2001-12-18
ISO a strict hard-ass bastard, posted at 3:39 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Today in my classes:Tenth grade - I had hoped to be able to start August Wilson's "Joe Turner's Come and Gone" this week before break, because it's really the last major work we have to read for the semester other than Great Gatsby, which the kids are largely reading over break and I'm not requiring them to have until Thursday. I figured that a drama, read out loud and acted out, would be a good way to get antsy 15-year olds through the tough pre-vacation week. However, other teachers had the same idea as I did, and I wasn't able to get the school's set of books in time. I was left with not much of a plan only forty minutes before class. Oops. I'm so bad at this between-novels stuff.
I fished out a Fitzgerald short story called "Winter Dreams" from the text, and we ended up reading that orally in class today. Reading it with the kids was my first real reading of it (I skimmed it in the few minutes I had beforehand). I liked the short story better than I do The Great Gatsby so far, with the same basic theme and similar characters but said with a lot less extraneous information. I was also able to pull in a brief lesson on the jazz age, and we had cool class discussion about it. The lesson, for being as hastily thrown together as it was, turned out nicely. It probably was a better lead in to Gatsby than Joe Turner would have been, anyway.
For my ninth graders, they continued their group work from the day before. It was really the first time I had given the little beasts group work all year, and they actually did well with it yesterday - getting thigns done and working hard. I had intended for their major unit test to be today, but I gave them a one-day extension on it because of their good work yesterday. They spent the first half of the period continuing on with the group work (basically compiling information on essay questions that will be on the test), and then we shared.
It was at that point that I wanted to kill them. They are so freaking rude to me and each other. Talking out of turn. Side conversations going on. Getting up and walking across the room to throw away something that could have waited. Doing whatever they can to distract others. Talking. Ugh.
I can't wait until next semester, when I can be mean from the beginning. I have never wanted this before, but I want my kids to think I'm a strict hard-ass bastard. The other night at a party I went to, a veteran teacher said something that struck me: 90% of what we do is classroom management. All of negative parts of my evaluations thus far have focused on my need to improve my management of my classroom. I wish I had learned better tactics at MSU.
I've already written my syllabus for next semester, and I'll be fiddling with it for a month or so. I need to figure out a better plan, or I'll be far too stressed out all the time to do this job for the next thirty years.