Parents!

Today I ran 4 miles, bringing this week's total up to...4 miles. Felt good, though my legs were tired.I might do another 2 tomorrow, or I might attend a ballet class. One of those is easy/less fun and one of them will leave my calves and glutes screaming for days, but also leave me happy. I'll do better next week. This was a busy week, so I'll try to catch you up now.

Wednesday included my best and worst classes so far this year. The lesson was on calculating the slope of a line, which I didn't realize before is a very abstract concept, the kind that you either get or you don't. My first class in the morning was just getting it. It was a tough lesson, and I managed to really challenge the kids for a whole 55 minutes. The lesson was going well from the start, so I was really getting into it and the kids were getting into it and the whole thing snowballed into a whole high-on-teaching sort of deal. I ended up with a bunch of happy and engaged kids who really understood the material.

Unfortunately, what I didn't consider at the time was that the morning class tends to perform a little bit better than the other classes. Since the first class was just pushing the kids to their limit, the next class was just not grasping it. And, since they're twelve, they get the I'm-confused giggles. I was so frustrated, and realized I would have been smarter to split the lesson into two days, but couldn't adjust the agenda on such short notice. Next year. By the time the third class rolled around, I did better, but it wasn't anywhere near as good as the first one.

That evening was Back to School Night, so I was at school until 8. It was an inspiring experience, because the event is mandatory, so the building was packed with caring parents. I had the opportunity to introduce myself, and then was swarmed by a dozen parent all wanting to know how their child was doing. I think I did a good job of being honest, but not too honest that it would be inappropriate in front of a room full of other parents (and some kids). It was fun, and challenging, and exhausting.

Thursday was the test, and it went better than expected. I've only graded two class sets so far, but they were 84% and 81%. More kids understand slope than I thought, although a few students were still missing questions on controls and variables. Fortunately, it's pretty easy to include these concepts in with the rest of the course. I saved the best class for last, though, and I'm hoping they can break 85%.

The exciting part about Lab Coat Friday is that it was the due date of our first lab report final draft. The rough drafts were handed in Wednesday, and I got a wide range of work. I gave some feedback, and received a beautiful collection of 7th grade lab reports on Friday. I'm really excited to look at them, although it'll take a long time to grade all of them. I really emphasized that I prefer typed to written, although I couldn't require it. Some students did a beautiful job of formatting, and others...didn't. I had to juggle some flash drives in the morning, and print out a dozen lab reports from my email, but it was worth it. These assignments are beautiful. Now I have to decide whether to take off points on professionalism from a student's report because he ended it with, "P.S. :Ms. Zelman ROCKS!!!!!!!! P.S.S :Ms. Zelman is the best female science teacher in the entire universe." (The 5th and 6th grade teachers are both male.)

I think I'm gonna like it here.