OKP Teachers (and stuff)

Non-Phish General
#41

So far, waking up and getting to work is not too difficult. But wait until winter. Ughh, Michigan!

Anyway, I have a question, lol…
What do you do when you have to piss? My school is on a block schedule, which means classes are about 1 hour and 20 minutes long. A full bladder is distracting, and kids can’t be left in the room alone. I know a lot of you drink coffee (i’m off it) which definitely speeds up the system. I like to stay hydrated. What do you do when it’s urgent and you’re in the middle of class??? Any tips?

#42

Don’t you have someone supervising you who can cover? That is a long class time. I have had to grab coworkers walking by the room or actually call one to cover the room while I peed because I tend to wait til the last second. I would suggest being proactive and going in between every class period. Only taking small sips of water to whet the whistle.

#43

^ Yes but I was thinking about long-term, later in life. It’s pretty easy to suppress the urge if I’m active and teaching. Fun stuff!

I had a really successful lesson today. Students had fun, I had fun. Everyone was really active and involved, except one kid, who refused to do any of the work, because he was really mad that I implemented seating chart today. I didn’t have a seating chart for the first two weeks, because it’s only 9 kids in a small English as a Second Language class, but of course they took advantage of it, so I of course made a seating chart. This kid was so mad about it that he decided it would be better that he earn a 0/10 on today’s work than simply participate in what everyone else thought was an easy, meaningful, and fun activity. Boo hoo, you can’t sit with your friends and goof off.

He’s mad that he’s in the class (honestly he could’ve tested out but he was stuck here for other reasons), but if I were in this advanced ESL class as a senior I would be thrilled! He has the highest test scores of anyone in the class, so it should be a breeze. And me the teacher, I might be weird, but I’m not unreasonable and I’m not a prick. I haven’t even given homework yet! (not trying to, either).

Oh well, simply venting. I’m not mad, just disappointed and confused why someone wants to cut off their nose to spite their own face in order to spite ME. If he won’t work, he’ll get a bad grade, and I’ll sleep like a baby. It’s not my grade and it’s not going on my transcript. Kid acts like I show up every day to piss him off.

#44

He’s mad that he’s in the class (honestly he could’ve tested out but he was stuck here for other reasons), but if I were in this advanced ESL class as a senior I would be thrilled! He has the highest test scores of anyone in the class, so it should be a breeze.

Seems like his test scores may be reasoning for the behavior. He knows he can easily pass the class so he can afford to pout and protest at the expense of a grade. I’m imagining he’ll get over it. For some kids, school is just too easy.

#45

Seems like a golden opportunity to really teach. He’s probably mad at more than what you surmise, Drew. Maybe you can help him with more than just teaching him English he already knows. He’s not coping well, and in order to get him to be receptive to you and achieve your goal of learning English, sounds like you might have to deal with his coping.

Maybe talk to your school counselor to see if there is a way to approach this. Wouldn’t recommend sending him, unless he can’t adjust in spite of what your counselor suggests to you. Sounds like he’s suffering under some negative stuff. Why not engage and see if you can help him, even if it’s only to send him to someone else to talk to.

#46

Welcome to teaching… :wink:

#47

This is probably something good to keep in mind. I am cutting these kids some slack because some of them are refugees and some of them still have family in pretty hot war torn areas (northern iraq). It’s definitely on their minds

Welcome to teaching… :wink:
[/quote]
Yes hello. Of course I don’t expect to reach every kid, but what do you usually do in these situations? Let it be? Or do you try to motivate them?

#48

Update on that kid: I overheard him tell another student in Arabic (which I understand), that I was a “really friendly teacher”.

Gotcha!

#49

:thumbup:

#50

#51

I haven’t seen this episode. What’s going on here?

#52

youtube.com/watch?v=NrOnhuDfBrU

#53

Taking over 3 more classes tomorrow, bringing my total to 4 classes, which I will teach for 10 weeks. I’m happy to have more work since being there all day only preparing for 1 class was getting trite. Hopefully I won’t be eating my words!

Do you prefer block scheduling, or standard 6/7 periods and 50 minute-ish classes?

#54

In High School we had eight 45-min classes a day. A few of the teachers wanted to change it up to nine 40-min classes a day, which essentially gave over-achievers like myself the option to take an extra class (and not-so-much achievers an extra Study Skills or just a free period). I gave up my lunch period to take a foreign language in HS, so I would have welcomed the extra class period. I think there is minimal difference between a 45-min class and a 40-min class, but having 9 periods would have enabled me to take another AP class (probably Comp Sci or Psychology). In the long run the AP classes I took in HS saved me about half the tuition my last semester in college, which really came out to a lot of savings. (I took 7 AP exams)

Although I think the group which benefits the most would be over-achievers, whereas the teachers / admin may be the ones doing extra work with same pay. Idk, maybe the extra period gives teachers an extra free-period too.

My school system switched to Block Scheduling a few years after I graduated, and I heard rumors that finals for the 1st half / semester were still at the end of the year. I think this type of finals-schedule is pretty messed up and really tough to score well for the 1st semester classes. Not sure about AP exams but they were May-ish when I was in school. To take an AP class 1st semester and then wait 4 months for the AP exam would require extra studying and prep aroun April-May time, which really can interfere with the 2nd semester classes.

But I think everyone’s experience is personal and on a case-by-case basis.

#55

I think there is minimal difference between a 45-min class and a 40-min class, but having 9 periods would have enabled me to take another AP class

Meh, I suppose but eight classes instead of seven is just that much more work. I don’t think the time matters but the sheer number of classes might. I never could bring myself to skip lunch, even if I often used it to do homework. I think I preferred just having that break in the middle of day…helps to unwind and all that. At the same time, I had a nice system where I used each class to do the previous classes’ homework.

In the long run the AP classes I took in HS saved me about half the tuition my last semester in college,

Wow, I don’t know if any of my AP classes, especially since my major had little to do with the AP classes I took.

#56

SInce this sentence is incomplete, I’ll guess you meant to say something like you didn’t think you’d get credit for any of the AP exams you took since …

Of the 7 AP exams I took, 3 of them were humanities and didn’t allow me to ‘skip’ actual classes. My Calc AB and BC only counted for one Calc class equivalent, but they gave me general humanities credit for the other one. So that’s a total of 4 humanities classes I got credit for, and we had an 8-humanities requirement at college. I generally took about 4-5 classes per semester, and by the time it was the last semester I only needed 2 more classes to graduate.

The whole point of AP classes was to skip out on the same courses in college. My HS didn’t offer a lot of AP classes (I think the only other 2 which were offered that I didnt take was Psychology and Comp Sci) but I loaded up on as many as I could.

If there was one more period in the day, I would have been able to take more potential AP classes. If you didnt want to, you were not required to fill up on the max number of classes. Most people in School had a few ‘free’ periods or study skills period.

#57

SInce this sentence is incomplete

Yeah, I meant to say I don’t know if any of my AP classes “counted” towards college credits. I don’t think I was able to skip anything. At best, my AP Calc course allowed me to crush it in the college Calc course I had to take since it was essentially the same material…but I still had to take the course. I had AP English but didn’t need any English-type courses in college anyway so those credits didn’t much matter. I can’t remember any others.

And in the end, it’s not like the AP courses were BAD, even if they didn’t transfer…it probably looks good on a college application and I probably learned more in them anyway.

#58

I remember my Newspaper class my senior year only met Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays we got out of school at 1:36, so on Wednesdays I was home before 1, which was too awesome.

#59

What is a “Newspaper” Class? We had a School Paper that was an after school activity, but we didn’t get credit for that.

#60

Wednesdays we got out of school at 1:36, so on Wednesdays I was home before 1, which was too awesome

Yeah, my school got rid of leaving early right before I got there. My brother had the same setup and left early a few days but they changed it where I’d have to give up lunch to do that which was dumb. Didn’t much matter as I didn’t have a car then anyway.