Almost there!

Well... students took their final benchmarks last week.

My math class has been split into three. That's fine for me, since I get the "high" third, the ones who are doing OK by grade level standards. They're the easy ones to teach. The rest of them go to our pull-out teachers, who normally do reading, but who are doing their best to try to get them caught up. Meanwhile, I've met with my TFA program director to figure out a plan to get kids up to speed as fast as possible. I taught the plan (it includes an acronym for their test strategies).

Issue: they still have comprehension problems. Even if they're reading it out loud in a group, they miss some big things. Result: their reading scores were about the same on the new benchmark, though math climbed a bit. That would mean about half pass, half don't. I'm under no illusions that all of them are going to pass, though I am still hoping maybe 2/3 will pull it out in both math and reading. I'm feeling a little better about next year, though, because I really think I do know how to improve a lot.

We had Friday off and today was professional development. We met in "vertical teams," i.e. the PK-5th teacher in the same sequence. The third-grade teacher before me, who reportedly doesn't teach much English, finally admitted as much (since I don't know it anyway). I don't understand how that works, since she has all the time after the reading test in March to focus just on English. Sigh. Anyway, my vertical team is a joke, since the goal seems to be to leave as quickly as possible and not to actually cooperate in any meaningful way. They always tell me "we are here if you need us" but they're definitely not committed to collaboration as a concept. So far I don't feel like I can change that, much as I might want to.

Last bit of good news: I'm getting a smartboard! (although we call them "teamboards"). I'm excited to see what I'll be able to do with it!