Mr. Ward Visits The Fishbowl

Well, I made it through my second week at Highland High School. I need a break! Fortunately, I talked with my principal, Mr. Randy Ward and he has arranged it so that I can have Monday off! Yahooo! (It's Labor Day...)

As I mentioned yesterday, Mr. Ward was in my classroom for the Fourth Period yesterday. Of course, it was my toughest class with my hardest student. She got irritated and threw a bit of a fit, saying that everything I was teaching was stupid and that she WASN'T going to do anything more in my class!

I talked with her for awhile in the hallway and she eventually came back into the classroom, but still struggled for the rest of the day.

I was amused that later in the same day, she and another student came back to my classroom, wanting to know if they could type something up on my computers. Of course, she made sure that it wasn't HER that needed help, she was just along to be with her friend. She almost seemed to crack a slight smile when I said, "Good thing I like you...." and let them work on the machines. Don't know if I am making progress or not...

In meeting with Mr. Ward this morning, he had mostly good things to say about my class. He liked the assignments and the projects that we were working on and thought that my interactions with the kids was good and that I was a natural teacher. Yeah!

He thought that I gave too much attention to my difficult student and that he would have just cut her off, but that's OK.

I need to work on my differentiation. Yeah, I knew that. Doesn't mean it's easy.

What the heck is differentiation?

Different kids in the classroom learn and progress at different speeds. A good teacher will accomodate that somehow. This is even more pronounced in a computer class, as there are some kids that just don't have the skills of the rest of the class. I need to figure out a way to make my class pertinent and meaningful for them, as well as stimulating for the rest of the class.

Not easy....