Day 6

Another day in teaching paradise.

I got my room set up yesterday afternoon (which I probably will be unable to make a habit), so I felt a lot less stressed today. I think I was right about my 3CPs getting the whole "Me parece que" thing (minus a few, of course, because as much as I hate to admit it, I'm not perfect!), but boy were some of their vocab quizzes horrible! One class did fine, with only a few slackers who didn't study, but in the other class there were tons of people who handed me their quiz with lots and LOTS of blank spaces. Grrr. I'm definitely not giving a re-quiz because they'll think that they can slack off all year and just re-take the quiz. I am, however, going to be easy on them verbally when I hand the quizzes back. A lot of the kids asked me right after the test if they can retake, and I calmly and kindly told them, "No, but don't worry about this one quiz. There are going to be many more. Just make sure you start studying more from now on." They seemed to appreciate that more. One girl even told me she felt so bad that she didn't do well but that it's because she had a science teacher last year that berated and yelled at her for flunking a test, so now she has test anxiety and focuses so much on her fear of being yelled at that she can't concentrate, especially on the first quiz/test of the year. I reassured her that I will not yell at her (unless of course she makes it habit! She agreed I can yell at her then, but I probably won't.) or anyone else for that matter. I think that's one thing I screwed up on last year. I was really hard on the kids who didn't get A's and probably made a lot of them feel like they were unworthy. It's not because I thought they were unworthy, it's just that I was basically reliving my high school days where anything less than an A made me and everyone around me think that I wasn't good enough. I really don't want to make that same mistake this year. I think today was a good start.

My 2 honors are freaking fantastic (thus far) in terms of intelligence... they're just so quiet that it drives me crazy! I think we'll make it through the year though.

My 2CPs... they're gonna take some work. I think many of them just barely had a high enough grade to move up, and that scares me into thinking I'm going to be reteaching everything from Spanish 1 before I can really get into the meaty stuff of Spanish 2! Ahhh!

I'll make it through this year though, you can rest assured about that. Still wondering if this is really my calling (something I struggled with last year as well). There's so many things to consider, but I don't have a plan yet, and I can't move forward without a plan. Ahhh! *Breathe*