Parent-teacher conferences took place tonight. There wasn’t a huge turn out, but it was nice to meet parents. Students act very differently when they’re by themselves (instead of around their peers) and they act even more differently when around their parents! I was kicking myself tonight for not keeping up my Spanish skills–that was the major impediment tonight.

Grades for next grading period due tomorrow. I’ve been thinking a lot about the purpose of these mid-semester grades. The purpose is to send feedback to students, so I’m not as concerned about the grades matching up numerically with students’ performance as I am with the grades sending the appropriate messages. For example, one student was so thrilled to hear that he is going to get a B in my class. He told me he’s never gotten a B in math before. His mother was so proud. Truthfully, he is closer to getting a C than a B, but I’d rather him get a B now and work hard to maintain it (or improve it to an A!) rather than feel like he’ll never be good at math.

In third period, a student called me over to his group. “Teacher, what does ching chong <insert other random Asian sounds> chong mean?” He had his whole group in stitches. The first time he asked the question, I didn’t realize what he was doing and I said, “I don’t understand what you are trying to say.” (Duh, I’m slow.) He tried to call me over many other times with the same question and I ignored his subsequent attempts. I was busy responding to other students’ mathematical questions.

At the time I didn’t think much of it, but now I realized how bothered I am by the student’s actions and the reactions of his peers (one is an A student). I can’t do anything about my ethnicity (Asian) being different from most of my students so I’m not going to overthink that. I do wish that I was a lot quicker on my feet than I am. I’m usually the last one to get a joke and can never think of the right thing to say in a situation until much later.

This and other incidents at school make me wonder why high schoolers seem to be so fixated about ethnicity. There was another conflict between Hispanic and Armenian students at school this week, apparently.

Today’s professional development meeting at school was productive. We spent much of the time talking about students, especially those that are having issues that are causing them to miss school or do poorly at school. It was great to hear the concern from all of colleagues. This is why we do what we do.

Quick updates:

• Still no copier available for teachers to use. I am getting by using a laser printer in our classroom.
• It’s then 10th week of classes and students’ schedules still shifting around. Sounds like the schedule changes will be good for students, but I feel bad for them that it took this long for their schedules to get fixed.
• Gave tests today in Algebra 1 and Geometry classes. Results look mediocre so far, but it’s a slight improvement from our first set of tests.

Today was extra fun because of some students throwing little bits of linguini all over the class. Oh joy!

The teacher with whom I share a classroom is doing a cool project (relating to the sine and cosine) and among the art supplies was a package of uncooked linguini off to the side of the room today. A student thought it would be so funny to steal the linguini, break it into little bits and throw it at people whenever I had my back turned to them. What distresses me more is that this student is very bright and somewhat of a ring leader and so his behavior is immediately copied by others.

I made two of the students who I saw doing this sweep the floor after school. Parents notified.

I could be much better at teaching high school if I could multitask better. I used to think I was good at multitasking, but I’m really horrible at it.

In my classes today, I meant to assign homework, pass back graded papers, give work to students who were absent, make copies of a handout needed for class, carry supplies from one classroom to another classroom. I didn’t do any of those things. Oh, and there were a couple more things I know I forgot, but I don’t know what they are because I forgot. (My bad memory is also a big problem.) The issue is that I’m not willing to set aside class time for these kinds of things because I’m always freaking out about having the most learning possible out of every class period. For example, in my imagination, while students are working productively on a task I’ll be able to walk around a pass back papers. However, that never happens in reality. Students invariably need help, or someone knocks at the door, or the phone rings, or someone needs to go to the office, and then I forget to do what I thought I would do.

Another issue is that I need to get from the fourth floor to the fifth floor between third and fourth periods, and I have a really hard time making this transition smoothly during the five-minute passing period. Arriving disheveled causes me to forget things as well.

There is no way I will become massively better at multitasking, so the solution is that I need to do is to make students responsible for as many tasks as possible. I can hear Harry Wong yelling “Procedures, procedures, procedures!!”

I’ve been insisting on passing papers back myself up to now because I’ve been trying to learn students’ names. But now I think I can let students pass back papers or put them in some central place. That’s at least one thing I can try to do. Other tips from seasoned teachers?

Our school district is large and uses a centralized web-based system for taking attendance. I think it’s interesting that this system has a separate web page to tell users whether the service is working properly. Hmmm… Any guesses from readers about what this means about the reliability of the service?

A minor setback over the weekend. The copier is in our school’s office. The office is often locked during school because staff or admin are not there. When us teachers need to make copies, we have been relying on the teacher who room is next to the office to let us into the office through his side door. This is really not a good solution and the teacher, rightly so, has decided not to allow us to come through his room. So now, our ability to make copies is restricted. We found out today the copier is out of toner, so maybe it doesn’t matter anyway.

And now nice anecdote to end the post: Today in third period, I noticed one of my students (who previously complained about being in a group with people she did not know) helping another student. She was explaining things methodically and not just giving the other student the answers. She was doing it so earnestly and she seemed so pleased that she understood the material enough to be able to explain it. I thanked her for her thoughtfulness at the end of class. Hooray!

I leave school feeling encouraged today because of the amount of learning that I saw.

Today, in my third period class we started working on making that “Cartesian Connection”–connecting a patterns with graphs with algebra with tables. It’s a central part of the CPM algebra curriculum.

Most of my students were able to successfully look at a table of numbers such as

and generate a rule for it: y = 6x + 3. This is something they could not do just a few days ago. And they seem to be really understanding. Some of them were able to explain to me that the reason the “6” is where it is in the algebraic rule is because the pattern of blocks grows by 6 each time.

But here’s the thing: Sometimes I worry that if any of my colleagues or administration were to walk in my class, they will think the class is out of control and that no learning is happening. Certainly, there was a lot of talking and lots of movement. Students find it hard to sit still for a long time. But, there was still a great deal of work and learning being done–more than I’ve seen in this class in a while. Furthermore, there were lots of meaningful mathematical conversations taking place. Students were saying things like “I think it should be 6x+3 because…” or “I think Figure 0 should have 3 blocks because of the pattern of numbers…” I’m sure I have a long way to go in developing classroom management and effective discipline, but I’m okay with a noisy classroom if there is real learning happening. I made sure to give positive feedback to the class on their good effort.

In geometry, today we learned about the incenter (intersection of the angle bisectors in a triangle) and learned how to construct it in two ways: using patty paper and using compass and straightedge. Again, there was a good deal of learning taking place today. Many students were able to find the incenter using compass and straightedge, and that is a relative intricate task for them. We ended the class with some dynamic geometry software on my tablet computer and the students seemed to enjoy that.

So, a good day overall. Someone please remind me about days like this when I feel like quitting.

Had a number of students transfer out of RCHS to a nearby continuation school this week. I’m hoping that if a student is taking the effort to transfer that he/she is serious about finishing high school. I wonder what students say to each other about continuation schools.

Not a great way to start off the week. Lots of resistance and defiance from students today. Few stand out moments.

In third period, we (me and the resource teacher) instituted seating charts to get students used to doing group work. One student was very publicly criticizing her group: “I don’t like my group and don’t want to work with them.”

In sixth period, one student was texting during her class. It took about 2 or 3 minutes before she would give me her phone. She’s very mature and very emotionally manipulative and the interaction totally drained me. (“Well if I’m going to give you my phone I don’t want your dirty hands to touch it so go get some paper to wrap it first.”)

It’s also discouraging to see how many students complete their homework, even after I explain how important it is to practice to get good at math.

Days like this really make me dislike my job.