Every once in a while, I give my students a pop quiz: "How do you spell and pronounce my last name?" Even after repeating it every day for a week, I get blank stares from most of them! I used to refuse to let students call me Ms. C--I thought it was disrespectful considering my last name is only 5 letters and if they tried they could learn it easily. I quickly realized the importance of the phrase "pick your battles." Most students at this school refer to their teachers as "Miss" or "Mister," so I'm lucky when they actually try and end up calling me "Ms. K."
Overall, my first week went pretty well. My colleagues are amazing. Most are new teachers, I'd say everyone, even the principal, is under 40 (most under 30), and we all get along wonderfully already and everyone is really supportive. Some of my students are absolutely hysterical. On Friday all they could talk about was the hurricane...one student asked if we were "going to die." At the end of the day I saw one of my students, JT, who I have in both resource room and in Algebra, slowly swagger past my room using an umbrella about half his height as a cane. I had been incessantly praising him for his awesome math skills all week (I noticed it got him to actually stay awake during class), and when I stepped into the hallway he said, "Miss! I'm a pimp...that knows math!"
What I learned that day: Never underestimate the power of praising a high school student and....STICKERS. Yes, they are 15, but they love stickers and stamps. It's hysterical. JT, who gets distracted really easily and will at random intervals during the class either fall asleep or stand up and disrupt the whole class by cracking jokes, tells me he is going to "shoot for 3 stickers a day" on the positive actions sticker chart. Allison steals the stamper off my desk whenever I'm not looking and next thing I know she's covered in smiley faces and A+s.
I spent several hours on Sunday calling the parents of all my students. I was a little anxious about it, but I had some great conversations (and some really funny ones, and some awkward ones that made me realize I need to learn Spanish). Today most of them told me they were surprised I called home, so at least now they know how easily it can be done!
My ongoing challenges for the year:
1. "Differentiating." Basically, although most of my students in resource room are 10th grade (only one is 9th), they are all at completely different levels in each subject, and in subjects like math and science they are learning completely different things (those who failed biology last year are taking it again, others are taking chemistry, and one isn't taking science at all because he is at a fourth grade reading level and needs all the English classes he can get). It's really difficult to find ways to simultaneously challenge the ones, like JT, who are really high functioning, and others, like Cristy, who forgot their multiplication tables! I feel like I need to be a magician...
2. Every teacher has that one student....out of all of my students, I only have one that blatantly disrespects me. Jay interrupts me every other sentence to try to derail my thought process, makes inappropriate comments under his breath, and very easily gets the whole class off task. Today, while I was talking, he took a wooden hairbrush and banged it repeatedly on his desk. When I told him to stop: "No Miss, it's okay, I'm just cleaning it out" (as little bits of hair fly everywhere).
My principal was in to observe this mess of a class, and to my surprise she left a note in my mailbox saying she was happy to see my "lovely demeanor in front of the class", and the students "respond really well to me." A lot of times I have other teachers tell me I'm not tough enough (though I do break out the teacher voice when it is necessary), so I was glad to hear directly from the principal that my teaching style isn't in fact that terrible.
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