inquiry (Scientific Methods), Earth and Space Science, Life Science, and Physical Science. Since this…
read more »“In democratic countries, knowledge of how to combine is the mother of all other forms of knowledge; on its progress depends that of all the others” –Alexis de Tocqueville Originally, I was going to write about my final week of school before state testing begins, but I wanted to instead reflect on a great day…
read more »We all fail when we focus on blaming teachers on the one hand and blaming poor students and their families on the other. As reformers, “Rheeformers,” anti-reformers, unionists, etc continue to fight amongst ourselves, we neglect to answer one important question: who are we letting off the hook? The Law of the Excluded Middle states:…
read more »Today involved some disturbing developments I can’t really write about; summary: a persistent trouble-maker who is a threat to the school community had to be handled by the authorities and, on the other hand, one of my mentees landed in trouble- again. It’s really sad when a kid is trying to do well and either…
read more »“The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue, but that they are incomplete” http://on.ted.com/BEav (link to interesting TED Talk) Last week, I had a few spare moments to work on culture-building with my homeroom, and I ended up having a very intriguing conversation with one of my boys. The boy, L, shared with…
read more »Inertia: (n.) the tendency of an object to resist any change in its motion. Today was one of those days in which I feel so very fortunate to be teaching in my placement school. Those of us who have taught know that you have some rough days, but you also have that day where everything…
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