The Honeymoon Phase

...is what the first couple weeks of school have been referred to as by a fellow teacher at my school. While I do thoroughly enjoy my kids, I get the feeling that the math department doesn't get quite the honeymoon experience as do other departments at RHS. Today I talked to my students about how test scores from last year show that only 8% of all students at the school meet the "proficient" level for algebra after a year of instruction (and only 1% for geometry). My students suggest that these appalling results are because they don't care about the California Standards Test. Today I made a mental note that this issue would be my biggest to deal with over the course of the year, since our departmental goal is to drastically improve those numbers. Meanwhile, the administration wants us to start curriculum asap so we can close that gap, meaning overnight I had to fix my lesson planning so that the first lesson is tomorrow. I guess they don't believe a diagnostic test is that important for my 160 students.

Apparently though, I have it pretty good. A fellow TFA apartment-complex-mate works at nearby DeAnza High School as a Biology teacher and she has 190 students total, with at least one class over 50 students (in a lab set up for 24 students). She assures me that they are definitely breaking fire codes at that school, and with that many students, keeping authority is impossible: today she had three students call her a bitch, and the f-word is all too common. Thankfully I don't have that to deal with.

Still, teachers at my school have called this one the worst year yet when it comes to scheduling, because even with the frequent ridiculous class sizes, there are others with rosters of only seven or eight students. But don't worry - we have been informed that these problems will be fixed by the third week...

...By then I will have already given a unit test in my class, so I fear for those changes and I pity the students that have to go through that. Teachers in the meantime are furious, so needless to say, the strike authorization vote last week resulted in a 93% yes vote from the United Teachers of Richmond. Tomorrow we make picketing signs before school. Still haven't decided how I'm going to approach that scenario... All this just seems like unnecessary grief when I am up to my ears just trying to finish my algebra and geometry lesson plans for tomorrow. I already promised my kids I wouldn't be boring.