Group Video Project, Continued (Days 166-167)

This marks my 100th post on my new blog. So I'm adding the label "milestone" to this post -- and I think I'll count it as "A Day in the Life" as well. With the cancellation of the minimum days, there's no natural choice regarding which day I should count as my monthly post, so I'll just choose today. (And besides, today's the 18th -- recall that on the old blog in 2016-17, the 18th was my original monthly posting day.)

8:00 -- My Advisory class arrives.

I admit that of all my classes, Advisory is the one I write about the least on the blog. After all, I'm a math teacher, so of course I think the most about what's going on with my math students. But this is a great opportunity to blog about my morning senior Advisory class as well.

First of all, I've been trying to have two graded assignments in this class per week. One of them is some sort of financial literacy lesson, and the other is a character SEL lesson. Both lessons are done in coordination with the other senior Advisory teachers.

But this class is interrupted much more than the others. First of all, ASB often holds sports days for our students -- especially as we approach the end of the year. This week, the students were supposed to be playing flag football.

Yet the sports themselves were interrupted by visitors this week. Yesterday, the Army visited our campus and brought robots for the students to play with and maneuver -- this took the entire Advisory period. And today, USC researchers came in to follow-up on a vaccine survey that occurred last month, so that the flag football game is now delayed until lunchtime.

Anticipating that USC might take up all of Advisory again, I don't want to give any assignment. But as it turns out, only one student has parental consent to participate in the survey -- so USC simply pulls that student out and leaves the rest of us in class. Once I realize what's happening, I give the quickest financial literacy assignment I can find. I ask the student whether it's appropriate to purchase items on credit in five different situations. It's the first page of Lesson Seven at the following link:

https://www.incharge.org/financial-literacy/resources-for-teachers/high-school/

Ordinarily this would be too short for me to count as a graded assignment. But I don't know whether there will be time for any longer financial lessons this week. According to the schedule, tomorrow is supposed to be another flag football game (that might or might not actually occur), and then Friday should be the character SEL lesson.

As a matter of fact, another teacher also sent me an informal "senior survey" that I could assign to my Advisory at any time. If there's no flag football game tomorrow, then I think I'll add this survey to the credit questions to make a complete assignment.

In the end, I'm a bit disappointed in how my Advisory class turned out this year. The purpose of this class is for me to make a strong connection with my students -- to provide them with a sense of belonging as I'm a teacher they can depend on. But unfortunately the class is somewhat of a mess, for several reasons. It all began with the uncertainty of whether I needed to give my students a grade -- the answer turned out to be yes. By the time I started grading assignments, many students had already decided to tune me out and do work for their other classes, or even just drawing -- and it was difficult to get them back to respecting me as a teacher.

But it also meant that I didn't get to learn much about the students either. Indeed, just last week the art teacher put on an art show in the cafeteria -- and I was surprised to see how many of my Advisory students participated in it. Then again, it shouldn't have been much of a shock -- I could see how much they enjoyed drawing during Advisory. Instead of always making them put their drawings away during my lessons, I could have found a way to build on their love of art and make stronger connections. This is something I should definitely think about if I'm ever called upon to teach an Advisory class again.

(In fact, if I had to rank my classes in order by how well I made connections with the students, then I could do so almost by listing them in order by size. It's easy for me to connect to the three students in my Trig class and the quartet in second period Ethnostats. My Advisory and fourth period Ethnostats classes are tied for the largest with eleven students -- but that's no excuse, considering that eleven students is still quite small by public school standards.)

9:00 -- The Advisory class leaves for nutrition.

9:20 -- Second period arrives. This is the first of two Ethnostats classes.

The two pairs continue working on their projects. One pair writes a script to prepare for their video, and the other works on Google Slides.

One guy in this class has earned a $1500 scholarship, and so I leave a note of congratulations written in marker on his whiteboard (though it takes me two tries to spell his name correctly). In fact, he's one of two winners -- the other is in my next class, so I write his congratulation messages on his desk for him to see later on.

By the way, today is Saturday, the second day of the week on the Eleven Calendar:

Resolution #2: We are prompt and prepared.

And all four of these guys are prompt and prepared as they continue to work on their projects for this Ethnostats class.

11:00 -- Second period leaves and fourth period arrives. This is the second of two Ethnostats classes.

The student who was absent on Monday is out again today -- and so, just as I said I would in my last post, I pair her partner with another student who was working alone. If the girl returns next week, then she can be the third member of that group. The two guys begin working on their Google Slides.

During this class, seniors are called out to pick up their cap and gown. The arrival of these uniforms is a clear sign that graduation is almost here. Of course, the two juniors in this class don't need to pick up anything, so they continue to work on their project, which will be a video. As it so happens, the eleven kids in this class comprise three groups of three (counting the absent girl) and one group of two -- and the lone pair consists of both juniors.

One of the juniors was absent earlier this month, and upon his return, he explained that he was out because he was observing Eid al-Fitr, the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. (His family is from India.) I like acknowledging different cultures and their holidays here on the blog in my Calendar posts, especially those celebrated by real students in my classes.

(Indeed, this reminds me of something I read recently about Daylight Saving Time. As it turns out, one country, Morocco, observes DST eleven months of the year. This is the longest period of DST observed by any nation without having Year-Round DST. The lone month in Standard Time is Ramadan -- chosen so that sunset, hence the end of the fast, isn't too late in the day by the clock.)

Oh, and speaking of holidays, it can be argued that with the Army visiting our school yesterday, we actually celebrated Armed Forces Day (which is officially coming up this Saturday).

12:50 -- Fourth period leaves for lunch. This leads into sixth period, which is my conference period.

3:05 -- I've already pre-signed up for after-school tutoring every Monday and Wednesday in May -- and since I must stay anyway, I try to encourage students to stay. In particular, I inform four students with many missing assignments (at least 17 each) that they must stay during tutoring or else I'll send emails informing their parents of the missing HW. I end up sending emails to all four families.

4:30 -- I have a phone interview for another possible teaching job -- I try, if possible, to have interviews by phone or Zoom after school in order to avoid missing class. (But since the interview occurs today --on a blogging day -- I mention it here on the blog.)

And so this concludes this "A Day in the Life" post. At first I wasn't sure what I'd write today -- there are only so many ways to say "the class worked on their group projects." Fortunately, this post allows me the opportunity to focus on my students themselves -- what's going on in their lives, and the connections that I'm trying to make with them.