Tuesday, September 04, 2007

New year, new students, new headaches, old headaches

Well, here we are, 2 weeks in to the school year. My schedule is a little weird this year - I don't have a duty period (read: study hall/computer lab/hall walker), instead I have a resource class. This is a group of 8 students who need me to help them become more organized, finish projects, complete homework, choose a new car, develop career skills, learn geometry, settle disputes...get the picture? Sorta impossible to plan for this class. My schedule depends upon what other teachers are (or aren't) assigning. If a student has no homework/classwork/test/project looming over them, they have nothing to do in my resource class. UNLESS...I play the big, bad witch and make them work on other skills while they are in here. Yeah, they don't look kindly on that. So today, I'm updating my Blog during my resource class! One student is working on geometry homework (already helped him with that), two students are in the library, one student is in the office, and the other 5 are looking at car magazines. My assistant during this period has been a resource assistant for years. I asked her if this was normal for the beginning of the year, and she assures me that things will settle out once teachers start assigning more work and homework. We'll see.

Otherwise, this year is much the same as last year. I collaborate in 3 classes - 1 Earth Science, and 2 Biology. Now, I know about my own biology. Not too sure about anyone else's. I have 2 small group Earth Science classes, with mostly freshmen. I do have one student who failed my class last year, and is just thrilled to be with me again this year. She failed for several reasons, most important being she missed over 40 days of school last year. We've been in school for 9 days, and she's missed 2. She has a bad habit of missing test days, and she missed my first test last Friday. Not a good start...

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