H-town Teaching

Today I welcomed a group of incoming 6th graders to my school. I’m teaching a two week math and science camp and after a year of hormones from my middle schoolers who are high-school aged (I had a 17 year old in the 8th grade…), I find 5th graders cute and refreshing. These kids called me ma’am, and they raised their hand, and when I said “if you can hear the sound of my voice clap once!” EVERYONE clapped. I taught them my coordinate plane song and they totally sang it. No complaints. Poor things, they were so scared that when I cracked several of my lame jokes they were too afraid to laugh. And then I gave them permission. And then they sort of did. OK, maybe I’m just not that funny….

Now I don’t use the word precious lightly, but something extremely precious happened today during camp. We were discussing math vocabulary with the kids, and asking if anyone knew the definitions of certain words. We’d already reviewed data, analyze, vertical and horizontal, average, and a few others. It came time to discuss central tendency, and the first word up was “mean.” This kid, who’d been quite all morning, got a huge smile on his face and his hand shot up. “Yes A, what is the definition of the word mean?” He assertively responded with “It means unpleasant!” He’s totally right, mean is another word for unpleasant. Correcting him was kind of heartbreaking…”Actually, in math it’s another word for the average.” Poor thing, he looked so defeated!

Anywho…

Well, this post is two weeks after the fact but I finished my first year of teaching! I made it without strangling M or S, and my superstar G rocked the TAKS test for the first time in her life. Last year she failed by 18 questions, and this year she passed with flying colors. Sheltering benefits students like G–hard working but extremely shy. In the sheltered ESL environment she was engaged, she asked for help, and was surrounded by a community that celebrated her victories as opposed to ignoring them. It breaks my heart that I won’t be teaching ESL math and science next year because I could really be so much more effective with students like G next year, and even with my little crazies like M and S. But I admitted to my administration that I desperately didn’t want to teach science anymore, just math, and they said I would have to move to the general population instead. So I got what I wanted, sort of. Now I’ll have just 7th graders in each class, instead of of 6th-8th, and I’ll have just one subject. Of course I’ll have double the amount of students, and double the pressure during TAKS time. But I think I’m ready for it and I’m excited about next year!

I’m going to spend the summer relaxing and traveling, and mentally preparing for an amazing second year. It could be my last teaching, so I have to go out with a bang. And who knows, maybe it’s just the start of a very long career (oh my…). Either way, I won’t be posting till the Fall so have a wonderful summer.