I administered a practice Regent's this past week. It was an actual 3 hour run through that 22 students stayed until 5:30pm to take. The group was a perfect cross section of my school: 3 level 3's, the rest 2's and 1's. 5 student's with IEP's and 2 ELL's. A few repeaters, too. This was not planned, but that's the group that chose to stay after I announced the run through to my students the day before.
I graded the exams on Friday and a whopping 31% passed! And yes, this was with the Regent's curve.
I'm hoping to double this score with 4 instructional days to go.
ZOMG not happening.
I will administer another Regent's this coming week. I hope for 40% passing this time...
Saturday, May 22, 2010
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.
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.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
hit me (with a pie) baby, one more time
the students are making a carnival in june. as part of the fundraising, they're having a pie throwing contest. students will pay $5 to throw a pie at teachers' faces. when surveyed which teachers the students at my school were most willing to pay to throw a pie at, i overwhelmingly came in as #1. yesssssssssssssssss. i hope to raise a ton of money for the school!
in other news i gave a test this week and my students overwhelmingly aced it. 20% of them scored above a 90, up from about 5%. 3 more special ed students passed for their first time ever, too. it's very exciting. my CTT class is trying so hard, it's fantastic. my bad-ass class was still bad ass today, but they learned really well.
i'm just about racing through the curriculum right now since i'm soooo behind, but the kids are going with it. unfortunately, i seem to be out of school more than in school lately, so i've been falling even more behind. the one thing about taking on more responsibility at work is that i have more professional duties to pull me away. this month alone i flew across the country to speak at an international conference, and i also had a network meeting in the city. i know of 3 more days that i will be out in the next 2 weeks, and i'm getting nervous. i'm fairly certain i will not even come close to last year's regent's passing rate, but i'm trying my best.
for the record, i still am a per session whore. i picked up even more hours by running an extra math class so now i'm up to 12 hours a week.
and now for the joke of the day... how many students does it take to make tables from a classroom set of desks? no one knows for sure, but apparently more than 27!
in other news i gave a test this week and my students overwhelmingly aced it. 20% of them scored above a 90, up from about 5%. 3 more special ed students passed for their first time ever, too. it's very exciting. my CTT class is trying so hard, it's fantastic. my bad-ass class was still bad ass today, but they learned really well.
i'm just about racing through the curriculum right now since i'm soooo behind, but the kids are going with it. unfortunately, i seem to be out of school more than in school lately, so i've been falling even more behind. the one thing about taking on more responsibility at work is that i have more professional duties to pull me away. this month alone i flew across the country to speak at an international conference, and i also had a network meeting in the city. i know of 3 more days that i will be out in the next 2 weeks, and i'm getting nervous. i'm fairly certain i will not even come close to last year's regent's passing rate, but i'm trying my best.
for the record, i still am a per session whore. i picked up even more hours by running an extra math class so now i'm up to 12 hours a week.
and now for the joke of the day... how many students does it take to make tables from a classroom set of desks? no one knows for sure, but apparently more than 27!
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