Last Teaching Week of Semester

This has been a very mixed-bag semester.

Bad: Haven't blogged nearly as much as I'd planned to
Good: I'm still alive.

Bad: Spent the second quarter doing much less modeling and conceptual work with the kids
Good: Spent the first quarter doing it

Bad: I was too hard on myself
Good: I have next semester
Bad: I'll be too hard on myself then too.

Bad: I often forgot to take attendance.
Good: I only got yelled at about it once.

There are a million things I want to fix, change, do better next year, etc. so I'm going to do a brain-dump in this post.


1) Fix my timer. I've made an animation that lets a small timer tick off in the corner of a PPT but its got a bug. I've got someone in mind to help me program a better one.

2) Make a list of teacher procedures so I don't keep forgetting things LIKE ATTENDANCE!

3) Make a better seating chart

4) Redo bellwork procedure

5) BUILD A BALANCE SCALE. My kids do not understand equations, and I regret not having a balance scale ready to model that for them.

There are so many things about organization that I just feel overwhelmed. Honestly, at this point I have pretty much stopped caring about this semester. The kids who aren't working are failing and the kids who are working are passing, so I'm focusing less on "Start working! Start working!" and walking around to help those who are trying.

We're all burned out, but I have no way of motivating these kids who suddenly stopped working.

I feel like the walking dead.