Day 2

Most of the kids at Jackson have to take the TAKS (the Texas standardized test) today and tomorrow. My charter school kids don't, though. I was provided with the same enrichment lesson that the other math teachers were going to use for the Jackson kids who had already taken the TAKS. It was written by my CMA, and consisted of a game in which students arrange a series of fractions and decimals from greatest to least. During my first period, the kids were great, and even though I gave very poor directions, they were perfectly quiet during the game. I also felt like I was a little more interesting for them today, a little less boring.

So as I was walking from my afternoon session, in which I learned about new ways of introducing material, to my fifth period class, I was thinking of all these great ways of refining my presentation to make it more engaging. I figured it would be so much better the second time around.

The first problem with fifth period were the three new kids who showed up, who threw off a bunch of my plans. Then I felt like I had the lesson pretty down, so I stopped looking at my notes for it. Then a couple students were struggling with the long division I was using to divide fractions into decimals--but most people had it down, so I didn't want to dwell on it. So despite all my new techniques, it seemed like the lesson presentation was much less successful. Then came time for the game. I think after two days of TFA teachers, these kids are starting to figure out that we are not their charter school teachers and we don't know much about discipline. Not that they misbehaved much--I'm still much better off than most other people I've talked to--but they were much more prone to talking to their friends and getting off task today. And after yesterday I didn't think I was going to need any discipline at all, so I wasn't ready to start calling people on everything. So tomorrow I have to buckle down and set these kids straight on how I want them to behave.

Our goal for this summer, besides our development as teachers, is to have every one of our students score at least 80% on our final assessment. We gave a diagnostic yesterday that was essentially the same as the final exam to see how far they had to go. My two classes were around 50% and 60%, which may not be too bad, because I'm not sure how much of this material they have been taught before. My first period class picked up really well on my lesson--they almost all aced the worksheet I gave them--but my fifth period class, though they scored the 60% on the diagnostic, struggled a little bit more. The big problem for me in this class is the divide of talent. On the one hand is the girl who is still struggling with long division; on the other hand is the boy who scored a 97% on the diagnostic, only failing to reduce one fraction. I have nothing new to teach him; I have material not in my objectives to teach her. How am I supposed to keep them both engaged in the same class?