First day of school today... My lesson today was, for all intents and purposes, a flop. In the parlance of our objective-based classes here, "Student was not able to...." do much of anything that I thought they should be able to do at the lesson's end. I figured, these are 5th graders, they should know triangles, it'll be a review. Simple as that. Due to a late start and lack of net access last night, most of the entry points of interest did not find themselves in my final presentation. I also bit off way more than the kids could chew today, and consequently nobody had any idea what was going on. I thought things were going well (even though my first question "what do you already know about triangles" did elicit the response "they have 2 parallel lines") until we got to the worksheets and it became pretty clear that only a couple of kids had a clue what I was teaching. Got some really good feedback from my faculty advisor, mostly to clarify my instructions, print bigger on the blackboard, and try not to cram so much stuff into a lesson. Really liked the kids, actually especially liked the 2 who were referred to as behavior problems before class. Just about killed me when I asked one little boy a question, and his only answer was to pull at his shirt, buttoned up to the throat, and let me know how hot it was... and it was damn hot in there, not as bad as last week, but still 4th floor unairconditioned, no windows open room in the Bronx. Got a ride home with one of my friends, who was crushed after an encounter with his FA. He was teaching a lesson on long division, and one of the students was trying like hell, but without ever getting an answer right. The FA, sick of listening to the kid, just shot him down in front of the whole class, and he didn't talk for the rest of the class. My friend said the FA had pretty much given up on the kids, even though she'd only had them for a week... another friend had a 13 year old in her 4th grade class, who read at a 2nd grade level. You have to wonder how the people teaching these kids can sleep at night... i certainly won't tonight until i get lesson plan together that I think will work better than the ill-fated triangle plan of today.