What time is it?

This afternoon the teacher across the hall asked if she could send a couple of "students" to my classroom during 4th period because they weren't doing any
work and would not "shut the front door!" I said sure, because I knew she
had her hands full. That class is full of 10th-12th graders that are repeating
Algebra 1 for the second (or more) time. The only thing I can think of that
is worse than Algebra is repeating Algebra!

Anyway, it turned out that one of the girls she sent over had just been in my
3rd period Biology class. I knew that she had very low basic math skills because
I give all of my students a basic skills test in math and English during the first
week. Whatever they get right goes in the gradebook as extra credit, so they
do try their best. The average score on the math portion out of 18 is 5. We're
talking addition, subtraction, multiplying decimals, long division and percentages.
The vast majority of my students cannot do any of the last 3 skills, and that
includes the Seniors in my AP Environmental Science class. Every week when I hand back graded work the students must write down their scores on a log sheet, add up a subtotal to date, calculate their current percentage and write down the letter grades. I have hand-made posters all around my classroom demonstrating the steps involved in all of those skills, but most students still require me to remind them how to set up the long division and where to put the decimal point.

Today the girls were working on algebraic equations that required them to add or subtract negative or positive numbers to solve an equation like: x - 5 = 10. At first they weren't doing anything and then one, who I'll call "I" said the phrase I've banned from my classroom "I don't get it." I went over to see where she was stuck and it became clear that she did not know what to do to isolate x on one side of the equation and, then she did not know how to add five to 10. I helped her solve that one and then she called me back a few more times, but she also did several on her own. I also helped the other girl, my student, TP, who showed the exact same limitations. Once I helped them overcome some obstacles (without doing any of their work for them) they both happily worked diligently and happily. "I" even was smiling because she finally "got it". She was so proud of herself for finally learning how to do it. I told them both that I struggled a lot with math in high school and that I understood how frustrating it was when you did not know what to do, and I offered to tutor them any time.

When I learned that I'd need to leave 15 minutes early to go round up kids for detention (we have 10% of our students late to school or class every day and we make them stay 30 minutes to 1 hour late depending on how late they were). When I said I'd need to leave at 2:45, "I" admitted that she didn't know when that was. I "didn't get it" at first until she said that she didn't know how to read round clocks. She is 16 years old and cannot read an analog clock. She said she gets in trouble a lot because she takes out her cellphone in class to check the time because she can't read a clock. TP also told me that she didn't know how either, so I taught them. Now, that was a first for me. I had no idea that our kids could not tell time on a clock, only on a digital readout. I checked with a few other seasoned teachers and only one of them knew that this was a problem.

My Advisory kids are gonna be mad at me because now I'm going to test them on their ability to tell time on a "round clock". Then, based on that, I'll test all of my students. I'm also thinking about proposing watches as part of our dress code!

....When I got to my classroom this morning...butt cleavage! No, not me! There were two laborers in their finishing painting the walls (they didn't know it was a school day!!!) and they both had on "full moon pants"! Aside from that, I saw that they had taken down all of my posters and student work to install new whiteboards and some fancy wall treatments, called tackboards. Oh man, I had just written a bunch of stuff before I left class the previous day so that I'd have plenty of time to set up for labs. Rats! Now I and the teacher next door, have brand new whiteboards...on the back walls of our classrooms! I also could not locate any of the lab materials I had set out so carefully; turns out they were all piled on the bottom of the overhead projector cart under a sheaf of posters. Okay, so by now, I'm madly planning my Plan Cs for the day. (Plan A was developed last July when I thought I'd have the much-promised science lab. Plan B was the lab-lite I devised because the lab's still not finished.)
Plan B involved students bringing their favorite drinks and liquidy foods (pizza sauce, for example) to test the pH levels and figure out which ones would erode dental enamel and irritate linings of the digestive system. Ingrained student habits were on my side today; no one brought anything to test! So, we wound up using the time to set up an organizer for them to track and review the science concepts they've learned in class...and calculate more percentages. Yippee!

So, tomorrow we'll probably get to do the lab, and we'll only be 1 month behind my district-mandated pacing plan...after 1 month of school!

By the way, remember how excited I was about Parent Night? Our Administrator didn't do anything regarding Parent Night. So, 15 minutes before it was due to start, we teachers reported to the office to sign in and get our name badges and we discovered that she didn't have the phone bank notify the parents, reserve the auditorium, have any chairs or tables set up, make any signs, print any programs...or anything! Many of our parents are on tight schedules with multiple jobs and kids, so many parents were already there watching the teachers quickly set up the auditorium. Luckily one of us had the slide show from last year, so we just showed that, and since most of our parents do not understand English, our Foreign Language teacher talked them through the program. Their unease at our lack of professionalism was assuaged when they learned their kid could have a high school diploma, requirements to get into any UC, Associate of Arts degree and a trade certificate when the graduate from our program. We're the only public school program in our metropolis that can say that! We had several parents come in saying that they wanted their kid to transfer to a local private school and left saying how glad they were that their kid was in our program. Once they talk to us personally, what's not to like?

Next time, maybe I'll tell you about tinyboys!