Day one

A good day.

So, early on in the summer, I was told that I'd be paired up with one of the less inspired fellow teachers in my course team (for the sophomore course). By uninspired, I mean he has a reputation among the faculty as being less enthusiastic, less engaged in his students lives, and less into using open-ended, inquiry-driven teaching methods than is the norm in our department. I've been asked to try to help push him along, which I'm happy enough to attempt.

It turns out that the upshot of this is that I have both of the honors sophomore classes. And it shows. The attitude and behavior are worlds different. So far as I can tell, the knowledge and intellect aren't worlds apart from the non-honors sophomores I have (nor from the sophomores I had last year). It begs the question-- what makes an honors student? I would argue that, in practice (as practiced at my current school, and my previous one) the metric that would most closely correlate with honors placement would be some index of "maturity", or perhaps an inverse relation to behavior complaints.

In any case, I'm pretty pleased about the situation. Four hours a day of the best and brightest, with one "hard" class (by which I mean, there are four students who appear to be poised to be discipline problems; time will tell if I'm able to handle those before they spiral out of controls, but I have plans...)