Grading Concern

Wednesday. Fourth period. 

Tyson strode in the room, upset. "You told me not to worry. You told me I wouldn't get an F." 

Tyson is new to the class. He only started it a couple weeks ago. He transferred from another school. (I presume he just moved.) 

When he arrived, we were in the middle of a unit. Since this is a special ed math class, our unit consists of graphing one kind of problem. As we were going to be doing more days on this, I figured that Tyson would catch on and catch up. I wasn't going to make him responsible for the worksheets he missed before he joined the class, but he could start where we were at. 

The worksheets that Tyson had done had many errors. Ms. S (the instructional aide who's been doing all the grading) informed me that the kiddos were missing many problems on their assignments. So, on this day, as luck would have it, the plan was to give the students a day to redo the problems they missed to improve their scores. 

I attempted to calm Tyson down. He was in a panic about having an F in the class. I explained that once he made the corrections on his assignments, his grade would rise. Tyson was stuck on the F and how that would effect his ability to play football. 

He had lots of questions. Ms. S sat with him a while to help him. By the end of the period, he seemed way more confident. 

And, as he finished his corrections, Ms. S graded and input his new scores. His grade went from an F to a C-. And it's only going to go up from there. 

It's hard to come in mid semester. But I knew that Tyson's grade wasn't going to be an issue. 

And, we kind of want him on the football team. That kiddo is huge. 

Unpopular

Tuesday, fifth period. 

The period goes by a couple names. Conference. Prep. It's the period I have off from students. 

So, I was sitting in "my" classroom, doing what the period was intended for. I was doing some lesson planning. Some grading. And eating my lunch. 

The phone rang...

Ms. L, who I sort of co-teach with second period, called. 

In a prior second period, Ms. L used her document camera so that her students could copy down some notes. Only that day the thing wouldn't work. As I am familiar with the technology, I managed to get it going. 

And this is what Ms. L called me about. She couldn't get her document camera to work, and could I help her out? Well, sure, I was without students. 

I popped on over there, and in a couple seconds I got the thing working...

This success was greeted by a loud round of boos from the eighth graders. 

I'm not sure what they thought would happen if the document camera didn't work. It's not like they were going to get the period off. They might have had to do something harder than copy notes. Really, they should have thanked me. 

Ms. L did thank me, though. Profusely. 

And I was then off and back to my lesson planning and grading. 

(It was a beautiful sunny and warm day. It was nice to get out and walk in the sun for a bit.)

Economic Blackout

These times... 

I have had a hard time lately with the world at large and my country in particular. These are not normal times. We have devolved into a fascist state, and I feel powerless and helpless. And angry and scared and anxious. I can't be all business as normal. I just can't. 

But, I can't be angry all the time. 

I'm playing with what I want to say and how I want to say it. Because to remain silent in these times is to side with the oppressor. And I won't comply in advance. 

No one cares what I think, though. I won't change any minds. 

So, this week I'm passing along some info that some of you might find helpful. 

I don't know if you heard of the no buy February 28th. I did, and I participated (or didn't participate, whatever the proper terminology for not buying anything that day was). 

The Amazon blackout (no buy from Amazon) is next week, from the 7th to the 14th. I don't buy a lot from them, so that won't be hard. The Nestle... That one is going to be a challenge. I'll have to sit down and figure out what is Nestle, because that company owns a lot of things. 

I don't know what day of the week April 18th is. I'll keep this on my radar, I hope. 

This is a protest I can actually participate in. Now to find other ways I can help. Because I don't want to give in to the fascists. Make no mistake, that's where we are now.

At the Halfway Point

I finally used up all the yarn!

It's tiny, but since it's just for my neck, it's fine. After trying it on, I think I will, in fact, continue the project. There's one more skein that came with this yarn:

Now I just need to figure out what stitch pattern to use. It should be simple as the yarn is kind of fuzzy. And I want it to take a lot of yarn to make the stitch (as I don't need the finished scarf to be too much bigger than it is now). 

It's something to think about. As I have been doing for the last couple weeks. Maybe this week I'll figure it out.

Moebius Scarf Posts

• Moebius Experiment
• A Back Up Project
• Unraveling
• A Redo
• A School Crochet Project
• Crocheting at Work
• The Project in the Background

Pac-Man Fever

Thursday. First period. Co-taught freshman math. 

It was the last ten or so minutes of class. I was seated in a corner, watching. And then, the opening strains of the music for Pac-Man rang out loudly in the middle of class. 

I walked over to the student. Stood there. He looked up.

And he got very, very defensive. "I'm completely finished with my work. I have no other work to do. Class is almost over. I can play this game."

I continued to stand there. 

That's when he realized why I had targeted him. 

"Oops. Sorry."

He quickly muted the sound, and continued with his game. 

He had headphones on, so he hadn't realized that his game's music was being broadcast to the entire silent classroom. 

(He was right. He had finished his work. He could play a game for the remaining time in class. But, we weren't supposed to hear his game.)

The Easy Class

On Tuesday of last week, I was asked to cover a class on my prep period. No problem. (I get paid extra for this, so it's not generally a hardship.) 

The teacher, Mr. H, had a meeting, so he was there to start class. There were eight students. And they had a story to read and questions to answer. The assignment was online. 

Mr. H explained to me the class was really good, so I'd have no problems. 

Well, I didn't have any behavior problems...

First up, one of the students couldn't log into the assignment. We tried everything. She switched computers. We reloaded. Nothing. 

Apparently she'd been having issues. Nothing I could do about that.

And then, just when things were going well, the internet went out.

Naturally. 

(Later I found out the internet went down for the entire district, so at least it wasn't some weird dead spot where we were.)

The good news was by that time half the class had already completed their assignment. And their phones worked fine. So, they kept themselves entertained. 

Why is it that the internet goes down when I have only online work for kiddos and no way to pivot to something else? Sigh. 

Of Streaming and Screenshots

For second period, I sort of co-teach with another special ed teacher. (The "sort of" is doing a lot of heavy lifting. It's a complicated story that I don't want to spend the time explaining.) 

When I started the class, they were finishing up their World War I unit. For a final, Ms. L is having them write an essay about the movie they watched: All Quiet on the Western Front, the 1930 version. 

Because they're special ed eighth graders, this was not something they're used to doing. So, it has taken a lot of pushing to get things going. 

The plan was for them to write about certain portions of the movie. But, of course, they were having trouble recalling the scenes. Then somehow I ended up looking up where it could be streamed, and sure enough, it's currently streaming via Tubi. 

Which they could access via their in school Chromebooks. 

Suddenly, all the kiddos were rewatching the movie. 

"So, I can actually watch movies at school." 

Yeah, probably shouldn't have clued the eighth graders in on the fact that they can stream movies on their computers. (If you look, Tubi has a lot of content. Some of which the eighth graders would like.) 

With me and Ms. L and our two instructional assistants in class, the kiddos couldn't really sneak in other movies. But they do have other classes. 

One thing Ms. L wanted the kiddos to do was to find a photo from the scene of the movie they're writing about. There are a ton of images they can find. But one kiddo wasn't finding the precise image he wanted.

I reasoned that one could take a screenshot from the movie on their Chromebooks.

I explained this to the kiddo. He knew how to take a screenshot. And he managed to capture the image he wanted. 

Ms. L isn't very techno savvy, so when she saw what the kiddo did, she had him instruct another classmate so he could get the image he wanted. 

Yeah, I think I just created some problems. For later. And likely for other teachers. 

But they were actually writing essays on the movie. And about World War I. So, maybe it's a good thing?