The Praxis of Pedagogy Day 38

I didn't get to my monday post like I wanted. I'm staying late at school cause some students don't have computers at home and if I stay a little longer they get more computer time, plus it's coming up on finals time. I had a student come up to me today asking me what he was writing on for his final project. This week we are giving presentations, next week the papers are due. He's asking me what he needed to do. I finally did the grades up on the computer and students aren't doing so well. Next year I need to be more on top of it when it comes to grading and posting grades.

My first period didn't have any speakers so I let them work on project stuff. As they were doing that I gave out grades. Some seniors aren't walking. My second period had two students go. I'm being more lenient to the students that go first because they got the guts to go first and it's tough. But the presentations were... disorganized. One thing that I've really learned teaching is that I can't expect them to know how to do things. I have to walk them through and really show them how to do a lot of things. The kids are smart enough, they just lack skills and often motivation and self confidence. My motto though is to always have hold them in higher regard than they hold themselves. Higher expectations, though not blind to where they are. My third period class had students doing projects too. One student didn't even know that he was doing a project today. He signed the paper himself choosing the day that he was going to go. Apathetic bump on a log.

In more humorous news, I was offered my first bribe by a student today. $140 dollars on-the-spot cold hard cash if I passed her in the class. She's a senior and wants to walk but she hasn't been doing so well. I mean she took a test and got an 8 out of 50. A test where the students made up more than half of the questions. Sigh... it's very frustrating.

Alright got to get back to grading.