Tuesday, September 29, 2009

it's been three weeks

since school started. and i'm very happy with how things are going. this new crop of ninth graders seems really eager to please. it might be due, in part, to how i'm presenting myself, but i actually think they're worlds better than last year's freshman.

i spent the first week on rules and procedures, with a little math here and there. in the past two weeks, my kids have learned how to handle fractions, write algebraic expressions, fill out function tables, plot points, graph simple lines using tables, and graph scatterplots with the line of best fit and recognize correlations. i'm going to take the rest of the week slow, practice, review with regent's questions, and give my first full test next week. i'm toying with the idea of introducing slope already. i know it's something most of my students found difficult in middle school so i might wait.

one student completely defied me today in front of the entire class and then a hallway full of kids. luckily i have enough of a paper trail on him to get him suspended. i didn't think of logging every little thing last year, but i see now how it gives me leverage to really reign down on these kids. now i'll use him as an example so that the other student don't think they can get one over on me like that.

i guess i'm really lucky to have a super supportive dean and administration. i simply said i need this kid suspended, told them what i had on him, and they got right to it. it really scares me to think about what some of my colleagues go through in a less supportive environment. i don't think i'd ever last.

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