Time is passing.

It is. Quickly. This coming week will bring me my halfway point. I'll be 30 days into student teaching, 18 days into full-control teaching. Crazy. Here's some highlights of what I've learned so far:

1. There is a direct relationship between how much I sleep a night and how well I can answer my students' questions.
2. Always check to see if you've written down the grades before you hand them back to the students. There are two parts to dealing with homework: grading and recording.
3. It is extremely useful to be anal about being organized. I could spend half a day organizing my stuff to try to stay on top of it. I don't do that, but I do spend a couple of hours every weekend purely on organizing my stuff.
4. Teaching can give you a self-esteem boost. I have a pair of students who said they realized they can't do anything without me. They said I have to go with them everywhere they go for the rest of their lives because they're always lost without me. They said we'd be dawgs. =)
5. Teaching can give you a reality check. Sometimes it's tempting to get caught up in the desires to be liked by students, but then I realize how truly shallow most of their 'liking' is. Establishing myself on that is a good way to fail.
6. Though being liked isn't necessary, it sure makes it a lot easier to run a class.
7. I don't know enough ways to say "Be quiet and sit down." Luckily, I can follow in my teacher's footsteps. Though I'm not nearly as effective as she is, a look of complete exasperation is one of the most effective ways I know to get high-schoolers to be quiet (No one wants to be thought of as annoying by the college girl!).
8. Generally teachers feel the same way about other teachers, convocations, and school policies as students do. They just hide it from the students.
9. I'm a grown up. And I'm okay with that.
10. I don't have time or the energy for anything beyond maintaining necessary relationships. I've stopped singing, playing guitar, playing piano, reading, playing games, and all unnecessary cleaning and organizing. This is sad. I need summer.
11. Teaching should only be done by old people. College students need too much sleep to function properly to run a classroom and have a life outside of it. Probably people will disagree with me on that, but statistically it's true. If I want to get the 9 hours of sleep I should get, I would have 3 hours of free time a night (at least half of which would be used to grade papers), and I would never see my roommates.
12. Weekends are truly the greatest thing ever. Even with a huge list of things to do, the weekends are a magical time full of sleep and t-shirts and flexible schedules and fun times and friends and no peanut butter and jelly. It's glorious. =)

There's the short list. Time for my magical weekend!

A Mean Teacher

My students say I'm becoming a mean teacher. They told David, the other student teacher, that I was becoming mean, even though they could tell I wasn't really a mean person. Some other students told me yesterday too that I was being mean. In my mind I told them they were being disrespectful and irresponsible and immature. They're trying to take advantage of me; trying to get away with not doing much and talking a lot in class. It's not going to happen, but they're really trying. The only thing that really bothers me about all of this is the fact that that they can see when I'm getting mad and am completely serious about them getting down to work, yet they still defy me.

Not that I'm used to getting my way or anything, but I am used to people responding appropriately when I am angry. How do you deal with people that just don't care if you're angry with them? I got to the point where I would not talk to them except to discipline them and help them on math if they asked. All the other students I talked to willingly and openly and with a smile.

I have to figure out how to manage this classroom. I think they should learn how to grow up first.

Ah, wishful thinking. =)

From Day to Day

Yesterday I felt like maybe this teaching thing wasn't all it was cracked up to be. My students were irresponsible, exasperating, and disrespectful. And after spending a good 10 hours of my weekend prepping and planning and grading, it was frustrating to hear students' excuses of not having time to do their homework. It's interesting as a student teacher because students seem to feel that they can be more honest with me. So, rather than saying, "I tried, but I couldn't," they say, "I'm not gonna lie about it, I didn't even look at it." Or instead of, "I heard what you said, I just forgot," they say, "I'm gonna be honest with you, I didn't pay attention to you at all." The honesty of it all just throws me off that I don't even know how to respond. The best that I've come up with is to say, "If you're not going to take the time to listen, then I'm not going to take the time to help you. Figure it out on your own." Then I come back maybe 5 minutes later and answer a question. I don't completely ditch them. Just long enough for them to think they've been ditched. Conversations like that along with students who cannot sit down and cannot be quiet while other students are taking a quiz made for a very long day (and that was just one class period!).

Today, however, was a better day. Carol had a substitute and yet the students didn't have any problems with me. The first class talked with me quite a bit and we got to know each other better (along with getting math done!). The second class had some problems keeping on task, but with a new lesson that they seemed to actually totally understand (we'll see when we get the homework back!), the class period went alright. The third class was more interested in getting to know me, while still getting some work done. It was a good mixture of conversation and getting stuff done. Maybe I won't give up on high schoolers quite yet. =)

I do miss math. A lot. I know I'm teaching it, but it's not the same. My students today were complaining because part of their assignment required them to answer questions about functions with complete sentences (I added in correct grammar too, but I'll not hope for too much). I so badly wanted to tell them, "The higher in math you go, the more writing you have to do. Lots and lots of proofs = lots and lots of writing." But I didn't because I knew it would cause an uproar of half the class saying, "Well I'm not going higher in math, so can I not write complete sentences now?" So I didn't. But still, it made me think fondly of Abstract Algebra. Oh to think about subjects that are challenging. I think having this calculus class will be nice for that. Though spending 4 days on Chain Rule is a little tiring (though probably necessary). I'm just feeling the withdrawals from college academia. Do most people feel this after they graduate college? I never thought about that aspect of graduating. No more challenging collegiate courses to push you beyond your normal capabilities to levels of aptitude that should not be expected of any 20 year old. Sad.

On to grading papers and planning lessons. Ugh.