Penat Buter and Gelly

1. How did today differ from how I expected it to be?
2. What are the high points of the day?
3. What are the low points of the day?
4. What is one experience that caused me to grow today?
5. What am I excited about for tomorrow?

1. Today was a little worse than I expected it to be. I think I was a little complacent because yesterday went so well, but we were in the library yesterday, and today we were back in the classroom, so all the students were up to their old tricks. It really is getting destructive in one of my classes and students who want to learn are not able to, literally. So hopefully my teachers and I can meets to come up with some kind of solution because it's really out of hand. I expected behavior to be a little bit of a challenge today, but we were playing a review game, so it should not have been nearly as bad as it ended up being. Stay tuned.

2. We distributed our student survey and got a lot of awesome feedback! A LOT of students wrote that they were either very interested or somewhat interested in attending our after school program, so that is really exciting. We also rolled it out to the team and talked about our procedures for submitting lesson plans and all that, so it was nice to finally have thew hole team on the same page about it. There was a space for students to write in topics that they were interested in learning about, and we got a lot of serious answers that will help us a lot in planning our units, but we also got some creative answers, such as "penat buter and gelly," "apps on my phone," and "how to solve life's problems." If only I knew about these things! 

Also, we started pulling out potential focus list students to do an assessment with them, and as I was pulling a student out to work on hers, we were walking down the hallway and talking and she said, "Miss, you're cool." Ahhh, music to my ears.

Josue has been doing much better in class! He's working towards earning one of my felt-tip pens if he doesn't say anything mean to anyone during class. He almost got it today, but then he called someone a name I won't repeat here. He is doing leaps and bounds better in his other classes, and I'm excited for the day that he'll earn the pen from me!

3. This one class is just terribly out of control. A high-low point was a student in class who put his head down mid way through. I asked if he was okay and he said that he couldn't play the game because he had a headache from all the talking. It broke my heart! He wanted to participate but couldn't. So after school, he came into my teacher's room and asked if he could finish the review game on his own since he couldn't during class. HE is the reason that I am going to regroup and redouble my efforts to rein in this class. My teacher doesn't like to be a strict disciplinarian, so I am going to offer my services in that area, because I am beyond the point of caring if the students like me. I have asked them nicely to be quiet over 10 times and they have disrespected me and my teacher to our faces. It's time.

4. I grew today when Lexie and I presented our After School program plan to the team. It was awesome to get reactions and input to the work that we have been doing so far, and I learned a lot from the questions and reactions from the team. I realized that I think my high expectations for this program can be met. We are working to put a structure in pace to support our teammates as they plan units and lessons. After getting student feedback from the survey, I am so optimistic about our program!

I also grew while I was troubleshooting my problem class with Pat over the phone. He is a literally award-winning classroom manager, so talking to him about this taught me how little I know about how to manage a middle school classroom. I taught seniors and the sweetest group of freshman imaginable during student teaching. All the students were highly-motivated internally and externally. I didn't have to make up a behavior rewards and punishment system. I am SO SPOILED. That ends now.

5. I am excited to meet with my teacher tomorrow to plan a new attack on our most disruptive class period. Something has gotta give with these students, we can't go on like this!