Well, I survived PTCs. Most of the parents that I had were great. They just wanted to see the face of their students teacher. I had a couple that tried to get me to explain why their student didn't get all the points on an assignment and I told them to ask their student. She has an A overall, I don't know why they are complaining so much. But luckily enough the parents that I've spoken with are understanding enough to realize that when I put a 0 on their student's grade, it is an incentive for the student to get that work turned in. When the teacher doesn't put anything there, it doesn't effect their grade, so most students won't do anything about it. But if their grade goes from a A one day to a C the next, they want to know what is going on.
On another note, I already have students who will never receive an A this term. They have lost enough professionalism points to do that to them. I decided that this year of teaching I was going to put professionalism points attached to their grade concerning their attitude in class. Many students have realized that the way they approach their education is the way that they are going to approach life, so they have a professional attitude towards me and the class. Many others still haven't figured that out yet, so their grade is dropping. Each term I am going to give them the opportunity to redeem themselves by wiping the slate clean, but I don't know if that is going to do anything good for them. We'll see when the term comes to an end in a couple of weeks.
The film classes are moving along, slowly--according to the class. I have to keep telling them that they need to learn the basics before they are allowed to just jump in and make their own films. I am kind of concerned about the Profanity Boys and what they are going to do when I release them to work on their own ideas. They have some pretty wild ones. Pink Pants is still bugging a little, but when I spoke to his mother, I figured out where he gets his attitude from.
The basic computer classes are moving, although I try to make it exciting, I think they are getting bored with some of the repetitive nature of the assignments. I'm not a big fan of busy work because busy work for the students means busy work for me to grade. But most say they are learning things that they didn't know how to do and that is good for me to hear.
The only problem with teaching with technology is when that technology goes down, I really don't have a back-up plan. The computers haven't been connecting to the network consistently, so it is hard for the students to keep working and for me to grade their stuff when half is saved on their server space and the other half is on the computer. It makes for a lot of grading.
Thursday will be my first day with a sub since I will be on a "professional assignment" for my New Teacher status. I've got a couple of these a year and luckily enough with it being a professional assignment, the district pays for the sub and my pay isn't docked. I'm trying so hard not to have to use a sub because if I do they dock my pay and the students don't get what they need. It would be nice if I could have a sub that knew what I was teaching and could continue or if there was a way that I could send the students to another classroom where they were teaching the same stuff, but I am the only teacher for film production and digital media in the school.
The school does this interesting little thing called Intervention. It is a 20 minute span of time that is attached to their 5/6 period. If the student is failing, they have the opportunity to go to their teacher and get the help they need or turn in the assignment that they are missing. If they are passing all their classes and they have nothing that they need to work on, they have an extra 20 minutes of lunch break. I haven't had too many students wanting to come in here yet, but I think that when we start on the films and they have a hard deadline, more students will be coming in to that.
I'm still getting used to all the hoops that I need to jump through, so this is entertaining.
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