Pedagogy and Praxis Day 11

I gave out vocab words to the students today. The words are exploit, plutocracy, propaganda, occupation, and nationalism. It's STAR testing this week... I hate the STAR tests. I think they are a waste of time and a measure not of intelligence but how well one does on a test. But they got to take them. Kids are gonna be out of it this week with the STAR. Allison tells me that when STAR is happening they can't do much else cause their brains are fried. Doesn't look good for vocab tests at the end of the week, especially when they weren't doing so hot at them anyways.

My CTM... never comes to school. This is the student that I am supposed to be a Counselor/Teacher/Mentor to. We don't get along. It's unfortunate. I don't know if he is going to make it to the end of the year cause he never comes to school and is way behind in all his classes. Then I will have lost both of my CTMs. My other CTM decided that she wanted to go back to her old school. I found out from a friend (we know each other through the teaching credential program) that she was going back to her old school. She showed up for like 2 or 3 days... then she got sick and vanished back to her old school.

In my Asian American studies class, we took a test. We'll see how they did, but a lot of them didn't answer a bunch of questions. One student just sat there and didn't even take the test. Undoubtedly, she is very unhappy. But I know that she is going to flunk cause she doesn't turn in anything or do any work. It's unfortunate, but sometimes things are going on and school is the last thing they are thinking or caring about. Hopefully they can work things out and figure their shit out sometime in their lives. The sooner the better though.

In my US history class, only two students did the homework and those two students only did one part of their homework. I used the sticks to call on them and no one was able to answer any of the questions that I asked them. This was really demoralizing. I was ready to go into Zinn and talk about US imperialism but no one had done any work in the textbook. I was going to compare the textbook to "The People's History" and talk about the things that the textbook left out. I wanted them to use the SQ3R on the textbook to learn it better and faster, but they didn't do the work and they are having trouble using the techniques. I can't talk about textbook omissions if the students don't study the textbook. So in class I made them do the SQ3R. This really threw everything off and it will be a pain to catch up.

In my multicultural education class, almost half the class was missing. Guess they were having an extended weekend. We broke up into the groups from Friday and they examined various quotations and answered questions on the worksheet. This took the entire period. After this we are going to talk about the quotes and then fill out the L part of the KWL drawing from the photos and quotations. Everything takes longer with this class and when they don't come...

I talked to my friend Jeff about the homework and he said that I shouldn't give out homework over the weekend and not to give tests on Mondays. He said that I won't get any homework turned in on Monday and that students won't study for tests on Monday. Then I mentioned this to another teacher and she said that she hands out homework over the weekend and the students turn it in for the most part. Here's the thing, I want the students to be successful and I don't want to set them up in situations where they will fail. But at the same time I've got to make demands on them to push them to do better. Just because they aren't doing the work doesn't mean that I shouldn't have goals and expectations for them.