"Ms. I didn't know we were having a test!!"

First test day!! Ahh!! We decided to give our students a 12 question equivalent fraction test. We’ve covered fractions many different ways and matching the equivalent fraction should not be that difficult for them. We wanted a major grade to be in our grade book for 3 week progress reports and felt this was a good way of testing their knowledge. It would also allow us to assess how CScope (our new curriculum that were using for the first year!) is really going. Our math department at Lake Air has decided while CScope has great hands on activities, it is a lot of application and not a lot of practice for the students. We only assign homework on two nights a week (I think this is a Lake Air policy), but our homeworks so far have been over division and not fractions. I graded all the tests on Thursday as they were coming in. I do not like doing a 12 question test for the fact that if a student misses 2 they are already down to an 84! When I have my own classroom I will not do it this way, or I will not make the questions be worth so many points. I think the scores were a good representative of what I was expecting. I didn’t have a grade lower than a 44 and they were several 100s in all of my class periods. I didn’t have a chance to talk over with my mentor teacher how she felt about the grades, but I think this is a great start to what we have been doing. Having 120 kids is so different than having 30 (like last year!). I like it because it allows me to have a better comparison to how the students are doing. I know which classes of mine are the brighter ones and which ones are going to be my slower ones! I don’t know if it’s bad to categorize them this way, but it’s definitely true. I definitely feel like my students respect me and that’s nice to feel that way. When I taught the warm up in one of my classes I had a little girl say, “Oo, Ms. L are you teaching today?!” and when I replied just the warm up she said, “Aw, ok.” I thought it was so cute that she was excited for me to be teaching and I hope many more of the students feel the same way! I kind of feel behind since I haven’t started my full teach yet, but I like our plan of on and off every week. So by next week, I will be ready to start and get my full teach rolling!!

1st week - Angels, 2nd week – Close?

Wow. How a week can change your students! The first week they were my innocent little 6^th graders who were so quiet and in a new school. They asked you questions repeatedly, you could tell they were nervous, and they were like little perfect angels.

The second week - they are intermediate pros. They know everything and are not afraid to prove it to you by talking back constantly! These are just some of my second week stories:

- I found out one of my favorite little black girls who sits in the back by me and always talks to me is diabetic. We got an email with all of her emergency phone numbers and who to call first and what to do if she ever has an issue. She left school early today because she was feeling too bad from not eating or eating too much of whatever yesterday.

- One of my talkative girls asked me “Do you got kids?” I replied with, “No, not yet!” …she thought about this answer and said, “yeah, you don’t look like you got kids.” I told her I would take that as a compliment! Ha funny girl

- The next day the same girl was having a bad day and got sent to out “time out chairs” in the back. She still refused to do her work, resulting in our first office referral of the year. It’s the 7^th day of school!!

- One of my repeat 6^th graders who does excellent in class he just doesn’t do well in the hallways/interacting with other students will be in ISS (in school suspension) for 2 days for apparently something to do with “herbal tea” (our teacher code for marijuana) … oh dear.

- I dealt with having an “accident” in the bathroom. My first thought was I teach 6^th grade not pre-k! But nevertheless, the little girl was so embarrassed and I worked with the Community-In-Schools person here at the school to get her a pair of pants to use while her mom brought her new ones. I missed an entire period of my class, but that’s the beauty of being a student teacher and having 2 teachers in one class.

- The last and biggest deal of the week was a huge reality check to the fact that I am teaching in Waco ISD and things like this could happen anywhere. The middle school that we split with – they are now only 7^th and 8^th – is Tennyson Junior High now. At Tennyson, on Tuesday, they had an 8^th grade student with a gun in his backpack. They are being very hush-hush about the whole situation but apparently a teacher reported “strange behavior” to an assistant principal. They pulled the kid out of class to question him and ended up searching his backpack where they found the gun. More than likely, he was just trying to be “cool” to his friends and wanted to prove something by actually showing them that he could bring a gun. The whole situation was contained by 10 am and my close friend Clancy who works at the school didn’t even know about it until 5^th or 6^th period or around 1 pm.

Overall, I still love my school and the people in it! We have open house tomorrow night and I’m very excited to meet some of my students parents. I’m hoping I can remember all of their names on the spot without them sitting in their correct seat in the correct period! Ha I’ve definitely already formed bonds with many of the students, so I can’t imagine what it will be like at the end of the school year in May.