School Days

• Last week a teacher I work with was having issues with a parent of one of her students. I told my mom, "I'll bet you $100 that the kid is transferred into my class by the end of next week." Today I got the transfer. He seems like a nice kid. I don't quite know what the problem was, but I don't know why people can't just figure things out.

• I'm teaching 2 sections of SLCC Concurrent Enrollment this year. I've never really taught "the smart kids" before and although it is only Math 1010, it is an entirely different environment than my other classes. It is super fast paced and I feel guilty that it is the third week of school and there are still a few students whose names I don't know. There is a lot of pressure and right now there are a handful of kids who didn't do well on our first test. That means that if they don't pick things up, they'll have a bad grade on their college transcripts. It's a different type of pressure than I am used to.

• This year, we are in our 2nd year of double blocking our low-end Algebra kids. That means we teach the same group of kids every day all school year, instead of the traditional every other day block schedule. We were happy to find out that our math score actually improved 19% last year for Algebra 1. We were all pretty happy about that. Unfortunately, my scores were the lowest of the three teachers who taught those classes, but I did have one nice special ed. teacher who told me that was because he stacks my classes with all of his kids because, "they can't handle them." I don't know about that, but I'll take it as a compliment.

• There is not enough time in the day to get everything done that I need to. I am teaching on one of my preps and I have students in my room nearly every day after school. I have one student who comes in EVERY day after school to work on her homework (even though she's not in my classes and has never taken math from me). She tries really hard and is hoping to graduate while making up for missing most of her sophomore year, but it wears me out to help her every day. She just really struggles. I'm not sure if she's going to make it through Algebra 2. She has a test tomorrow and we'll see how she does.

• We have a new principal this year. He has an enormous water buffalo head mounted to his office wall. Interesting.

• The other day I had a discussion with one of my students about how her grade is low. I said, "Yes, your grade is low because you bombed that test and need to retake it." She replied, "I didn't bomb it. I got a 43%." I said, "Yes, you bombed it." She said, "No, I didn't." This went on for a minute or so until I finally realized that she thought I was telling her that her test was "the bomb," meaning that she did exceptionally well. She did, indeed, understand that she did poorly. I must be getting old.

• My U.S. History class is tough this year. I am having some management issues and feel like a first year teacher who is on the brink of losing total control of the class. It is very stressful . . . and there are only 14 kids in the class . . . and then they probably swear at me in Ukrainian.

• I got this e-mail the other day from one of my 1010 kids. It made me laugh.

Mrs. Bing,

I'm scared for my sanity.

I solved this equation and got it right...and the first thing I thought was "this is fun".

What is this world coming to?!?!

Have a lovely night.

Sincerely, Student

• I made a girl's day last week. She is not one of my students, but came in to Math Lab because she needed to use a graphing calculator and didn't have one. I have gotten a small grant the last 2 years to purchase some calculators for just this reason. I gave her one. She was pretty excited!

• Molly is finally liking school. It took a couple of weeks, but now she jumps out of my arms, runs to Miss Autumn, Autumn picks her up, and she wave goodbye to me. I'm not needed anymore. That's good, though. It sure makes heading off to class a lot easier than leaving a sad baby girl.