1/4 over (I wish my students knew what 1/4 is)

The semester is over.

Comparing now to the beginning of the year... well, my job has stayed the same. A lot of people's job titles have changed. Bilingual gives you stability, because they don't have anyone to take your spot. It probably also means that some bad teachers get more security.

I still need to do better at making sure the kids have the vocab they need to succeed. I need to do better at a lot of things. Their average performance on certain things is still very low--I know there need to be way more efficient ways. I know you can always improve, but I want to improve a lot, now.

Today I saw at least one kid reading the book I gave him for Christmas. Good. I got a lot of mugs--certainly something I can use. I think the only thing most of them could think about me is "he drinks a ridiculous amount of coffee."

I go in tomorrow to clean up, do permanent folders, and take care of a couple other tasks, and then we don't start again until January 3. Now, to do some Christmas shopping...

Quick jolly comments

I hate holidays.

Anyway, tomorrow evening I have a final exam, which will be preceded by the merriment of the class holiday party. I got everyone from the class books--which hopefully are matched up well to their interests. Some are lightly used, some new. I hope they'll actually read them...

Today we had the school holiday assembly. Or, I should say, Christmas assembly. There aren't any other holidays. In fact, the kids sang some Jesus song (I don't know what it's called because I don't know what any of them are called) and there was actually a Joseph and Mary on stage, with a little plastic Jesus.

Ah, Texas.

Holiday season

HISD is almost ready to dismiss... we have 3 1/2 more useless days. Many of the teachers say that there are too many distractions at school. I think they are right. I would like to be able to focus with my kids, but...

Last week we started giving the "benchmarks," that is, practice standardized tests (TAKS). However, they weren't real TAKS release tests (you can find those online, by the way, if you want to know what my kids are going to take). They were TAKSMaster, that is, by a private company, and they were way harder than the TAKS. It is useless for me to know that my class can't read them, because I already knew that. They scored 39 percent on reading and 50 percent on math (that math score actually makes me rather optimistic, because there wasn't a lot of variation, and once we get through measurement, fractions, and decimals, I think they will be closer to 70-80 percent on a test that was harder than TAKS). Still... had it been real TAKS it might have been worth my time. Giving these harder tests depresses them, depresses me, and wastes my week.

So tomorrow, we are doing it again, this time for writing. Their writing is gradually improving... they generally have good ideas, but struggle with execution and providing details. I am optimistic that, in the end, they will be OK with compositions. What worries me is the grammar. Their grammar is horrible and not really getting better. We are going to focus intensely starting in January, so hopefully they will get there, but...

Tuesday the After School Program is presenting their holiday songs, and Tuesday is a short day anyway because I have my horizontal team meetings, so not much I can do. Wednesday we have our holiday party, Thursday is early dismissal and ends the week. So basically they didn't learn all that much last week and won't this week either. They need so much work that it really worries me that this time is being wasted.

I'm sure I've got plenty of other thoughts right now, but I'll wait until I've had time to put them together in some sort of comprehensible order. Happy holidays!

Oh, and just for everyone... a shot of my classroom: