Friday, May 21, 2010

i will be teaching geometry

for 2 short weeks, that is.

i filled out my preference sheet and chose to teach algebra again. the current geometry teacher who has seniority chose to teach algebra II, and then geometry as her second choice because she's that sweet and feels comfortable teaching anything. so i will be teaching the same subject for the third time in a row.

however, she opted out of teaching summer school so i've been asked to teach both algebra and geometry in july. we do a super short summer school for two weeks of two hour classes a day. it's good for review, but hardly anything else.

i'm excited to foray into geometry without a year-long commitment. i'm looking forward to wetting my feet a bit and maybe in another year, i'll feel like changing subjects.

My class is now in "Regent's Institute." If they are not there to work hard, I kick them out of my class and then have them come in for 7:15am detention to make up what they missed. So far this has been keeping my students very much in line. I guess having dean power is very helpful, but technically any teacher can adopt this policy. Before I was dean though, I would have never thought of doing anything like that.

I'm a firm believer of NOT kicking kids out and working with each kid to learn, however, at this point in the year we are moving very quickly and working intensely and I feel that no student has the right to take away from an entire class' chance of passing the Regent's.

Along with the assistant principal, I have also put 4 kids on permanent suspension for the rest of the school year. I love the no tolerance attitude. Our 9th graders are taking 3 Regent's, and our 10th graders at least 2 Regent's each so we want to make sure individual classrooms run as smoothly as possible right now.

ok it's 4am, another one of my insomniac nights. must go to sleep.

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