- Second semester is a lot more difficult than first. The bad habits learned are pretty deeply ingrained. They have lost a lot of their spark. They even seem a little bit lazier. On the plus side though, they are better writers.
-Only one person failed the first half of the semester. They only turned in one midterm. And had missed a few classes. Everyone else had a D or higher. I consider that a slight success.
-As I said earlier, the papers are slightly better. Slightly, being the key turn of phrase, of course. Although one kid wrote a two page paper (biography) on Al Gore and mentioned nothing about his career in the Senate or his time as a Vice-President. I feel a little something was missing. Oh, and another kid (who I really really like and am rooting for) wrote his first paper on an article that I did not assign. I had passed this article out a few weeks before break and I have no idea what article he used for his paper. But it was not the right one.
-There is only so much I can do. I can want them to pass their classes and succeed with all my might but until they want to change, there is little I can do. Next week I'm going to meet with them individually again and have them come up with a detailed plan of how to go from where they are with their midterm grades to a hopefully improved final grade. I don't know if this will do anything but at least writing up a plan will hopefully inspire them to follow through with the plan.
-The range of intelligence/care/consideration/whatever you call it of my students in wide. I had one student totally on top of things, even though they were playing Nationals for Basketball and she was dealing with some medical issues. She got me her midterms a little late but had talked to me about it ahead of time and turned everything else in. Another student had to miss some classes but always let me know ahead of time, stayed up to date on everything and came to me today to work out a way to take notes in class with a broken dominant arm and to make up his quizzes. On the complete other end of the spectrum, a student emailed me today, having misspelled my last name on a previous email (out of all my names, my last name is by far the second easiest...) and was informing me of missing class tomorrow. Because he has a CORT date to fight a ticket he got awhile ago. Can I email him back and tell him he can't miss class until he learns to spell court? I'd really like to do that...
-I don't know if I've been writing it here on my blog but in my journal I certainly have been exclaiming over the haste in which this year has been passing by. Holy bananas, folks, it's already the 4th day of April. Where on earth did the first quarter of the year go? Because I certainly have no idea.
So I'm tired now, I want to make some homemade pizza dough but probably will hold off until Wednesday since I don't have anything thawed in the fridge right now (although I could still make mushroom and pineapple pizza....) and tomorrow I"m going out with Dori. I actually have pretty full week, now that I think about it. Tonight I have rehearsal, tomorrow dinner with the Dori-ster, Wednesday is Faculty Appreciate dinner, Thursday there is a poetry reading in Boise and Friday starts the birthday weekend extravaganza!
OK, off to enjoy my day- I've worked a lot today. Love!
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