Some progress...

I have spent a lot of time really working on lessons this week that feel like me. It is super, crazily time consuming, but for this week, it felt worth it. Lessons that felt like me except in my Y10 class where I am ashamed, (VERY VERY VERY ASHAMED and I secretly hope Kendra, Natalie, and Andy Kaufman are not reading this) that I did a WORD SEARCH!!! AAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!! Oddly enough, they told me that it was the favorite thing they've done and I had more juvenile delinquents working today than I have had ANY other day since I took over that class. Granted, a few were absent and a few had to be removed at the beginning due to the fact that they refused to even sit in a chair at all. Yes, this is what I am dealing with here folks. I can't even get them to sit in a chair sometimes.

But, the lessons that I did spend a lot of time on were pretty solid and I felt like myself again in a few classes. Today, I even did a think-aloud on a science article with my Y7 kids and they were really excited about asking questions to the text. One girl even told me that she thought her text answered back because she found the answer in a another part of the reading! YAY!

This is a paper that was left in my room. We were coding for questions and connections that we could make to the text. It was a reading from the young reader's edition of Bill Bryson's "A Short History of Nearly Everything" and it is called "A REALLY Short History of Nearly Everything." The hard part is that there is one overhead projector for the whole science dept and it is complete shit. I am thinking about just forking over my own money for a document camera to make my life a bit easier. We'll see if I can get that all sorted out or not!

Tomorrow I have an article about goats that have been genetically engineered to produce milk with spider web fibers in it (WHAT? CRAZY!) for my Y9 class. We will be discussing the ethics of genetically modifying organisms for the benefit of humans. I was able to use an exact assignment I've used at home lots of times with a clip from Jurassic Park where Jeff Goldblum says, "Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think whether or not they should." My Deputy Headteacher wanted to come in and watch me teach a lesson on reading in science so, Friday, last period of the day, he's coming in. I'm an idiot for inviting an observation at that time, but oh well.

Tonight, I was going to the grocery with my friend Nicola and we saw a bunch of my turd-ish Y10 boys hanging around by the store so I made an extra point to totally embarrass them by waving hugely and being like, "HEY GUYS! How ARE you? See you tomorrow! Can't wait!" in a totally not sarcastic way. It was awesome! Apparently, they were sufficiently embarrassed that they decided to leave the area by the time we came out of the store! HA!

Thank Ganesh Its Friday tomorrow is all I've got left to say. Hollah!