Day 11

 Day 11 Fixing Up Assessment

I did the comment only grading over the weekend. Handed it back and asked them to fix what I had noted.

I had mixed results with this and I think it was because along with the comments I included a grade for each of the four sections of the test. This caused some students to say, “I’m OK with that grade,” and not address the comments that I had made. 

This makes me reflect on a conversation that I have been having with Kaileen and other school leaders about whether students in the 14-18 age range can conceptualize the idea that practice is important and that they need to work on reacting to feedback. That is the real world skill they will need.

Day 10

 Day 10 Sept. 27, 2023 Assessment Day

This was assessment day. They don’t call it a test anymore. As I passed out the test I realized that I hadn’t given a test to a group of my own students since the 2011-2012 school year. When I taught in 2020-2021 it was the pandemic so the experience was completely alien. There weren’t traditional tests that year because it made no sense.

It made no sense on a human level. Putting kids who are in a daily state of low level panic through a test—whether timed or not. 

It also gave us the freedom to stop giving tests. With the upheaval of how we were even getting kids into the school parents did not care at all if their students were taking tests or not.

Day 9

 Day 9

One unexpected aspect of a return to teaching is doors. I’m not exactly sure why we are so assiduous about locking doors in the science wing but every door is locked and closed all of the time. It could be due to some bad break ins that the school had back in 2018-2019 or it could be pandemic related but I don’t know.

For someone coming from a more office-like environment the amount of doors to unlock and go through really threw me off for the first couple of days. It was accentuated by the temperatures and the gross sweatiness of my hands trying to extract my keys from my pockets. But on the way to get in the building I swipe my key card. Use key to open classroom door, key for copy room door, key open storage room, key open adjoining storage room, key open chemical storage room, key open the other classroom, I teach in, then key open the door inside of that classroom to get other materials, go back to the classroom where I teach first and key open that door.

This repeats throughout the day.

Day 8

 Day 8 September 23, 2023

Plate tectonics day and more with S and P waves. I led the students through the plate tectonics questionnaire from the book I used and then I had them get the same information from a 20 minute video that I was hoping would be a good double up. But it was way too hard and I think it just led to confusion.

In my period 7 class there are two students who can’t read beyond grade 2. I worked to organize the rolling cart.