2 more weeks!

Ug...I'm exhausted and definitely ready for a break! You know, when I first moved down here and discovered that we had to start school at the beginning of August I thought it was absolutely insane. Where I am from, school starts over a whole month later around Labor Day. Now, I am nothing short of grateful that I have a little over two weeks of rest coming my way. Unfortunately, my students want it even more than I do and some of them have taken an early holiday. Today was particularly frustrating. During my Environmental Science class, my students were taking a chapter test. In the short 48 minutes of class time, six cell phones went off, 5 of them with Christmas carol ring tones and the other with the latest Black Eyed Peas song. Our school's policy on cell-phone is firm. Teachers cannot hear them or see them. If we do, we must take them up and run them to the office (which is probably the furthest point from my room and not even in the same building). The student's parents must come to the school and pick the phone up. I agree that cell phones are a problem in schools but this rule creates leads to an influx of whiney students who all of a sudden begin to need their phone for safety reasons. Plus teachers are supposed to find the time to run phones all the way to the office between classes...yeah right.

In my third period, I had two students get in a verbal (thank God!) fight about when Santa Clause comes to the new Southaven mall and who Santa Clause really is. Apparently it's some "crunk, drunk, punk who's the bre of a dude named Jale “who "knows" the cousin of one of my students. He's been in and out of prison twice and also just so happens to be the boo of one of my other students. Half of the time I have no idea what my students are saying. It's like a foreign language coming out of their mouths. And to think that two students were getting ready to fight over this? Oh, to be in high school again. Oh wait, I am.

Two more weeks. Right now I'm struggling with absences and catching students up. It seems like just as I catch them up on their tests, they decide to miss a week of school. I'm also trying to prepare students for finals. My school has this policy which allows students to exempt out of exams if they have a B or higher in their class and only two absences for the entire semester. I’m sad to report, between failing grades and many absences, I think only a handful of my students will be able to exempt.

It never ends. The paper work, the lesson planning, the managing of the classroom, the absolutely pointless faculty meetings and my epic battle with the copy machine. I’m exhausted and looking forward to sleeping away my holiday break.

On the bright side, I think I have finally found a way to increase student achievement in my classroom. Previously I was spending about two weeks on a chapter before I gave my students a test on the material. Sure, I gave a few quizzes here and there to keep them on their toes but it didn’t seem to work. So I decided that I would do away with chapter tests all together. Instead, I split the chapter in half and give a 50 pt quiz every Friday. By giving a quiz, students find that the amount of material is much more manageable. I have had more A’s on these past three quizzes than I had on all the chapter tests from the entire semester. Isn’t that awesome? I’m so proud of my students.

How’s that for ending on a good note? Gotta go!
Happy Holidays!