Alright people, I'll be honest. I didn't write a blog post last week because I just felt like there was nothing to write about. My week was boring, just filled with pretests and boring beyond boring lessons. You know it's bad when the teacher says those things; I can't imagine how those students felt. But....this week...now there is a different story.
This week I warned my students that they would have a quiz on all of things we have learned up to this point. We didn't have time for a review before the quiz, but I wrote down everything that they would see on the test and made them write it down. I told them day after day to study. Yeah...well I think teens are really great at hearing something in one ear and then letting it go straight through to exit through the other ear. Well, hopefully they will study from now on since they have seen the kinds of quizes we give in 8th grade English. 50 points, fill-in, no multiple choice. If they studied (and I could definitely tell when they did), they did a perfectly fine job on the quiz.
While they were taking the quiz, I walked around and made sure students read directions clearly and did all that the quiz required. One girl raised her hand to ask a question and I walked over to help her out. The boy sitting next to her had his quiz turned over to show that he was finished and he was drawing. While I bent over to help the girl, I see this boy look at her test, flip over his paper, and write in an answer. "No you don't," I said loudly. "I just saw you take an answer from her paper. That is cheating and you will get no points for that question." He looked at me in stunned silence. "Turn your test over. You are done." And I walked away.
Rule number one of common sense: "If you are going to cheat, DON'T DO IT RIGHT IN FRONT OF THE TEACHER!" Seriously!?!? I couldn't believe it. This is only the second time I have caught someone in straight out cheating mode. (The other time was when I graded two papers on Huck Finn that were exactly,word-for-word the same. It was my first year in the English Teaching program and I was observing a high school class. The teacher had me grading essays, and the only reason I caught them was because the essay was memorably terrible. For being in an honors class, these sophomore girls were not terribly smart.) Anyway, I could see this boy crying softly after I caught him. When he regained composure, he raised his hand to call me over.
"I'm really sorry, Ms. Mayans," he apologized softly.
"Alright, thank you for the apology. We will talk about this later." I then informed him that I would be calling his mom during lunch to tell her about the incident.
"Don't call my mom," he pleaded. "I'll get grounded!"
This almost made me laugh out loud. Haha...that's not my fault, kid.
The phone call with mom went well, and I was happy to hear her support. In the moment this all happened, I definitely reacted instictually, so I'm happy to report that my instinct was fair and showed strictness with boundaries while also being kind. I could have given him a zero on the test, but I felt like that would be over kill in this situation so I only took the points off of that one questions. It all ended well, and I think the kid learned a lesson.
Well, the stories continue for this week. On Friday we went to the computer lab so that my students could take the SRI (it is a reading test that tells them their lexile level). There were these three boys sitting in the front who I had my eye on. One of them, near the end of the test, looked at his two friends to get their attention. He then proceeded to flip off the computer screen in a display of annoyance to the test. I was standing one row back looking at this whole thing, and so I just said, " 'student'. Not appropriate." He just slunk down in his seat and mumbled, "Sorry." haha. The truth is, I laughed at how ridiculous these teens were. (I didn't laugh in front of them, of course.) I am actually shocked that I caught all these kids doing this stuff because usually I am oblivious to those things.
I, myself, was also caught doing something. I have tried teaching vocabulary, commonly confused words, and affixes they way the other 8th grade English teachers do, but I have found that it is sooo boring and not very interactive. I talked with my co-teacher, Lindsay, and we brainstormed some ideas for how to better teach the material. We came up with a great idea to do centers on Monday to teach all three things (vocab, commonly confused words, and affixes) with more student-centered strategies. This would also help us remember to reinforce throughout the week instead of just teaching in once and then forgetting about it. Well, this was all great, but I wasn't sure how to tell the rest of my team about my change. In the end, I chickened out and decided I would just do it without telling them. That was a great idea until one of them saw me at the printer with the worksheets for the learning centers and asked me to explain to her what I was planning. I quickly gave her the condensed version of my idea and she said, "That sounds really interesting. Print out 3 more copies to bring to the meeting, and we can discuss it then." I was scared...but it all turned out fine. Come to find out that these other teachers had also talked about some of the weaknesses in the way they were currently teaching the material. They liked my idea (some more than others) and helped me smooth out some of the rougher ideas. I was so happy to receive their support and ideas. Now all three of us are trying it out on Monday and hopefully it will work out well. For the first few weeks, I think it will be a lot of work on our part, but hopefully after a few weeks of practice our students will be able to self-monitor their learning a bit more.
When I told my mom about this weekend, she simply said, "You had a very adult week." There were lots of fears and uncomfortable situations to face, but I feel stronger and better prepared after all of it.
