So I told my seventh grade students that today would be my last day at the end of both classes.  I was stunned when virtually everyone was upset at the news.  There are many kids who I was building relationships with, and will miss a lot.  I'm especially sad about Zavien... I really believe he is balanced on the edge of knife.  A few wrong moves, and he may fall into oblivion in the school system.  I hope someone takes up my efforts to keep him moving forward.

Moving on to the high school level is not really scary.  Especially since I have so many relationships at Somerville High School already... But, I will miss some of the people here at McCormack.

Today, I'll be calling Nicole to talk about the Spring season.  I still don't know if I'll have enough time to coach the team this Spring, but I think I can do a couple of volunteer days to help out with land practices.  I hope this all works out as well as it might.

Well.  The bomb dropped.  The bad information I received about which license to pursue last year from Arthur Eisenkraft has become a problem, and submitted my resignation for Citizen Schools yesterday evening.

I'm really excited that I'll be starting at Somerville next Thursday, but it was a difficult thing to communicate to all the people here.

More news later, but I'm feeling a sense of relief.

It has been far too long since my last post, and I am not going to bother trying to fill in all the blanks.  I am feeling a high level of frsutration with the whole situation here.

My advisor at UMB told me that I would be fine with a Gen Science MTEL and license for graduating from the program.  Turns out, that was wrong.  He told me that I would never get a job teaching high school chemistry without a chemistry degree.  Several other people have told me he's wrong.  Unfortunately, I can't take another MTEL right now.  Unfortunately, I only have the Chem 8-12 license to fall back on now.

So, I'm in the wrong place, with a bunch of 12 year old kids that would like nothing more than for me to go, waiting to hear back from my one hope for the resolution of this mess: Karen Woods and Somerville High School.  Each time I open up my email, I fell like a little boy under the Christmas tree, wishing-hoping-praying that the package I truly want is there.

I do not know how to translate my success in coaching crew to this environment at DMC.  There are some good kids here.. some of them being held back by the 3-5 kids in every class who are disruptive, bratty, and aggressively opposed to doing anything that would further their education.  The challenge I am facing is that the constant disrespect is wearing thin.

At Somerville, the kids respect me and honor me.  It is the relationships forged through practices that are such a benefit.  Of course, there are going to be difficult cases - heavy hitters as they are known at DMC - and there are going to be disrespectful students at Somerville.  I do believe though, that having the support of a group of students will help earn the support and respect from most of the students.  Right now, I'm just struggling to even build relationships with students at McCormack.  In the end, it turns out I'm more than a little glad that my advisor was wrong.  But it would have been nice to find out about this sooner, and before I ever accepted this position at DMC.  I'm ready to go, but it is going to let down a lot of good poeple.

Will I hear back today?  Time for this is getting short.  Something needs to happen quick.

Two science projects started this weekend.  One for me, and one for my seventh graders.  The one for me is a batch of mead.  This will be my second batch, and I'm hoping it comes out as tasty as my first.

The one for my students is a bucket of muck.  Literally.  The muck is from the Mystic River, and I was hoping to get a lot of microscopic life in there.  On the first day at home, it was teeming with life.  After another day of sitting in that polluted water in an enclosed space, looks like everything died.

I will try and get some more this evening.  I think I may need to get the bucket of muck from the river first thing in the morning, and bring it direct to school if we're really going to be able to see anything.

Glad I have a microscope at home to check these things out!

Tonight is the first meeting for the fall apprenticeships.  I am kind of not looking forward to this, but only because the schedule I'm already on is pretty crazy.  I have to be at the school by 7:05am, but I usually leave the house at 6 and arrive around 6:30am.  This gives me time to check emails, and talk to Kris about the upcoming day.

The school day goes until 2:30, and then we are supposed to be staying until 5:00pm every night, except for Friday, when we get to leave at dismissal (2:30).  How many hours is that?  50 hours.  And that would be OK, except Tuesday nights I'm in grad classes until 10pm.  So then there's study time for each of those two classes, which amounts to about ten hours a week each.  Suddenly I'm up at 70 hours a week.

On top of that schedule, tonight's meeting goes 5:30-7:30, and then tomorrow night's open house is 5:30-7:30.  I'm feeling pretty seriously run down just thinking about the upcoming year.  What the hell is going to happen when I have to be planning lessons next semester?

OK - Happy thoughts.  Happy thoughts.

My main apprenticeship is with NVBots, and is focused on 3D printing and design.  Should be pretty exciting.  Plus, my citizen teachers (CTs) have done this program a few times here, so I think it may go fairly smoothly.  The vast majority of what I'm supposed to be doing here is unclear to me at this time.  I think I'm supposed to be making sure the CTs know how to teach the material to middle schoolers.  I really wish we could have some of the 7th and 8th graders from the looping team participating in this class... it may be a bit much for 6th graders, but then again, the class seems to have a big focus on 3D design, and these kids probably have a lot of gaming experience that will help them with the design software.

Well.... here we go.

Happy thoughts....
Happy thoughts....

Yesterday was an awful day.  I hope there are very few days like that throughout this year, but I fear they may be plentiful.

Instead of focusing on yesterday, I'm not even going to talk about it.  Instead, I'm moving on, and talking about today's Vials of Life lab in 7th grade.  There were several behavior types I noticed today in the lab:

1) Fully participated - There were a good number of kids in each class (probably 35%) who really got into the lab, and were actively interested in examining what was happening in each vial.  They followed the directions, and took the activity seriously enough to be able to correlate the activity to the instruction from Mon and Tue.

2) Vicariously participated - The biggest part of the class in both periods (roughly 50%) participated reluctantly.  They did the work, but slowly.  The did not follow directions well, but eventually got their vials correct.  Their observations were poorly written or not done. etc  This group is at risk... they may fall behind, or they may pull it together.  I think this is the sweet spot for positive change and improvement.

3) Non-participants - There was a smaller number of kids in each class who simply refused to participate at all.  A couple were moved to other rooms, and/or moved to the focus desk.  It is hard for me to understand how a student is more interested in aggressive non-participation than to just get involved.  I mean, wtf?  There is no escape from the school environment - you might as well at least participate.  These students are already in trouble.  They have either failed in other classes, or are likely to fail this year.  What can I do to try and change this?  How can I get them engaged?

All in all, the lab went well, and today is off to a much better start than yesterday.

First Friday of the school year, and man, am I happy about that.  This waking up at 5am is not as bad as I was afraid it would be... but I sure am looking forward to no alarm clock waking me up tomorrow.

My mentor has expressed frustration about the behavior of our 7th grade homeroom.  For me, I was expecting a lot worse.  A whole lot worse.  However, as Kris has pointed out to them, some of these students are trying to give science a chance, and are being hindered by those students who would rather clown around and dig up some trouble.  There are so many little power struggles going on.

I have decided that one of my special focus students will be Duc Duong.  He is in 8th grade, and has been in the US for one year, after moving here with his parents from Vietnam.  He seems like a good kid, who is seriously trying, but I think he is missing about 90% of what is said in class.  He may be getting certain words, but the content is flying right over his head.  Regrettably, I don't know any vietnamese, however, I am planning to try my best to make sure he understands what his science homework is each night.  Also, I put an English to Vietnamese translator on my phone.  I think with what I'm doing in RETELL, I may be able to provide some support for him.

There is a girl named Evelyn in my 7th grade homeroom who I am working on as well.  She is shy and uncommunicative frequently, however, she often has correct or almost correct answers.  Whenever asked to share, she hides her answers, and won't say anything.  How does one get her to feel more confident.  Then again, today on her dwarf planet mini poster, she said the location of Makemake was in the Pacific Ocean.  I pointed this out to her, and she immediately recognized that this was incorrect.  I suspect she found something on the internet and just copied it verbatim... how do we teach her to be more skeptical of what she finds on the Internet?

We're out at 2:30 today.  I'm so happy about that!  Taking Carl to see Book of Mormon tonight, and will be so happy to sleep in tomorrow.  But... it's going to be a busy weekend, full of school work and assignments.  And this is just the beginning.  Yikes!