Blog # 2: What's going well, what's gotta go.

I have a lot to learn.

I found out yesterday some of my kids could be gang affiliated, one kid showed up with bright red eyes and a changed affect, reports of 2 runaways... and I've been learning how to teach and so I missed a lot of cues. I feel like I'm years away from being the teacher that can see these kids and be one of the teachers who can try to be some of the change these kids need.

SO lets start with 2 things that are working, to stay positive.
1) I teach 9th grade science, but to keep the topic from getting stale I have a weekly current event assignment. The topic has to be science, and it helps my students build basic skills while integrating research tasks with ELA. It's been a slow build up for buy in- I started with 30% turn in rates, now up to 60%.
2) I've gotten better with discipline and classroom management. I've moved away from counterproductive habits (group punishment, showing frustration) and gotten better with differentiating my approach by student and situation.

2 places I have to get better:
1) I need more confidence in my role. I'm still so busy white knuckling the lesson plan that my focus is more on me than on the learning. This is going to take more planning further ahead than I'm currently running, so I'm swimming instead of treading water.
2) I need to improve my management skills running labs. I have to get better at hit-and-go contact so I don't have my back to the rest of the class. This is going to need me to sit in and observe other teachers running labs and just observing. Another fix is going to be prepping the demo and intro *after* I've run through the lab myself to I'm doing less remedial coaching and more moving the herd along.