Well, today was the last day with students and it kind of ended on a sour note. We think a girl stole another girls purse out of my room while everyone was at the "Middle School Dance." We had to go back and watch the video from the hall cameras and although it's not entirely obvious, there may be enough evidence. Hopefully we'll be able to recover it.
Anyway, it was a pretty good year. The thing I realize about teaching is that 10% of the students take up 90% of your time/thoughts/energy/emotions. This is unfortunate on many levels, but I probably end up neglecting the other 90%.
Still, I sat in on a presentation by a group of 7 seniors for their AP English class. It was eye opening and encouraging to hear that they recognize that our educational environment needs to be improved and that the students need to step up and play a bigger role. We hope to incorporate a mentoring program next year that would get juniors and seniors positively involved with freshman to help them with the transition and set good examples. I think this is an awesome idea, but understand it will be a several year process.
Tomorrow I have a "report and planning" day and then Monday I go in for a committee I'm on, but after that it's all about summer vacation!!
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4 comments:
James, I wonder if times have changed very much. We like to claim that kid's today are so much different than when we were kids. But, I wonder what our teachers said about our collective class. I am sure that they will have a very similar response that you just gave. 10% of the kids consumed 90% of your energy, emotion, spirit, ... I hope you are lifted by the kids in the AP English class. If you focus on the kids in your immediate reality, I can easily see how that could lead to depression. Keep fighting the goos fight. These kids will be better off in life because of you. You are giving a piece of yourself to each of them. Mr. D will be one of the teachers that they remember later in life. You can't save all the kids, some will make it out ok, some won't. All you can hope to do is give them the hope and courage they need such that when they hit that seminal moment in their life when they are faced with either pulling themselves up by their bootstraps or spiralling down to exticntion, they choose the former and not the latter.
agricola, agricolae, agricolae, agricolarum, agricolae
Sorry, I was caught in the memory of a teacher that lifted my inspirations while at GHS
Those weren't your inspirations that Alice Ann was lifting.
Congrats on yet another school year completed James. I agree with Larry that you are fighting the good fight and your kids will remember you as one of the good guys who tried his best to help them out in life.
Do you remember the time we found the picture of her daughter on her desk? I believe it was the wedding announcement from the newspaper. We were in awe.
Thanks for the words of encouragement fellas. I agree, the way kids are acting aren't that different from when we came through, for example, during the "dance" on Thursday, the song "Stacy's Mom" came on and a group of 8th grade boys gathered around this one guy and sang the chorus, "Zacharay's mom..."
Two things that worry me though, is that there seems to be less of an internal conscious for some of these kids. There's no fear of consequences anymore. Instead of being more afraid to go home after caught cheating, cussing at a teacher, possibly doing drugs, etc, the kids can't wait to get home because mommy and daddy will take their side no matter what. Now I realize that this isn't the case for everyone, but it just seems to be more apparent. Also, the level of "innocence" seems to be gone at a younger and younger age. I realize that there was drinking in our middle school, but we're confident that drug use is becoming quite prevalent. And of course, what TV and the internet has done to sex for these kids is unbelievable.
I realize I'm going on and on, and don't mean to sound negative. Like I said, 90% of the kids I work with are awesome. I guess you just want to save them all. To bad it's not as easy to rescue kids as it is dogs. I'll end with the senior quote from graduation last night, "Dream like you'll live forever, live like you'll die tomorrow."
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