I Have a Good 5th Period.

Today, I actually had a great experience in 5th Period. Most of the time, the 5th Period kids are whiny and complaining about working. They don't ever want to and they are vocal about it. Very irritating.

Last class period, I was away from my class for the District Technology Committee meeting. I left an assignment for the 5th Period kids to complete. It was a walkthrough of a project, step by step, showing how to create a relatively difficult figure in AutoCAD. I was not sure how well the kids would do with the project. I suspected that it wouldn't turn out well.

Come Tuesday, not only was I not there, and I had a tough assignment for the kids to complete, there was also a number of different activities going on that took kids out of my class, like Pre-SAT tests, picture retakes, etc. Most of the kids didn't get my project done or even worked on.

I wasn't surprised.

Thursday in class, I tried to show the kids how to get through the project. I wasn't telling them anything that they couldn't get out of the walkthrough that was handed out on Tuesday, but they were still struggling. One young lady in particular was really frustrated, as she often is. She likes to try things for about two minutes and then frustration kicks in and she starts to push things around, throw her chair back and tell the world how much she hates whatever it is she's working on and put her head down on the desk.

Usually, if I can spend about 3-4 minutes working with her, she starts to say, "Oh, wait, I get it! That's easy, let me do the next one!"

She did this on Thursday, which was really cool. The cooler thing, though, was that she finished the project and began to help the young lady next to her. The really neat thing was that the person she was helping was getting frustrated and saying, "I don't get it!" Our hero was patient and helpful and said, "Well, let's try it again, I'll see if I can show you what you did wrong."

Really, really cool.

I was smiling and smiling the rest of the afternoon.

A Long, Long Week.

Mr. B., whereya been, man!

Oh, it has been a really, really long week. Grades for the end of the quarter were due this week. For normal teachers, this is probably not that much of an issue. For me, it was a problem.

Here's why.

When I meet with Sue Ann, the Curriculum Coordinator and New Teacher Head Coach for the District, she always chastises me for working too much. "If you work everyday until 7:00 p.m., you will burn out and quit in two years!" she says. So I try to take her rather seriously and attempt to leave the building during the week by 4:00 or 4:30 at least twice per week. The problem with this is that I have to let something go sometimes. For the most part, I have a couple of choices when deciding where to cut the fat. Either I cut back on the lesson planning or I cut back on the grading. Well, I have these hoards of kids coming through the door each day, thirsting for knowledge, so I can't really cut back on lesson planning.

I have been cutting back on the grading.

Just a little bit.

At the start of the semester, I was pretty diligent about my grading. Things would be graded within a day or so, complete with full rubrics and comments, etc. Grading took hours, hours and more hours. Each project was taking me 4-5 hours to grade. It was killing me.

I started doing some in-class grading, wherein I get out a copy of the blank rubric and have kids grade their own. I have been letting a couple of the writing grades go, giving them "completion grades" instead of letter grades. I can't grade 20 hours per week. I just can't.

That being said, grades were due this week. I stayed really late (past 9:00 p.m.) on a few evenings to get the grades done. Now they are.

Thank goodness.

I Attend the District Technology Curriculum Meeting.

On Tuesday, I spent the morning over at the Administration Building, working with Sue Ann, the Staff Development Coordinator, Sam Pagni, the Tech Teacher/Art Teacher at the Middle School and Bob Carrier, the Tech Teacher at the Elementary School. We are the members of the District Technology Team.

What we are doing is planning the direction that we would like the district to take over the next 5-10 years with regards to Technology. Currently, the district has a rather haphazard approach to the subject. Bob teaches what he thinks is appropriate, Sam teaches what she thinks is appropriate and I teach what they tell me to. We are working on building a single K-12 curriculum that will outline exactly what we want kids to learn each year at Weld RE-9 School District.

An important piece of this will be the end product. We will be deciding what it is that we want kids to know about technology when they graduate from Highland High School. This will help us figure out what we want to teach kids in their high school years. This will tell us what they need to know when they get out of middle school, etc.

I am excited about the process, mostly because it sounds like the district is serious about it and Sam and Bob are enthusiastic about the subject.

Hopefully, over the next couple of years, good things will come out of it.

Unfortunately, in the meantime, the two classes that I had to miss while at the conference blew up in my absence. 1st Period, the kids had a practice test, in which they could help each other, and a real test, in which they couldn't. Ms. Bashus, the substitute, indicated that a couple of kids were cheating during the real test. Grrr.

In 5th Period, I left Ms. Bashus with a handout for the Tech I kids. The handout walked them through the creation of a fairly complicated figure, step by step. She indicates that the kids cried and whined a ton about the assignment. Sounds like that wasn't successful, either. Grrr.

On the other side of the room in 5th Period, the Tech II class was supposed to finalize their Tower Project and all of the drawings therein. Ms. Bashus said that a number of kids were goofing off all period and were playing games. Grrr.

Being away from the classroom and having a substitute is MUCH more work than being there and doing it yourself....

A Project Promise 16 Reunion.

After much emailing and discussion, a number of the members of Project Promise 16 got together on Friday Afternoon.

Project Promise is the Career Transition Teacher Licensing program that I went through at Colorado State University last year that allowed me to become a teacher. This was one of the first social gatherings I had been to with my cohort since our graduation.

It was great to see everyone. In attendance was Carolyn, Robert, Abby, Sara, Stephen, Dave S. (and Jill), Keith, Jay and myself. Most of the rest of our group is scattered out about the state of Colorado and couldn't come to Fort Collins on such a short time schedule.

For the most part, we all seem to have the same opinions about our first year of teaching:

• Teaching is tough. They don't really tell you in teaching school how hard it is, or nobody would ever become a teacher.
• Grading is a true pain in the ass. To adequately and accurately grade student materials would likely take more hours than there are in a day. This is one of the reasons that teachers long ago invented Multiple Choice Questions, to make their lives easier.
• Students, by and large, are great. Unless they are being monsters, in which case, they aren't.
• Parents can be more of a problem than the kids.
• Paychecks are a wonderful, wonderful thing.

In hearing stories from my cohort members, I am more and more thankful that I am where I am. My experience at Highland High School has been a great one so far. I feel wanted, supported and respected, and this makes all of the other problems seem not really so bad. Thank goodness I came to a tiny school. I think that it has made all of the difference.