Inside Four Walls: 2009 - 2010 school year reflections part 2: students

If you missed part 1, it is here and it deals with the parents I had this year.

So what can I say about my students this year? I had a lot of freshman...a lot. Sometimes it's good, like in Geometry or Algebra 2 because those students work hard to get where they are. Other times you get them in Algebra B. Now even then it's a toss up. Some are there because they screwed around and didn't try and won't ever try. Others are there because they just struggled, but genuinely want to pass.

My Geometry students were a mixed bag. I had students that wouldn't miss a thing on a test and others that couldn't tell you what the sum of the interior angles of a triangle was. After state testing, the Geometry students were more upset than my other classes. They felt I didn't cover everything... we skipped reflections, translations, and dilations to finish some other chapters. They wanted to know why, so when I told them that if we finished the book completely some people would fail because of the faster pacing and they might not remember as much because we would be skimming and not going down a few levels. I think of all my classes, my geometry students thought I wasn't competent. But then again they did give me fainting girl, cheaters, and male chivalry at its best.

I can't say much about my Algebra B class. As I said, mostly freshmen. They were immature at the beginning of the year and for the most part, they didn't change. I will never forget the book check story...one of my all time favorites.

My Algebra 2 classes were fun. There were a total of 4 freshman between 2 classes, can you beat that? And a freshman in Algebra 2 doesn't act like a freshman. I had some problems with one period because our counselor decided to put 13 friends together in my class. Now, having 4 friends in a class is bad, but 13 ... come on now. I am sure they didn't do well on the state testing because they were mostly juniors and by then they realize that the CSTs have zero effect on them.

I had a ton of favorite moments from these classes, but my favorite came the day of finals. I was grading them on the Scantron machine and before I slid one in I noticed this one student (had a 35-40% going into the final) bubbled like 4 answers for one question. A bunch of times. I wasn't upset, I thought he wanted to be funny. After I scanned it, I looked a little closer. Here is the scantron.
See it? Well, if not, let me outline it for you...Stay classy Walnut. Pretty good in terms of originality, I will give him that much. I just never thought I would have a student bubble in a penis on a scantron, silly me.

Maybe I will submit this one to Zero Out of Five.

As far as summer school is going...it is better. That student hasn't done anything since the first day. I have a ton of stories I can't share because I want to wait til summer school is over. I will just say that this year's summer school highlights the failure of education and something better than this scantron.