Day 105: The Praxis of Pedagogy

I have no idea what I'm doing up this early. This is the second time in a row where I've gone to bed early and woken up early. I hope this isn't a start of a disturbing trend. I've ALWAYS been a night person. I don't want to become one of those...gasp...morning people. They are all weird freaks that are far too peppy in the morning. I've always secretly...ok not so secretly hated morning people. My wife is a morning person and yet I still married her. However, she's learned not to talk to me too much in the morning. She only asks questions I can grunt no or grunt yes to. Anyways, today I'm totally up.

Ok. So yesterday I started off with journal writes. I asked students to think about their school experience and tell me study skills that they learned that worked and didn't work for them. Then I asked them to tell me about a project or time in school where they were successful and what did they do that made that so successful. Finally, I asked what study skills could they apply to school right now to make themselves more successful. After they wrote I asked for people to talk about what they wrote. It was sad to hear some students that feel they have never had a successful time or project in school. This is the situation that I'm facing. This journal write was to be the intro to talking to them about meta-cognition. However, I didn't get to that cause I needed to finish up psychosocial development. I did total physical response and had them stand up if they agreed with the answer. I think I'll have to warm up to this one cause some students just sat there cause they didn't want to do anything so I don't know if they don't know the answer or are just lazy. Anyways, they seemed to be into the adolescent phase especially when I was talking about rites of passage. I focused on the particular rite of passage of turning 21. Everywhere you go people buy you drinks and you drink to excess. And when you're on the corner puking your brains out people just say, "oh he's turned 21, it's ok." Strange. Class ended relatively perfectly when I finished the last stage. The classes seem to be doing ok. Discipline doesn't seem to be a problem. Now getting work done...