WELL whats new. What isn't? My kids and I have grown a lot together and its amazing to see how much love and affection you can have for children who are not your own. I didn't think I really cared that much until I spent 3 weeks away from them and saw them again the first day back. I was happy to see them. New hairstyles and clothes made them look different and I realized how much I missed them. That feeling lasted about 10 minutes. LOL. My patience is low. To recap on the past year, I spent 3 1/2 God awful weeks reteaching fractions and decimals OVER AND OVER AGAIN. I tried so many strategies and finally started seeing results. Its crazy how so many try to typecast learning. I personally don't find it to always be as consistent as it is argued to be. Learning different things take different learning styles I think. My visual students have their kinesthetic moments and vice versa. After those three weeks of feeling like a failure, coupled with dissatisfaction with school curriculum, frustration with lack of maturity, and the ever present battle against laziness I was feeling the effects of a burnout (hence my lack of blogging). I was thinking that nothing I was doing was working and that my efforts were getting us no where. UNTIL the last week of school came around, I was convinced that I definitely needed to explore some options. My students took an assessment in both math and reading. Of course as the math teacher, i was eager to see what my students would do. I expected the worse. In fact, I thought scores were going to decrease from the prior test. To my surprise, I got the very opposite. My kids showed out and they all showed growth in math. Not only that, their largest gains were in mathematics as opposed to reading. It goes to show that hardwork is never in vain and that sometimes you have to endure what seems like failures to get the ultimate success you desire.
Now that we are up to date, lets talk about how my life has taken a dive. Returning back to school i find out 3 new things: 1. We have yet another new schedule (GREAT!) 2. We are dropping the old curriculum (YAY!) but now we must design our own according to the standards (UGH FAIL) 3. Im now teaching writing....(i already teach Algebra and Physical Science). Clearly it is evident that I have some talent at teaching these kids which is why I think the additional subject has come along but the other two coupled with that are proving to be nerve racking. Im a bit stressed but their is a silver lining ($$=End of year bonus)
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