DonorsChoose take two

Well it worked well the first time, and the materials we got at the beginning of the school year have been crucial to the learning and behavior management of the class. This time, I'm hoping that my DonorsChoose request can help tackling the problem of math class being boring and not hands-on enough. I'm asking for about $400 worth of manipulatives and materials to keep the class engaging, and hopefully my department will see its impact and fund these materials for the rest of our math teachers. I've copied the prepared DonorsChoose text below for quick reading (just in case you know anyone who would like to contribute). Plus, if you did, you wouldn't have to feel bad about not getting me something for my 24th birthday today :)

My Students: Math is everywhere in the world around us. Unfortunately, students do not recognize and appreciate this fact when all they do in math class is write definitions and equations on their paper - and you can't blame them for that! Math class should be much more hands-on and visually involved!

My students are awesome. While they are in general many years behind in math, they embrace success in the subject with an excitement that even I don't remember having in high school. From a low-income and often violent community, many of the students deal with issues that make it difficult to see the importance of school, let alone math. Over half of my students are repeating Algebra since they failed it in 8th grade, and they come into class with this preexisting relationship with the subject. Some of them have had past teachers give up on them and some have been crammed into classrooms of more than 40 students, but they are a resilient bunch and truly appreciate the efforts of the teachers that put in the time and give them some tough love to push them on.

My students need math manipulatives to help them visualize algebra and geometry and practice it in a fun and meaningful way.

My Project: Adding and subtracting negative numbers are fundamental skills required for high school math, and so many students enter ill-prepared, making the sliding number lines and double-sided counters crucial for understanding. After this, we will be able to use the color chips and the dice for solving one- and two-step equations, as well as combining like terms. This will be incredible for them because it will demystify the idea of an equation and will visually show what it means to solve for a variable. This skill, after all, is the crux for nearly all math afterward. The geometric shapes will help my Geometry students be able to visualize math in three dimensions, as well as to distinguish the difference between the surface area of a solid and its volume. Helping students to learn this would prepare them to see and use the math in the 3D world around them. Finally, the dice and overhead sets will be great to disguise the practice of these skills as fun games and activities!

For my math classes, it is no secret that every day I must wage a battle against the boredom of my students. I hope that the materials I have requested will make learning more engaging than simply taking notes or writing out expressions and equations. I believe that manipulatives are an amazing supplement to notes, and present math in a visual way that facilitates a shift in how students view mathematics. Instead of seeming like a foreign language, math will be seen as a tool to solve problems!

Happy Holidays

The Christmas Break Countdown

It's not that I don't like the kids. I just that I like Christmas break more. 'Tis the season for a handful of students to be missing weeks of school on family trips to Mexico, which really sucks considering that when school resumes in January, there are only three weeks until the end of the semester, and then it's going to be crazy frantic in trying to make sure all tests and quizzes have been taken as well as all homework being turned in. In four days I am taking a train to Seattle and I can't wait - I am actually super excited about it taking almost 24 hours too, because it forces me to find a way to relax. My perfectionism has been coming out in full force recently, and it's becoming harder and harder to let go of work life and foster a real personal life.

Soccer is going decently well; the JV team has greatly improved over the last week, and so far we have shut out our opponents 9 goals to 0. Richmond is very deep in terms of overall boys soccer skills, so it isn't surprising that we are winning, but I'm really enjoying the coaching experience that I am getting. The other coaches for JV and varsity have really set a great example of how well practices and training and games can look, and I hope that I get an opportunity in my life to use these coaching skills completely on my own.

Today was a ridiculously long day that kept me at school for 15 hours - 6:30am to 9:30pm - so I am totally exhausted and need to sleep, but I thought I'd share an "only at Richmond" moment: every time we scored today during the boys' varsity game, our fans threw tortillas like Frisbees onto the field. Who does that!?

"Just thought you should know that your 6th period is worried about you"

Friday was officially my first mental health day that I've taken off this year. This was in direct response to probably the shittiest week yet - horrible student behavior, horrible test scores, and many silent drives to and from work. Having had essentially a three day weekend now to cool off, I've realized that it's all relative to my expectations for what my class should look like. Both the behavior and the test scores weren't as bad as last year, so that's a plus, but having seen the improvements that we've made in our Algebra classes, it's so depressing to feel like these kids are slowly starting to fall back into the familiar routine from last year. I feel like I've been doing WAY more for them this year, and because of that I think this past week I was feeling personally offended that the students weren't appreciating any of that extra work.

Now I didn't tell them that of course, but I'm no good at concealing emotion, so it should come as no surprise that my substitute sent me a text on Friday saying that my 6th period class voluntarily wrote me an apology letter because they were worried about me. I have yet to read it, but it's nice realizing that the kids don't actually TRY to ruin teachers' lives, unless of course they actually don't like them at all.

Tomorrow is a crucial day. Now that my students know that I pretty much took a day off because of them, I have to play my cards very carefully. We are resetting classroom rules tomorrow to be very explicit in what the consequences are, and if they ask, last week was last week. Nothing more about it. I think I'm going to have to smile a little less this week to get the point across that learning is top priority. New seating arrangement, new seating chart, new unit. Let's start fresh.

Too bad we'll just have to start fresh all over again after the holiday break.

StudentsFirst.org

Looks like Michelle Rhee, the former Chancellor of DC Public Schools, has founded a new organization online at StudentsFirst.org. I encourage everyone to check it out.

Figured this blog needed a pick-me-up...

...so here's a couple funny things I read on my students' papers among the heaps of grading I did today:

One of the class questions was, "If Mr. Bretl gave you a million dollars today, how would you spend it?" Jimmy didn't really understand that the purpose of the question was to think of how many things you could do with all the extra money you get in your life just for getting a college degree. Instead, he wrote, "I wouldn't because Mr. Bretl wouldn't give me a million dollars." Touche Jimmy.

In the middle of the homework packet, I found a note from Lourdes asking, "Mr. Bretl, do you even check this?" Unfortunately, I doubt she will remember to look back to see my answer written on her page.

And finally, I cannot believe how many kids misspelled their own name - mostly just forgetting the last one or two letters. Apparently kids are so ADD today that they get distracted before finishing their full name. The winner is Julio P, whose paper just said "Ju." Handwriting investigation made it clear that it was his. I totally believe he had full intentions to complete his name, but something more urgent must have come up...

It's the Most Ridiculous Time of the Year

At this time last year I was blasting Christmas music 24/7, to and from school, and putting up icicle lights in our apartment window, and imagining how unreasonable it would be to get a Christmas tree for our apartment. For whatever reason, I can't get into it this year. Not yet anyway. I feel like it's because I have no time to think. You'll notice that with my sparse blog posts, I don't even have time to procrastinate anymore.

And that's because soccer is in full swing. Our first game is on Tuesday, but we have practice every day, and since Varsity has already begun their games, on their game days, I have to run JV practice by myself - and let me tell you, after a seven hour teaching day, that never sounds fun. This is especially the case because I have recently come to the realization that these boys have never really been coached the way we are trying to do it. They are obsessed with scrimmaging and shooting, and they just plain don't see the importance of running a structured practice. The first couple days were rough. Plus, I'm beginning to understand that my teaching and coaching personalities need to be different, because the kids respond differently in and out of class. It's quite a juggle for those students that I have both in class and on the team. I predict that we'll get blown out of the water in the first game or two and then they'll start to realize the importance of getting down to business. Classic movie setup.

This addition to my schedule is made particularly challenging because we have to share the field with the girls' soccer teams, so our practice can't start until 5:30, so I have been staying at school every day until at least 7:30. Varsity practice starts at 7:15 and on some days I'm asked to stay after to help - which I find very difficult to refuse for some reason - and I may not get home until after 9. Let's just say that my hours of sleep are dwindling.

In all, life right now is crazy stressful in that there aren't enough hours in the day, but I think we all agree on that front. The sacred place left in which I can actually relax and think is the bathroom: either on the toilet or in the shower. Thank goodness for our seemingly unlimited supply of hot water. Outside the bathroom, my apartment is a mess - so much so that I am ashamed at the way I am living. But I'm totally living in the something's-gotta-give mode right now and things like bedroom cleanliness and healthy dinners have gone out the window. My only motivation to keep going is the thought that things will be so easy when soccer is over. I love it, but I swear I die a little each day because of it. There must be some study somewhere concerning the connection between lack of sleep and years off one's life. I should be their case study. In the meantime I hope the Christmas spirit picks up!