Failures and Successes

A lot of things have been going wrong at school lately. Most of it has to do with the workload placed on us, on top of our normal duties. On Tuesday, I snapped. Only, I didn't snap at my principal. Any time I tell her that I'm stressed, or ask for something, she asks me if I want to transfer. (This happens about once a year.) The APs aren't any more helpful. We had another writing test on Tuesday, and the APs messed up. They should not have made us take our last benchmark, but they did, so our kids took one more test than all of the rest of the schools in our district. The whole process was a mess. My team, teachers and kids, ends up getting their 25 minute lunch cut short every time testing runs long. Not only is this hard on the kids who have to inhale their food, but it's against the law, so this time I asked that the APs cut a class short, rather than lunch. (It usually ends up being about 17 minutes when they cut it.) They got really snippy, and thanked me for "being flexible as usual." With responses like this when there's a problem, we (the teachers) often bottle it up inside, or gripe with eachother. The problem...in the midst of the testing MESS, one of my kids did something that set me off. I really got on to her, and knew immediately that I shouldn't have, but there wasn't time right then to fix it. I didn't find time that day, and had forgotten by the next day. She hadn't though. I talked to her finally on Friday, and told her that I was really sorry, and had a really good discussion with her. Then, we hugged it out.

Another English teacher and I have worked really hard to revamp our lessons. They have been boring and ineffective in the past, but they were what they were. They had been given to us, and it's what we and the 3rd English teacher were comfortable with teaching. It wasn't working though. Hayley and I decided to make a change. We turned our last unit, Myths, Fables, and Legends, upside down, and the kids loved it. Lora, the principal, asked on Monday how it was going, and I told her that we'd know on Friday after the test.

I have a student who has not passed one quiz or test all year. He came in on Wednesday to get help on the review, and I heard him say to himself during the test, "Man this is easy!" I was so excited. His was the first test in his class that I graded. He made a 94!!! Talk about successes. I noticed that this was the case with many of my students. I kept thinking, did I make my test too easy? Should it have been longer? Should the review have been different? Then it dawned on me that maybe I had just done my job, and taught my kids in a way that they understood. The had been saying for the past 3 weeks how much they like the curriculum, and I guess it worked. I can't wait to change our next unit!