These are my confessions...

I'm starting to freak out here. I've been looking at Biology tests, and while Jess might have been a miracle worker, I'm starting to think she just had the touch.

There are only three practice tests to work off of, for the whole year. Many of the questions don't really fit into one of the categories that we'll be studying, but involve a synthesis of several of them, and I can't imagine how to prepare my kids for this year's combination questions- and there seem to be a slew of them on every test. How do I teach my kids to THINK when they don't even retain what I've taught them to begin with. I've tried everything I can think of, I'm going of off Jess's notes, and it feels like it's not sticking. Most of my kids ended up failing the scientific method test (they take their next unit test on Characteristics of life on Monday), and we went over dozens of examples, used group work, made index cards, put the words on the wall, did work sheets for homeworks and went over them, designed our own experiments, did a lab and wrote it up as a 60% grade, did a "what's in the box" activity and a group work problem-solving activity to get them thinking, did a broom dance to demonstrate observation and noticing patterns (don't ask, please), did an activity for "Story time with Aristotle", had the kids draw pictures of Redi's experiment, spent two days just reviewing, and probably did some other activities I'm just not thinking to include here. WHAT AM I DOING WRONG? !!!!! I know, I know, if my kids are failing, I'm failing. I think I need to realistically say that I may need help. I don't know what else to do. I call parents (lots of them). I enforce my consequences. I write kids up. I do spontaneous crazy things to get their attention. I am not being perfect, certainly, and there are plenty of things I still need to do differently, but I still feeling like I'm throwing paper air planes against a wall. I am not trying to complain. I am trying to do my job, and I think I suck at it, and I have 106 kids, give or take a couple by the day, that need to pass this test to graduate high school, and the state is coming in a couple of weeks (holy crap that assessment instrument is a brilliant work of frustration and nonsense). Really, if you have a suggestion, please give it to me. I think I need some professional help.

For this last unit, the kids read out of two different text books, took notes on both (for a grade), did a project of their choice where they could choose between writing a rap, song, or poem, inventing an organisms that they build or draw with a written paper describing how the organism had each of the characteristics of life, building a shoe-box model of an ecosystem (again with a matching paper), or doing a project of their choice, approved by me. We presented projects. We went over the important points from the text as a class, with each student having a packet that they highlighted or underlined as I told them exactly what to mark, with a homework assignment to take notes by writing all that stuff down. (That was after they'd already taken their own notes on the other book). After project presentations, I gave them notes to copy from the overhead, and assigned them homework for which they had to make index cards and study them. I told them exactly what to put on each index card, and how many they had to have. We did class questioning. I can't spend any more time on this. Two 60% grades plus warm-ups and participation. The second one is a test Monday. We'll see how that goes.

Classroom Struggle

I think I need to be kinder- and stricter- in my classroom. I am noticing myself beginning to get tired- that first streak of it- and loosing patience with the kids. There are times when it feels like I've tried everything that I'm supposed to do- calling parents, giving write-ups, enforcing my consequences, every time (though I'm sure I'm still being too lenient). But I feel like I'm loosing them anyway. (Granted, not every class, but yesterday was not good.) Usually I would be able to step back, think of how my attitude is influencing my classroom, and adjust. As usual, I think not getting enough sleep made a big difference yesterday, but it should be automatic. I should know how I need to react in every situation. I wouldn't want to be spoken to the way I spoke to my kids yesterdays (well, one class). I don't think it was productive, and it certainly did not feel like leadership in the classroom. I should have given them a pop quiz, switched to silent work for the remainder of the period, and called it a day. Hindsight. Some of my kids seem like they like my class, but some of them- especially in the tougher classes- still complain about. It seems to come very naturally to many other teachers, and I can't help but wonder if I'm missing some key ingredient.

I had a nightmare last night about the state coming into my classroom. They showed up on Monday, and for some reason I was not prepared, I did not have enough copies, I was not well planned. I haven't had a single day like that this year, but in the dream I did, and the guy from the state was not generous. He stayed for another period and it was the same. I wasn't teaching in my classroom, or someone had moved everything around in my classroom, and it really threw me off. It was different furniture, and I couldn't move around right, and I had that feeling like when your legs and arms are made of marshmallow and you're completely helpless, expect that my body was fine, I just couldn't teach. I was obviously wasting my students' time. The guy told me that I was inadequate and lazy. He came back one more period and it was marginally better, but not enough, and he told me to pack up and go home- that I was not an adequate teacher. It's funny, because I've been trying not to stress too much about the state thing.

A personal rant about friendship. I think I've given up keeping my private thoughts out of this; they are just too entangled with all the others.

I always feel more for other people than they feel for me. I have come to rely on the teacher corps group, to love them as friends. I look forward to Oxford weekends, to seeing faces and hearing voices and feeling light, and it always seems like we leave having looked into a window at a beautiful scene inside that is beyond reach. We always scatter back to our busy lives and fight our big and small fights for another set of weeks. Every time, I accidentally paint up a picture in my mind made of bright colored heartbeats in time from those hours, and look at it unintentionally between working and thinking and drawing straight lines. Rather than chase every spark of affection, I hide from all of them, or most, because it matters to much to me. Is there a use and a purpose for this kind of thought pattern? I could probably stop it, but it took so long to get to this level of honesty. I might be more productive, better off, in a different way, but I don't see how it matters. Anyway, I wonder what will happen to all of these friendship-fragments, and if they will grow stronger with common memory or weaker with distance and time.

I also wonder if I can get everything done this weekend. If anything, this frame of mind is time consuming, and I think that's why I sometimes consider turning it off.