Edwin…Please See Me In the Hall….

     Woah, second day of teaching actually went well I felt as though my kids really did understand the material and they participated more than they did last Thursday. This morning before the lesson started I called role and had each kid tell me their favorite candy and then they also filled out a survey for me. I caught a glimpse of a couple of the boy’s answers to what they were most excited about this summer and their answer was “girls”…maybe I should be teaching a sex education class??? Then we talked about goals and how they have to get to the 9^th grade if they want to reach that bigger goal of going to college and I talked about the University of Alabama and about my experience being able to study abroad and how college can open so many doors for them. In my lesson today we learned about similes and metaphor and how they are used in sentences and within text. My lesson was about an hour long and they had a quiz at the end. I have already graded them and most of the students seem to have done well and understood the material. The biggest problem with today was how my students behaved. I had to handout lunch detention to 3 kids for being disrespectful. I have them on a check mark system. First check is a warning of what you are doing wrong with a reminder of the consequences, second check mark is first five minutes of lunch is silent, third checkmark is moving seats and writing an apology letter to the class for taking away from their learning time, fourth check mark is full lunch detention and fifth check mark is a referral to the principles office. I will just tell you I am not afraid to give out check marks. Today was different because I got to Edwin on his 4^th check mark he was just being a prick and I didn’t want to send him to the principle’s office just yet so I asked to see him outside while the rest of the class finished up their quiz and we had a little heart to heart. He has severe ADHD and is at an incredibly low reading level with behavioral problems, which is not such a good combination. It is amazing to see first hand how our education system has failed these kids. They are in 8^th grade and can’t even read on a 4^th grade reading level yet year after year teachers have just pushed them along. I worry that I am not going to make a big enough impact in such a short amount of time but I am doing what I can and trying to make my lessons as interesting as possible. I am incorporating some Tupac poetry into some upcoming lesson. I will probably have a long night tonight because I have so much work to have turned in by tomorrow at 8:00 a.m. Hopefully my body will adjust better to the lack of sleep this week. I wish yall could see me in the classroom its like a totally different confidence and fear of being able to lead the kids in the right direction and teach them what they HAVE to know to succeed. So a long week ahead and I’m so excited for Angel because she is going to Scotland this week and I want to jump into her suitcase!!!! I will be up late tonight but I took some pictures of my classroom today that I will try to upload to facebook if not tonight tomorrow night! Hope everyone is doing well!

Love and miss you,

Molly