Somebody better fix this so they can keep stuff cold.
Got busy for a few days this week. Feels like the closer I get to a functioning classroom, the more I'm inclined to stay all hours and tweak lessons and assignments. I only get an hour a day, there's no homework (cultural thing), and written instructions don't land, so I gotta make time count. I get an hour a day during which I can either teach to the group and ignore those individuals who aren't lined up with the group in ability level, teach to small groups which has a finer degree of control, but necessarily leaves some groups in the dark while another group's being worked with, or work 1-on-1 for those students who really need things explained in a different or slower way, ignoring the rest of the class. Spending that time is consuming a commodity I put a lot of stock in. So I stay here late and obsess over the best use of class time. Then I lose half a class on Friday so we can meet and discuss the break schedule with the student body.
Volunteered to run the scoreboard for the basketball games this weekend, which ended up being infinitely more enjoyable then I'd anticipated. I really like the kids. And every one of the basketball players (maybe 2 exceptions between the boys and girls teams) is in one of my classes, and the classes are small enough that I know them at this point. So I was rooting hard for our team, excited when they won (we trounced), cheering as hard as you can when you are the official scorekeeper and required to maintain a facade of impartiality, according to the rulebook (which I consumed in the twenty minutes between the first and second of eight games - scorekeeping is hard!). I learned the intricacies of basketball rules that I had never guessed at when I was a mere player (players, generally, don't have to be concerned with when subs can be buzzed in or exactly when the clock starts up after an out-of-bounds, because they just go when the ref tells them. Mess that up as the scorekeeper, though, and people get MAD).
So I finally got my quizzes graded yesterday after all the games, took today as a mental health day for most of the day, and came in late this evening to do a little quick pre-gaming before tomorrow. I got all the grades updated for the past two weeks, and the burn of the terrible attendance in these parts is showing. I think for most of my classes I'm spending tomorrow catching up. Taking stock of where we're at as a class puts a bit of a damper on my charge-forward enthusiasm - when planning it's easy to remember the students who made big leaps, but when you look at the score across the whole class, the pack is not all running with the leaders. A day of catch up will be boring to my quicker students (and those with better attendance), but it'll save me a lot of headache down the road when I've got to explain to a parent why their little shining-star has an F in math.
It'd be nice to spend a day shoring up the progress we've made over the last two weeks, too. A couple of my classes have leapt through a lot of material, and I'd like them to recall some of it in a month.
In personal news, a couple boxes came, two from kk and two from amazon, leaving me well stocked in food, with Yak Trax, a big huge box of candy (THANK YOU) and running shoes. Decided to see if maybe my inability to sleep normally up here (besides the weird daylight, stressful job, odd hours, and too-hot house) might be due in part to the huge cut-back in physical exertion in my life in switching from a job that was at least part load-in/carpentry to a job that's all standing/sitting and talking. I do tend to be a very active teacher - I pace back and forth in front of the white board, write things on it, move back and forth from desks to white board to answer questions (I've also learned how to write all my numbers upside-down with a great degree of accuracy, to expedite answering questions from the other end of the desk from a student - interesting quirk of the horse-shoe shape I've opted for with the desks), but active teaching is the exertion of very very lazy carpentry. So maybe running, shooting some hoops, doing a little working out, might be the way to get myself to sleep at night? We'll see.
Goals for this week: build more connections between the unit we're learning and other concepts / the world; learn some Yupik numbers, and set expectations for quiz day in advance so it isn't a surprise.
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