The second first week of school

I taught real, live students this week!!!  Although I’m sure that the students would say that I must then have a broad definition of the word “taught.”

            Here is a breakdown of my teaching schedule.  Thursdays are going to be a little rough but it will be worth not having to miss classes to work on secondary projects (like our girls’ group or science fair or something) or to travel a bit. 

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday
6:30-7:15			12th Grade B2	11th Grade B2
7:20-8:05		11th Grade B2
8:10-8:55		12th Grade B1		12th Grade B2
9:00-9:45				12th Grade B1
9:50-10:35		11th Grade B1		11th Grade B1
10:35-11:20

            The first single periods with the 11^th graders and first half of the doubles with the 12^th graders were just for establishing class rules.  Some of my rules:

1) I will close the door after 5 minutes and you’d better already be inside because I’m not opening it until class is over.  With between 50-100 kids in each class, I can’t have steady stream of students coming and going. 

2) Only 1 person – Chefe de Lingua (Language boss) – gets to correct my Portuguese and ONLY when it impedes understanding.  I don’t have time for 100 kids to edit every sentence I put on the board.  Idea courtesy of Chris in Mapinhane.  Thanks, Chris!  See, we do pay attention during training J

3) Take pride in YOUR work. Did I emphasize your?  Don’t cheat. You will get a zero… if I can tell, that is… might be the toughest (although apparently they’re sometimes pretty blatant about it sometimes) part of my job.

4) Don’t come to class drunk?  Thank you, smart *insert word* 12^th grader.  Based on your behavior in comparison to your peers, this rule might only apply to you.  Last time I let you write on the board without approving your public message.

The rest of the rules are pretty common (raise your hand, do your work on time, etc).

            The second half of my first 12^th grade classes I threw some basic math and a little algebra at the students.  Determining orders of reactions and pretty much every thermodynamics formula is going to be really interesting later in the year because apparently 3² is 6 no matter how much I insist otherwise.  Forget logarithms.  We won’t be getting into much detail about pH this year…

            Despite the disappointing math skills of my 12^th graders, I decided I was going to try to review balancing equations during their next single class.  This went surprisingly well!  We’ll see how well it actually went I get the extra review problems I assigned from the handful of students who will have bothered to do them by this Tuesday…  Oh by the way, have I mentioned that I still don’t have the 12^th grade chemistry book?  Good thing is I do have the curriculum so I can look ahead and at least review the math we’ll need at some point down the road.  I was also told by Derek (Physics) in Chiure negative numbers blow their minds.  Again, thermodynamics is going to be a really fun and interesting unit…  At least I can say we’re ahead of Will’s school because most of my students can add two-digit numbers?  Sorry, Will…

            My 11^th grade 90 min doubles were by far the highlights of this week.  They were the first “chemistry” lesson I had planned and honestly I had no idea how actually teaching chemistry in Portuguese was going to go.  Lesson one in the 11^th grade curriculum: States of matter.  I’m proud to say I’m that crazy teacher that made not-so-voluntary volunteers get out of their seats and act out what the molecules do in the solid, liquid, and gas states.  I even got them to fill out a table of what happens to the effect of attraction and repulsion for all of the phase changes!  Best part: two girls came up to me after class to ask if I would be teaching 12^th grade next year.  I hope so.  I like my 11^th graders.  I just hope they split up the classes next year so I might actually get to know them…  Worst part:  I assigned some math problems for homework including this one 5(15)=?  I pointed out this one specifically and repeated several times that a(b) is the same as writing a x b.  As soon as class lets out, a kid comes up and asks what you’re supposed to do with that number next to the parenthesis… *face palm*  Maybe we aren’t where I thought we were.