Trashketball

Today was a really positive day as far as tutoring went, however, there is a hitch in my giddilong, as my grandma would say. My teacher is getting moved out of my classroom on Monday. 

She will be reassigned to a reading intervention class, and I will get a new teacher, likely one who comes temporarily out of retirement, in my classroom. I'm not extremely worried because behaviorily, the classes can honestly only get better than they are now. However, I don't know how this teacher will react to City Year or my requests to take students out of class to tutor them, especially because my teacher now is extremely supportive about me getting time with my students. 

Today, my students and I played a game as we were learning new vocabulary. It's called trashketball. The students would write a Powerful Sentence (7 words or more) on a post-it using the new word, read the sentence aloud, crumple their paper and toss it into the goal. They loved it! One of my students said, "Miss, this game isn't fair."

"Why? We're all gonna stand behind this line!"

"Because, Miss, I'm too good."

:) 

Needless to say, we got through all of our words.

Also I had a great experience during our flex period (home room) when I went to work with a student on writing. I walked into the class and was assaulted with hugs by two students. Many of the others shouted, "Ms. C!! You're in this class? Awesome!" One student even asked me to sit by her an made a label for my seat that read: "Ms. C's Seat" It made me feel really loved. 

I started telling some students that I planned to teach next year. A lot of ten don't knew that I'm really a social studies teacher, so they're surprised when I say that social studies is my favorite subject! I tell them that I'm going to teach social studies next year and they say, "Oh, here?!" 

"No, at another school in a different city."

"Whaaaat?! No!"

:)

Josue's reaction: "Imma move to that city and be in your class." I think he meant that half in a nice way and half in a threatening way. Haha. 

I already know I'm going to miss then so much!!

Our afterschool program is going through some trials, but my co-coordinator, some teammates, and I are working really hard to figure out how to handle behavior issues without having to kick students out of the program. Because they all can be good-natured kids, and we don't want to be the ones who discouraged them from being involved. But something's gotta give, because it is stressing my team out a lot to redirect students constantly for an hour after working hard all day.

The end! Sorry my posts aren't very organized, but I'm not teaching prewriting strategies until tomorrow! ;)