Telephone!

Sorry folks for the delay in posting this article, but things and events happen that can disrupt me from posting every week.

Thanks again for joining another sultry entry into this exquisite piece of ongoings of a teacher's mind. To put it simply, currently I'm tired and exhausted but excited that things are going well today. I'm tired from going to bed late and working on students' homework and attempting to grade them. Keeping everything balanced is essential I discovered and the more I have for them to do, the more we progress in my class. The negative is that I have now plenty of work for me to grade and redistribute to my classes. Also, I quit my side job on the weekends (good-bye Fresh and Easy!) and now I will have more time to enjoy myself and allow myself to relax. It will also be a good time to catch up on things that I have been procrastinating on, such as grading. Rest will finally return as I will not be working everyday of the week. I don't think I had a day off since the beginning of September, I am now starting to feel the pains of that. I could keep doing both things, but I don't have to so I decided to drop one of them. I think it's for the best.

Also this week I feel like I am coming to class unprepared but everything is planned out. I have homework to give the students and there are plenty of things for us to cover. However, I am trying to teach for mastery of this subject and the students have a hard time with understanding some of the difficult concepts. It's not all the students but a few. So now I'm in a dilemma...I want to continue moving forward and cover more material, but I feel like the students are overwhelmed currently with tests, quizzes, and homework. On the other hand, I don't want to make my classes seem so easy for the students that do understand the material. Obviously they understand the concepts that are occuring and in fact some of them consider it boring. That is why a few of them are disruptive and need to be spoken with ever so often. So I'm not sure what to do but I'm favoring the former. I think I will hit the brakes soon and slow down the train. I think a good review is in order and perhaps a review game where the students have to work together in groups. That way I can allow the smart students help those students who are having trouble. Less teaching for me and more work for the students. Hehehehe...

Also this week I began calling parents for students who have not been turning in the homework. Some students are really in trouble because they have not been turning in homework for the last two chapters and it really reflects on their test and quizzes. I've talked to each of these students previously but several of them have rejected my help or refuse the extra assistance. They think that all this will just blow over and that they don't have to put any effort in trying to understand it. WRONG! It is imperative that they understand the material and succeed. That's life. When something is hard and you don't understand, find a way and work at it. I don't think I have had a job yet where I didn't have to work hard at it to be successful. If I didn't get something I made time to ask for questions and get help. I learned that eventually but I'm trying to help these kids out now. So anyways, the parents have been supportive and I have finally gotten some material in from a few of the students and even a few have come in to see me for extra help. Previously I had an extra morning help hour on Monday, Thursday, Friday but few people would show; I'm hoping more will show as the semester continues and I keep calling these students' parents. However, some students still refuse to turn in their work and one even asked me for extra credit! EXTRA CREDIT!!! You didn't even turn in the original work! Why would I give you EXTRA work to do?! Sure we can discuss extra credit but once the original work is turned in. That's the deal.

So for me, it's more phone calls to parents both positive and negative. We'll see how things turn out, but so far it's been positive. The experience has been challenging but good. At least I don't want to quit yet like at my first job (thanks Teledyne!), and I think this is something that I can work at. I don't know, maybe I'll actually enjoy this teaching gig.

Well, I've got to go teach now and I'll talk to you later...