Quarter 2: the new beginning

I took some the time during the last couple of days of the first quarter to take to each of my classes about policies and procedures, and I think that it was a very good idea. It gave me some better frameworks for day-to-day operations (homework policy, grading policies, etc), and it gave my students a chance to give their input to those frameworks, which not only made the ideas stronger (especially because I now have a better idea about what's important to them), but also gave them more of a sense of fairness.

Second quarter is off pretty well with the juniors: we're getting into rates, which is a favorite topic of mine, and I'm getting good buy-in. Calculus is a bit rougher: limits, which is not my favorite topic. Today, I got well behind on timing the new material, because I tried to "graft on" an exploration assignment to assess yesterday's topic. It sort of slowly fell apart from there. And calculus is going to be a bit rough for a little while, because this week and next are all lecture-and-practice, without much room for class discussion or interactive/manipulative assignments.

Possibly, what I ought to do with this two weeks is to use it to focus on individual seatwork: drill-and-kill until the class knows how to stay focused for more than 30 minutes (the last part of class today was ridiculous, with the off-topic chatter). It sounds a bit like punishment, and I want to be careful to avoid that idea: really, I think the class has just swung a bit too far towards a relaxed, collaborative atmosphere, and we need to balance back towards scholarship.

Some great ideas from last week's AP conference. The students elected two leaders today, who will take charge of programs and projects (hopefully to include family night and after-school study sessions, as well as creating a t-shirt for the class), and I gave them all my phone number yesterday. We have an email group now, too. So, some good stuff coming together, even if it's likely to be a rough couple of weeks.