A few observations on the first week back at school:

The first week of school is always very busy and exhausting, which is why I have not posted all week. Between waking at 5:15 am and being on my feet the entire day, who has the energy to post blogs at night?

My classes seem pretty good so far. My most tiring class is my ESL class where most of the students do not speak English, so I am running around the entire period trying to answer all their questions (with answers they can hopefully understand) as they work at their own pace, since each of them came to the school at different levels.

The overall schedule is fairly chaotic, which the administration blames on the new computer system. Considering that we have never had wonderful schedules in the past, we assume part of the blame must lie with the schedule programmer as well. For example, two sections of Honors Geometry are the same period, yet one began school with 9 students and the other with 21 students. Surely a bit of error-checking would have caught that imbalance before classes began?

In recent years there had been 2 sections of regular-level Statistics and 2 sections of advanced placement Statistics, which was weird considering how few other honors-level math courses there were. The high number of students taking AP Statistics was largely due to the former teacher who recruited marginally-capable students just so she could have a better schedule, but consequently the students did poorly on the annual AP test. Since I took over both AP sections last year, I was able to teach the course on the level it deserved, which is why there is only 1 section of it this year as compared to 3 sections of the regular level.

I have been in contact with a few of last year’s graduates who seem to be adjusting to college fairly well. Thankfully, none of them have complained they are unprepared for their math courses this year, which is the true test of how well I taught them last year!