10th Week: Slliiiiidddding into home

Some baseball humor in the title. The home opener for the Colorado Rockies isn't until April 4th, but I'm looking forward to the warmer weather and baseball being on television again. Maybe even taking my daughter to a game this season. Riding my bike to school, and wearing short sleeves and sandals.

Photo from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster_College_(Missouri)

This week was the week before Spring Break. It was a slow start with International Day on Monday for the International Baccalaureate students at Poudre High School. It was a day filled with presentations from around the world and cuisine catered by ethnic restaurants around town. I went to five presentations. The first was about China that was given by a senior IB student. The second was about Korea, where I discovered where I could get good Korean food in Colorado. After lunch, I went to India, Israel, and Zambia. They were all interesting in their own right. Zambia was most interesting because it came from an adult who visited there. Now, I know Sebastian, who is also in the STEPP program, and he is a refugee from Zimbabwe, so I know a little about the culture there from talking to him. However, it is also interesting to hear an outsider's perspective of being there. The presenter spoke about the country as if she had just visited, and really, it had been seven years!

Photo from: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cristic/466888471/

Parent Teacher Conferences were on Wednesday at Poudre High School. I was able to brag to the parents of some of my best students, and I was able to connect with parents of students who were struggling. I spoke with most of the parents of the students with whom I was concerned. The parents seemed just as concerned about the grades as I was, and we discussed ways to help the students improve. Often, the solution was simply turning in late work. Other times, it was more about behavior and engagement in the classes. Teenagers are facing many challenges in their lives including raging hormones, media feedback, school, and pressure from friends and family. This is even not to mention that they are really still "just kids." This is a generalization about most of the students I teach, but some of them are very mature for their age. One student's mom was very concerned for her daughter's dis-engagement in school and in her relationship with her. She knew her daughter well, and told me a lot of the same behavior that I was experiencing in class. Unfortunately, other than turning in missing work, I wasn't able to help much. Another parent was somewhat out of touch with her child's behavior and grades. She had taken her daughter's word about the feedback that I was giving her about her grades and didn't speak with me directly about it. Because the situation was somewhat confrontational, I decided to take a side step and let her parents know that I would work with her in class and come to an agreement, which we did on Thursday after conferences. However, I was also able to see that the student was "pulling the wool" over her parents' eyes and blaming her ineptitude on me as a "lack of communication." I don't work well with manipulation, and I'm quite tempted to email her parents again with a progress report to ensure that work gets done over break. Overall, the Parent Teacher Conferences helped me to practice my communication with parents and to make note of things that I could do to help students more in my classes.

The projects in Entrepreneurship are beginning to come back to me better and better. I've graded all of the Building and Location projects that have been turned in thus far, and they are creative and interesting. My best students have turned in their work and made A's on their projects. I'm still waiting for a few projects to filter in over Spring Break.

Friday is, of course, the day before Spring Break. A few students are already leaving for vacation on Friday and will not be in school; however, there are plenty of students that will still be in school as well. In 4th Hour Economics, we have decided to have a "Friday Fun Day" for the day before Spring Break. We want to keep the two Economics classes on task together, so we had an extra day to expend. Students will bring snacks to share, and we will watch a movie or episodes of The Office. As much as the students are ready, teachers are just as ready for this week-long break. It denotes the middle of the semester, and after Spring Break, end-of-year activities begin to ramp up, which will lead to the downward spiral of the last day of school.