Sunday Morning

As always, I wake up totally wired, the polar opposite of how I'll be come Thursday night, when I collapse in exhaustion. On my mind this morning is the pesky regents. After a disastrous regents practice sesion on Thursday in which half of my students stared at the language as though it were chinese and then quietly gave up, I was feeling so down on myself, them, the school and the system that I needed a reality check. But after a day lying in bed because of a migraine yesterday, I've put it in perspective. Seriously. I really have... whatever = )

First of all, the regents is too damn hard for at least half of my kids. They're not ready for it, and no amount of cajoling on my part is going to get them ready. So my plan has to be to find ways to target those students who are fuly capable of passing and those who are borderline, while continuing to engage the entire class on an appropriate level. Easy as pie! Not. But I need to be realistic. One idea I had was to give students a regnets task to take home every monday, make it due friday (or vice-versa) and know that the motivated students will do it on their own.
But enough thinking aloud. I'm looking forward to the week and hoping that the stretch towards spring break will slowly begin to seem less stretchy. It really is a long long long long long way to go...

Cool link:
Article about big v. small schools with interview that discusses teaching fellows, class sizes, etc.