Wed., July 10:

Third day teaching today. Things were up and down, more time spent on down, but the brief up was fantastic and made up for all of it. After yesterday, I thought I had the whole "lesson plan" thing down pat, but today everything went to hell. Started out meeting the kids at breakfast, which was interesting, got to talk to one of the kids extensively which was really nice. Thought that class might only be 4 kids today, that's all that showed up early in the morning, but more trickled in later. Spent my planning period finishing grading the math test, which they all tanked. Really, really tanked. This is a 5th grade math final for kids who passed 5th grade, and nobody scored more than a 50% on it... kinda disheartening, but at least they all can read pretty well. Anyway, my lesson plan went completely out the window when I realized that the chapter I planned to teach in "Frindle", our reading book, was not one we could get up to because my collaborative colleague had not finished the preceding chapter the day before. Pretty sure the screwup was because i thought he said they read through chapter 9, not "to" chapter 9... so anyway had to come up with a lesson plan on the fly and discard the one i had spent 2 hours on last night... wonderful. The kids knew i was bullshitting, i knew that they knew, and they knew that I knew that they knew. Consequently they took it to me pretty well. Our small group math instruction, however, was wonderful. One exchange between me and a student made my day. "Good job, you just divided 4 subs so that 6 people could have them equally" I said. "unh uh, no I didn't-I can't divide" he replied. "well you just did," I said, "and even more, you reduced a fraction too."