Yesterday was… difficult. There were disruptions all morning for class and team photos, which also meant the gym was occupied. Of course there were monsoon rains outside, so we missed our PE time. This was a bad start to the day. Lately I have had to schedule a lot of time for working on yearbooks, sports day planning, sports day cheers, parent tea rehearsal, etc. I learned the hard way yesterday, that trying to do all of this in one day, when we miss PE, and when there are constant disruptions, is a bad idea. Half the class was seemingly always somewhere else, so getting any group work done was not really possible. In the end there was too much idle time, which led to too much bouncing off the walls. These kids bounce off the walls on the best of days; yesterday was a whole new level.
When the rain cleared up around 2 pm I sent the kids outside for a run. This didn’t really help at all. What I should have done is cancel my plans for the rest of the day and done an outside activity. The students could not focus and were not being productive in the classroom at all, yet I continued trying to push them to do work. By the end I felt like I was herding a bunch of cats. Cats who were bouncing off the walls. Next time I should know better on a Friday afternoon.
We had 2 TOCs this week, which was interesting for me. One was a teacher just back from Mat leave, who has her own grade 7 class. She gave me a few ideas and had a lot of good information to share. One of them was to start a homework club at recess for students with outstanding work. It was getting ridiculous with the amount of work people owed me, and going after them one by one was really not working (and taking a lot of time). So at class meeting I brought up the new system: Anyone with their name on the board under homework club owes me work and will stay in at recess to finish it until they hand it in. This was motivating for almost all of them, and sure enough, but the end of the week I had almost everything in. There is still one student who does not seem to be motivated by this, or by the idea of falling behind in high school. She is someone I will spend more one on one time with. Now that I have established homework club, I should have more time to do this.
Track meet is next week, which I’m impossibly excited for. It’s been a lot of work selecting the team- trying to pick the best and fasted kids, while still accommodating others that give their best and really want to go. In the end I think we made fair decisions. I’m also leading a ProD session with another TC on Monday at the school. I have a few things to do to prepare for that (ie- dusting off some workshop materials from earlier this year). Only 2 weeks left in practicum, but still so much to do!