My day today

On a random note, a mom yelled at me today over the phone. She said she was coming here to talk to me, but maybe she won't. She's mad at me for failing her child for the 2nd advisory (though I let her pass the class overall) w/out apparently informing her of the fact that her child was failing. This is probably true, so I decided to just back down since I had no real proof that I had told her her daughter was failing. THAT BEING SAID he daughter failed 3 out of 4 classes (the 4th being PE) that advisory so maybe instead of yelling at me she should yell at her damn daughter. But what I learned is that I need to update parents regularly and not necessarily by phone (which is really hard and ridiculously time consuming). Other teachers sent out regular notices by mail (which doesn't cost anything since the school pays for postage). So I'm going to come up w/a template and then I can just make copies and send it out to the children's parents when they're failing. That should work.

Otherwise 4th period went really well today. We are working on creating thesis statements for history papers (which can be really really hard depending on the topic) and coming up w/the whole "so what" issue. The kids are doing good jobs for the first attempt and tomorrow we will work on writing the rest of the essay. They'll do rough drafts over the weekend and have to have edited it once themselves then we'll edit it again in class and then they'll write their final drafts as homework! yipeeeee things are looking good in one class at least. Also I had to implement the 'point system' in my 11th grade class starting tomorrow. I hate the point system it is so childish, but it works, there is no doubt about that. So they'll get the point system. If that doesn't stop them the next step is a seating chart. After that, notices will be sent home with alarming regularity, and the worst offenders parents will be called. In my 12th grade class we worked on writing outlines, it is surprising how few of them they've ever done, half the kids didn't really know how to write one at all, and only knew some bizarre format for English that wasn't really an outline but more like 'things every english paper needs to cover.' Anyways, that seems to have helped them a bit I hope (as long as they actually USE the outlines of course). Here's hopin...