Overdue update

I wrote my last post in December and got out of the habit of regularly updating this blog. I hope to get back on track for the rest of this year. Here is a quick post of everything that has been happening since the start of the second semester.

The first weeks back got off to a rough start. In the span of roughly 2 weeks, 2 shootings happened in the neighboring town. Neither occurred at school; however, each affected many of the students' lives directly and indirectly. I saw that those most affected were in the high school but I could also see a marked difference in my middle schoolers on certain days. Just so no one gets worried, I live in a safe area and work in a safe school. Not once have I felt threatened or felt in fear of violence either at home, while tutoring, or at school. Things did get back to normal and school continued.

My room was without heat for about two weeks. A part was missing from the system and had to be ordered and shipped. As a result, I held class in the library. This was difficult. Although I had a whiteboard and all of my supplies, my students did not take class as seriously. Of course this is no excuse and I did not take their excuses/reasons why they chose not to pay attention. I could tell that the attention and focus dropped dramatically while in the library. Luckily, the behavior changed once we got our heat back.

Since the beginning of the year, I did not have any shelves in my room. I was promised some a few weeks into the year but they never arrived. As a result, I had few places to put the 20 or so boxes of new books and their related materials (workbooks, study guides, transparencies, CDs, etc.). Things started to pile up due to lack of organized space. Finally, about 3 weeks ago, the shelves were delivered to my room. They were simple "snap-together" shelves from Walmart. The next week I started to put them together in hopes of getting them all together by the end of the week. My principal did not think this was fast enough so one day during my prep period I inherited a team of student workers. The students have been without a permanent keyboarding/computer teacher and have had a variety of subs in the room; they weren't doing much in that class each day.

Once the students entered the room, I split them all into groups with jobs for each one. One group put together all of the shelving units. Another group organized the materials for the shelves. Another group was my "clean-up" group that I directed in cleaning up the trash and old materials found in the room. The cleaning lasted into 3rd period with the end result being a well-organized and spotless room. I'm happy I got the work crew as the room just looks amazing now.

During 2nd semester I started to help coach the Quiz Bowl team (along with 3 other teachers). Quiz Bowl is a competition where the students answer fact-based questions in the subjects of science, math, literature, art, music, history, geography, and general knowledge. The rounds are set up for students to answer questions through knowing specific facts or groups of facts (such as having 10 questions in a row dealing with units of measurement ending in -gram). The team advanced past the regional competition by placing 3rd (top 4 was needed) and the team competed at State this past weekend. We did not do as well and were eliminated during the first elimination round in the afternoon (the first 3 morning rounds decided placement for the afternoon).

I've also taken weekend trips to both New Orleans and Memphis. Both were fun cities and I would've loved to spend more time in both of them. In New Orleans, I got to see one of the teachers I worked with this summer at Institute. While I did not take a tour of the lower 9th Ward, I did get to see parts of the Recovery District. It's true that there are houses that are still sitting there with their insides gutted out onto their front lawns.

Those were the major events of the 2nd semester so far. Spring break will be in 3 weeks and the year will be officially 3/4 over at that point. While I feel that I am doing pretty well right now, I'll be a much more effective teacher next year. I received more books on teaching and I am slowly making my way through each one. Over the summer I'll be able to plan better according to those books in order to make the 2nd year run smoothly.