Three Weeks Down, One More to Go...

So I have been rather delinquent in posting any further updates throughout Institute, which is just a shame. Here's a brief recap:

Week 1: Holy Shit. Kids are loud. They don't want to be here. How can I get them to shut up so we can learn some math?

Week 2: Angels? Did they bring me angels? How did they make this 180? But wait, it's not even close to enough ... I tutored a kid at McDonald's for four hours and then he walked in 20 minutes late to his 30 minute midterm. Guess who didn't pass? Him, along with all his classmates with the exception of three students. Class average was a 45%. Decided to revamp the plan and keep going. Great success though -- one of my students said the following:

- "This class is like that movie ... 'Freedom Writers'!"
- "Ms. Brar do you have to teach in DC in the fall? If you were my teacher during the regular school year, I could go to Harvard."

Week 3: Trying to make that motivation convert to hard work. Huge mastery on Monday's lesson on factoring using the difference of two squares. All but two students got above an 80%. Most even got 100%. I believe the class average was a 91%. Then it went downhill, and quick. For Tuesday through Friday, I wasn't able to get through my lesson and there was no assessment to formally gauge their understanding of the material. This roots from my time management failures, but also because I decided that because I already know that they don't understand what I just taught, it's a better use of time to reteach than to have them fail an assessment.

Friday was exceptionally rough. This week, a student at my school was shot and killed and one of the girls in my class was out for two days getting grief counseling through the school. I explained to her on Friday that obviously there was a good reason for her not being there, but she did have to make up the lost work and we learned a lot that she'll need to catch up on. I also told her that her habit of only doing half of every assessment is really killing her grade, because I can only give her up to a 50%. I think I got to her and was even more sure when the rest of the class was goofing off second period and she turned around to tell the boys she usually flirts with to quiet down so we could learn. I could have died happy at that moment.

Next week is a challenge. Because most of the students were not in our class to receive their 'growth goals' based on these diagnostic tests they never took, we set an average growth goal for the whole class at 72%. I'm not really sure how TFA came to this number, but we realized that based off the data we DID have, our class started at a 29% understanding before summer school and achieved 45% on the midterm (though that only covered 12 objectives out of 35). It's going to be a serious struggle to get the kids over that giant gap and it doesn't help that the last few objectives are markedly more difficult than the ones they still don't understand from the first week when they were goofing off. But we're doing review sessions and everything else in our power to make this work.

Today, my partner Julie and I are holding a review session at McDonald's for our kids. I know I can make at least two of them come to it, but I really hope most of them show up, because they all need it. What kills me inside is the idea of failing these kids because my time management sucks and because that means I can't get through lessons. On Monday, I've decided that whoever wants to learn will be there and disruptions will be handled on a no-tolerance basis that I will make clear to them at the beginning of class. That's the only way I know how to get through everything and really prepare them for this exam on Wednesday.

I'm praying this works. I'm either going to be really, really happy on Wednesday afternoon -- or pitifully depressed.

~N.