Day 102-103 Praxis of Pedagogy

Thursday was the first day of regular school. I totally wasn't ready. Didn't have my attendance sheet. Fucking ridiculous. Monday and Tuesday I spent scheduling my CTM into classes and meeting with their parents. 3 hr plus meetings. Bureaucratic paper nightmare. Doing all the shit to get ready. Wednesday after school I had to go to credentialling classes.

So in all my classes I started off with a talking about classroom norms and expectations. There are some kids that I am concerned about behavior/discipline wise. 2 kids we had in for staff meeting. One of the kids I finally recognized what the look was on his face at staff meeting. Contempt. He seems to have a general contempt for everyone including his mother. If he becomes a problem, I'll have to call him on that. After the classroom norms, I had them do "I am" poems. Then I paired them up and they read their poems to their partner. Finally, I had volunteers get up and read their poems. All 3 classes ended with me explaining meta-cognition and how that is going to be a part of how classes are taught. I'm really going to try and get kids to think about their thinking. That will really fuck with their heads.

On Friday it was cool cause all 3 of my classes got to see performances of the "Theatre of the Oppressed." It's this cool organization that performs a piece about military recruiters. The first time around they perform the entire sketch. The second time around, students can call freeze and then add a character or replace a character and interact with the scene. This helps students problem solve and come up with alternative endings to the scene. I was impressed with some of the interventions and scene replacements. The troupe was very cool and the students really seemed to enjoy it. It really made my Friday a million times easier too. At the end of the day, I hand wrote report cards. We have easy grade pro and we're going to have everyone using it this quarter, so no more of this stupid handwritten shit ever again. Yippee!!!!