1 fucking year!

So yesterday was one fucking year. I'm no longer fresh meat. I'm a sophomore. Looking back at where I was a year ago...fucking shit. I've more or less got my style down. Now it's just about filling it with content. I'm the less well known function following form. I've got classroom persona Dave. Hello children! (now Isaac Hayes gets indignant???)

But I started off all my classes with students doing a journal write describing a time when they planned out an activity. Then I gave points to students that shared. From that I emphasized and drew from them about what it takes to plan out an event. Through that I explained metacognition. My 3rd period had a great example with a student recalling a time when he snuck a whole bunch of people into the ice rink and movies. It was a perfect example of metacognition though not of legality. But it really made the kids get it. I find that teaching this works better putting it in context. And that is my goal. I must put things into context for kids. This is how they learn best. Give them something they can relate to in their everyday lives. They need to draw the connections themselves. This is the beauty and the bane of the pedagogy. You can only point the way and sometimes it don't even matter if you do that. Then I told students the day that we were going to have a test and had them make a metacognitive plan to remember the information. Finally, I had them write exit cards telling me what metacognition meant, what the 3 basic elements were, and a question or two from each of the elements. I didn't expect anyone to get all of them, but I wanted them force them to recall something. This worked waaaay better than the first time I taught this.

CTM is crazy. I got 19 kids to watch over now. A lot of personalities to handle. Every single one of them with their own idiosyncrasies and baggage.