Hey! Teacher!

Monday after school:

I hold one student after (as per a parent teacher conference where I told her mother she was way behind and needed to retake the quizzes she got a 30% and 10% on). She give me so much sass I can hardly stand it.

In walks another one of my students. He’s been in the US for about 2 years and is making incredible progress. He works really hard and comes to tutoring after school – mostly just to practice his English and make sure he’s reading the math problems correctly. Honestly, he’s one of my favorites. I’m just so impressed with his work ethic and attitude.

There I sat – literally between two polar opposites, giving myself whiplash trying to deal with their COMPLETELY different issues.

To my right:

“You just need to show me how you got that answer… No, circling does not count as work. Remember when I spent ten minutes going over how we show our work to get full credit? No… this work does not look anything like the work I showed on the overhead… How about this? Start by showing me how you set up the problem… add… subtract… multiply…”

To my left:

“Okay, so read this sentence again. Very good. So how do you think you’re going to solve this? Add. Okay, what are you adding? So you’re going to add 22 beads to 1/4 inch? You mean that doesn’t make sense? Okay. What are you going to do? Multiply. Show me. Wow! Awesome!”

Back to the right:

“I’m not showing my work. I already took these quizzes. I’m not coming back for tutoring. I hate math. I’m never going to use any of this stuff ever. I’d like to see you try and keep me here ’til nine o’clock. Fine. Call my mom. I don’t care. I’m not going to do it.”

Back to my left:

“Is this the answer? I’m done? Thank you, Miss. Bye.”

I have to remember that not all my students are going to sit on my left and that I got into Teach For America so I could teach kids like the one on my right.

… sigh.

I chaperoned my first middle school dance on Friday.

It was pretty hilarious.

There was a lot of group dancing where everyone did the same exact move, a couple songs where kids just walked around in a huge circle around the cafeteria and then a few dirty dancers that I had to give the stink eye.

“Ms. Rieth, why can’t we dance?”

“You can dance.”

“No, you know… DANCE.”

“How old are you?”

“I’m a teenager.”

“How old are you?”

“Thirteen.”

“That’s why you can’t dance like that.”

That was a highlight of a week filled with paper work, parent conferences and kids failing a quiz on adding and subtracting fractions…

Officially done with my first two weeks of school.

WOW.

I gave my first quiz on Friday. It was a review on adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing decimals – something that they’ve been learning since 4th grade but still seem to mix up.

I was pretty happy with my results. I got a lot of 90s, 95s and a few 100s… but then there were the occasional 40, 50 and 65…

Even though the quiz was multiple choice, I graded all the work. In order to get the full 4 points for each problem, you had to show EVERY step and get the answer right.

One girl managed to circle every correct answer, but when I asked her to show her work, she stared at me with an “Oh sh*t” look in her eyes.

No cheating in Ms. Rieth’s class. She got a 30%.

In other news, Mark’s mom is in town and cooking delicious food for us every night. Mmm…. food tastes so much better when I don’t have to make it!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Labor Day! Mine was spent grading some papers and taking an online course… though I did find time to walk 9 miles around White Rock Lake in downtown Dallas. I’m still a little sore, but it was definitely worth it!