Today was the first round of ISTEP. Since I am not a certified teacher, I am unable to do ANYTHING while the ISTEP test is being administered. My only task was to pass out calculators today during the math portion to other teachers that may or may not have needed extras.
Pre- Algebra Classes
Because of the ISTEP test, many students thought they weren't going to be doing anything else legitimate in their other classes, so my first period class brought nothing but what they brought with them to their testing center. I don't know about you, but if you had planned everything to be in the book, wouldn't you be mad if you had to change all your plans at the last second? I was, but I sucked it up and went ahead and did what I needed to do, which was understanding the meaning behind the area of a trapezoid, parallelogram, and the review of the area of a triangle. My first hour class is so dead and quiet. It seems like I never get them to respond. I had a student writing notes while I was talking. I found it amusing that she asked me for her notes back multiple times, and each time I just simply said "no." She asked one time "Is it alright if I have my notebook back?" I wish I could have laughed at her, but I decided to simply say "No, you can't have it back." I was tired of people writing notes. I feel like I will write referrals for students who fall asleep during class or students who write notes. There are a few students in this class I have constantly told to stop either writing notes or sleeping. I am just going to write them referrals and go from there.
My 5th period class was a little more responsive, but it always seems that the same student answers questions. I have quite a few problem children in this class as well, yet they seem to cooperate with me quite well. I was able to use the book with this class because any student that did not have their book with them I sent them back to their locker, and I told them that if they were late, I would write them a tardy. Somehow, no student was late, mainly because the passing period was accidentally 6 minutes instead of 5.
Algebra Classes
These two classes just continued their learning on factoring polynomials that are cubic and are four terms. They seemed to have forgotten all the other things we had learned in factoring, which was a little frustrating, because they basically threw out the flow chart I handed them to help them remember what to do when factoring. After today it seems like the students who got it really get it, the students who kind of got it are starting to get it, and the students who didn't get it aren't getting it any better, mainly because they give up too quickly. Oh well, it's time to move on, I have been on factoring polynomials for wayyy too long.
Thoughts on the day:
I am pretty sure that I have a solid relationship with almost all of my students. To be honest, I don't care if I start to damage some relationships by writing referrals. Now I know why students think teachers just pick on them. They don't realize their own actions are the reasons a teacher "picks" on them. It happens because they are the ones who generally are the ones causing the trouble. I had an instance today where I got tired of two students making this weird noise. The problem was I only thought it was one student. I told this student to stop, was asked why, and I said because the other student was not being obnoxiously loud. I didn't mean to sound so condescending, but it just came out that way. I explained to this student that I didn't know another student was committing the "crime." We brushed it off as if nothing had happened, on my part that is.
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