Goodness Gracious. Geez Louise.
These are the two phrases that come to mind when I think about 1st period on Thursday.
Our supervising teacher's description of the 100 minutes was:
"The stress in this room was palpable; you could have cut the tension with a knife."
We started off the day by giving the students time to finish and present their political cartoon packets. For some groups, it was like we asked them to pull out their own teeth without anesthesia. Some students nearly refused to do their work. Hello? I never would have done that as a student. I really need to find a way to relate to some of these students, or else I think the next seven weeks are going to be a battle of wills. And I will not be the loser.
After telling the students to stop talking every 30 seconds during the presentations of their political cartoons, we moved on to reviewing for the essays. Our first mistake was that we let the students' groups get too large. We will not be making that error again. Due to all the talking during class and the amount of time they spent off task, we only got to see essay presentations from two groups. This means we will be reviewing the essays again before the test. Many of the students will not study this weekend, and since we won't see them until Tuesday, I worry that their only time spent studying for the essays will be Tuesday morning. Hopefully everyone will be able to focus then.
Needless to say, Carrie and I were fully exhausted by 10:15 Thursday morning. However, we continue to learn more about our students, ourselves, and this profession we call "teaching" every time we face these challenges.
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