Status check... and only two weeks 'til a break

Well...

First of all, if you only read this blog, I sometimes post over on my other blog--but that's an explicitly nonteaching, all-my-other-thoughts place (if they don't get on Facebook notes, that is).

Second, in the spare time I have to blog, I often don't like to talk overly much about my teaching problems--I want to escape!

That is my explanation for why my blogging is so sporadic. As I've said before, I'm not too good at this whole thing, but sometimes I like to try and pretend that I can do it. :)

What's going on right now? Well... crazy stuff. My disorganization has caught up with me and I'm in the process of trying to make everything straightened up. Perhaps related, perhaps not, my kids aren't doing that well on the assessments we just gave them. That is, they really aren't doing that much better than they would at the beginning of the year, I don't think. Mitigating factors are perhaps the following:

(1) Their English still needs lots of work, and when it gets better, so will their math scores (since they'll actually understand all the problems);
(2) The subject I have taught in the most uniform fashion, English grammar, was their best subject on the assessment.

The biggest issue is that I still have such a range, and some of them are just so low that it's unbelievable. I thought the point of the bilingual program was that they would be phasing into English, and while a lot of them are, some of them are just not doing well. It's tough for me to teach anything in Spanish, too, since they are testing in English.

The other problem I think I have had this year is I have not asked enough questions or gotten enough help on my own. The approach my administration has generally had is "we are too busy to watch you" (not explicitly given, of course, but that's been the reality). This has been good insofar as I've escaped direct sanctioning for anything I've done or not done, but been very negative as far as offers for help are concerned. I'm making a concerted effort now to understand what resources I have and use them appropriately.

One thing I am doing to change my approach is moving to a more uniform, textbook reading format. I just don't think that I, or they, have the capability right now to extract large gains from independent reading. They'll still do it, particularly at home, but as for expecting that to be the bulk of their in-class reading as I have been trying for a few weeks, that is over.

There are more issues than that right now, of course, and everything is complicated, but that's about all the time I have right now.