I lose time with my students this week and also last week due to TCAP. I'm thankful for the extra time I have this week to get my room cleaned and get going on planning.
But I am also a mere 7 minutes away from my 7th and 8th graders coming to me for an hour...at the end of the day...after 4 hours of testing....
So I am content to sit and glue elastic to multi-colored pom-poms with eyes until they arrive at my door
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Sunday, March 17, 2013
Handing Out Tough Love
Given the space of time between beginning this and now should be a testament to how much I have going on. From returning from an inspirational conference, restructuring my elementary classroom in the midst of a unit, changing over to my middle school students, and literally pushing them through my classes amidst state testing ...yeah, it's been a bit chaotic.
Oh yeah, and away from work I'm getting married in 4 months. So I take that back, it's gone beyond chaotic.
Sundays are my day to get all my plans ready for the next week. Luckily I finally have some direction for my middle school students that I'm at the point where I look at the objective and know what they need to do for the day. But given it's middle school, and they have been dragging their feet, we'll see how productive they will be.
It's hard to let them fail (which about 80% of them will given their work effort), but they need to experience it. Working in an urban setting however, I find my students more than ready to admit defeat. I've known since I began teaching that urban students put a lot of pressure on themselves to be perfect good at it, so I'm not going to try to be better" mentality is so frustrating to me and I don't know how to get them going. Giving them repertoire that is too easy might help, but then the minute I raise the bar and they make a mistake they shut down. I offer time to work one-on-one, some take it, some do not, but whatever the choice they make, that defeatist mentality comes back.
There is also the kids' notion that appearing intelligent is not a good thing, or that their classmates will give them a hard time. Happily some of them are realizing that their intelligence gained them admission into private high schools and it is trickling down to the rest of the middle schoolers. But for a larger number of them, I'm having to revert back to the "oh, well" mindset.
Over my six years of teaching I've found a balance between work and life. I have deadlines to make for my last set of units, and it's going to take a long time. So I'm choosing for my own sanity to not revise their benchmarks to ensure that a majority of them will pass. Too many of them just sit there and don't try. I'm going back into "drill sargenat" mode; and some of them will get a big dose of reality when they get their progress reports.
It's hard to do when you see so much talent in your students and you have the opportunity for them to explore all aspects of music and some of them could care less. It's not just in my class but in all other contents. Tough love...that's all I can give. I won't lower my expectations just because they want to be lazy. Hard to do when you care so much, but it's the right thing to do.
Oh yeah, and away from work I'm getting married in 4 months. So I take that back, it's gone beyond chaotic.
Sundays are my day to get all my plans ready for the next week. Luckily I finally have some direction for my middle school students that I'm at the point where I look at the objective and know what they need to do for the day. But given it's middle school, and they have been dragging their feet, we'll see how productive they will be.
It's hard to let them fail (which about 80% of them will given their work effort), but they need to experience it. Working in an urban setting however, I find my students more than ready to admit defeat. I've known since I began teaching that urban students put a lot of pressure on themselves to be perfect good at it, so I'm not going to try to be better" mentality is so frustrating to me and I don't know how to get them going. Giving them repertoire that is too easy might help, but then the minute I raise the bar and they make a mistake they shut down. I offer time to work one-on-one, some take it, some do not, but whatever the choice they make, that defeatist mentality comes back.
There is also the kids' notion that appearing intelligent is not a good thing, or that their classmates will give them a hard time. Happily some of them are realizing that their intelligence gained them admission into private high schools and it is trickling down to the rest of the middle schoolers. But for a larger number of them, I'm having to revert back to the "oh, well" mindset.
Over my six years of teaching I've found a balance between work and life. I have deadlines to make for my last set of units, and it's going to take a long time. So I'm choosing for my own sanity to not revise their benchmarks to ensure that a majority of them will pass. Too many of them just sit there and don't try. I'm going back into "drill sargenat" mode; and some of them will get a big dose of reality when they get their progress reports.
It's hard to do when you see so much talent in your students and you have the opportunity for them to explore all aspects of music and some of them could care less. It's not just in my class but in all other contents. Tough love...that's all I can give. I won't lower my expectations just because they want to be lazy. Hard to do when you care so much, but it's the right thing to do.
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