We teachers sort of see time marching on differently than others. The new year for us starts September 1st so January 1 means that our year is almost halfway done. I make my resolutions before the school year starts---like I will not let my grading pile up, I will make the time to compliment my students more (and to let their parents know when I do), I will try blogging with the students, etc. So how am I doing? Pretty good. I started a new tradition this year of picking a "Student of the Week" from my five classes each week. I take a picture of the Student of the Week sign and email it to that student's parents and I have tried to email parents whenever I "catch" their child doing something kind or nice. My classes have been blogging with each unit. It has gone pretty well but we still need to continue to work on the students' interaction with each other's blogs. I also have found that they are time consuming to grade, even with a rubric. I still need to tweak how I have the students blog but I am glad that I have introduced them to it. As for the grading piling up...yeah that still happens.
So what's happening right now in the classroom? In my ELL class, we have just started to learn about the Great Depression. In the Academic classes, we are finishing up studying the New Deal. The students did a project where they followed the stock market for over a month and they got to invest an imaginary $10,000. They seemed to enjoy it and I think I successfully scared many of them away from day trading. Most of them lost money. In Advanced Placement, we have started the chapter leading up to WWII and will begin to debate the mistakes the free world made in dealing with the Axis powers. Midterms are creeping up on us--ours will be on January 28th for all classes.
