Frustration

There are days when I truly wonder if I'm getting through to my kids at school. This week was a collection of those days. This group has been a challenge from the first day, but this week showed me just how far I have to go. Gwinnett County has instituted an instructional calendar that we all have to follow. While it's been a pain to stick to the calendar, especially in math where we have to move on sometimes even when I don't want to, it helps me stay focused on my instruction. In addition, we are giving Benchmark tests this year. We gave a pretest at the beginning of the year, and this week, we gave a test that covered the skills that I taught the first nine weeks in Language Arts and Math. While I would love to say that all of my kids did wonderfully, I can't. Actually, many of them scored very poorly, some even below 50%. It was extremely frustrating to see that. I feel like everyday is a fight with these kids. I have so many who struggle with school, plus I have ones who don't struggle, but also don't care, so their only goal is to fool around. So I'm spending most of my time with behavior correction and not very much of my time teaching. Plus, I get the feeling that no one has ever asked these kids to think beyond the obvious. Whenever I ask them a question where the answer is not so obvious, they struggle. They also have a very bad habit of raising their hands to answer without even thinking. I've even had kids raise their hands to answer a question that I haven't even asked! They also have a hard time retaining knowledge. We spent one day in math this past week working on rounding numbers. We used number lines, we talked about the tens that "sandwich" a number, we did numerous examples together and independently. So, the next day, I gave them 5 numbers and asked them to round them. There were only about 5 kids out of 20 who even had the smallest idea of how to get started. Most of them just sat there and waited for someone to give them the answer. They've had so much given to them, they just expect it. If they need to work to get something, there's just no reason for them to try. I've also had times where we will do a worksheet together, and I will give them the answers as we are working through the sheet. Unfortunately, when it comes time to grade it, I'll have kids getting 60 or 70 percent because they weren't even paying attention. I've tried really hard to plan lessons that get them engaged and interested, and they struggle with that as well. I've just got to keep plugging away. Hopefully, for the ones that are behind, their parents will see that it can't all be done at school, and they need to work at home as well. I sent home the Benchmark scores today, and I'm expecting alot of notes when we get back to school on Tuesday. (Monday is a work day to get report cards done.)

On a happier note, Matthew took the Benchmark tests this week in first grade, and I got his scores today. While I may not have succeeded as a teacher this grading period, I did as a parent. He got 100% on both the Language Arts and the Math. My kid rocks!