10/06/08

It was strange to be back in school today since we had had two weeks off, but it was great to see all of the students’ faces again. I was glad to see that most of my student remembered where we left off. There were a few classes where I had a review period for them to get them back into the lesson where we had left off, but even those classes seemed to get back up to speed very quickly.

For my 6th grade class today, I noticed that I had a new student. I had forgotten that while we were on our two week break that a girl showed up in the office with her father and he wanted her to go to school here since they just moved to the area. His daughter, Lindsay, had been going somewhere else so it was good to have a new student. I had also lost two students over the break. I think Wesley (one of my sophomore students) and his sister Stecy (who was in my 6th grade class) were moving to the US, so they were pulled out of the school. I hope Lindsay will be able to pick up where we are, otherwise I’d like to work with her as a tutor to make sure that she can get up to speed.

My 6th graders always have me laughing at their drawings. Well, I give a speed test each day. There are four speed tests on a sheet of paper, then on the back is a spot for the students name and four small boxes to enter the grades for each of the students’ speed tests. I start by passing out the speed tests and tell the students to keep them face down. Once they are all passed out, I tell them that they can begin. At this moment, they all whip the papers around and begin feverishly filling in the answers. Most speed tests average about 3 minutes in length. Many students finish early, so they take it upon themselves to flip their quizzes over and draw pictures on them. One day, I got a paper turned in from Ally, and it had a stick figure which said, “Mr. Dang”. Then, next to that was a stick figure riding a bicycle and it said “Mr. Dang” above him as well. I crack up whenever I see this stuff.