A few days ago I recieved and e-mail telling me that I had passed my MTELs (the Massachusetts Tests for Educator Licensure). Today in the mail I recieved my official notices about my scores. Since I passed they didn't tell me my exact scores but they did break down each test (Math and Reading) into sections and give me information about each of those. The sections were scored by saying that I had given correct answers on "most or all items", "many of the items", "some of the items", or "few or no items". Four of the math sections (out of six) were "most or all", as were seven (out of ten) of the reading sections. The other five were "many", which I take to mean I did a damn good job.

This is interesting to me because today I realized that I'm skating on thin ice a lot of the time with my students. Especially with the Algebra II kids, but also sometimes with the Algebra I kids, I realize that I don't really know the math as well as I should. They will ask questions on the homework or while I'm lecturing that stump me and usually one of two things happen. I can either make up an answer that I realize is correct as I make it up, or I will realize that I really have no good answer and make something up that isn't incorrect, but doesn't really answer the question either. I think I've managed to do well so far but I find it odd that my test scores say I am quite qualified to teach math while my math skills seem to suggest otherwise.

I think I am done with being a student teacher. At this point, I've been there for 6 weeks (I think) and I feel as though I've taken everything I can from the experience. The kids don't really respect me and while sometimes they sit and listen and learn, often they don't and it is very frustrating spending so much of my own time and energy planning lessons and teaching when I'm getting so little out of it. I really do think that I want to be a teacher, but I am finished with the whole student teaching thing. I mentioned this to Jessica on Thursday and I think she took it the wrong way (as in, I wasn't enjoying anything and that it was somehow a reflection of her), which made me feel pretty bad. I tried to explain what I meant but I don't know that she fully understood what I meant.

I had Friday off from teaching so I took the opportunity to go out to some bars on Thursday night. Alex and I wandered around Allston and Brookline drinking until around 2:30 in the morning. I haven't had that much to drink in several monthes; it felt really good to just let go completely and not worry about the next morning. Friday night I saw Grindhouse with Laura, Steve, Spoony, and Drew. I thought the whole experience was a lot of fun. I always enjoy Tarantino's movies, and I certainly enjoyed this one, but it is probably my least favorite. After watching Robert Rodriguez's movie about the zombies, Tarantino's movie just seemed to drag on for me.

Last night I watched UFC 69 at Alex's apartment. Some of the fights were entertaining, some were boring, and others were so unexpected that I'm still not sure if I enjoyed them or not. The highlight of the evening though, was playing Guitar Hero. I had never played before and it was a damn lot of fun.


A week from tomorrow is Marathon Monday which is the best day of the year, in my opinion. I also have that entire week off from school (their spring break) so the whole week is going to be marvelous.

This past Thursday was probably the best day teaching that I've had so far. Since it was MCAS week I had my A block kids for half an hour right away and then for two hours straight later in the day. They were very attentive for the short block and I got through an entire lesson quickly and efficiently. I was pretty nervous about the two hour long block, but they all did their work relatively quietly and when they were done, managed to amuse themselves in ways that weren't loud or obnoxious. This was also the first day I attempted a full lesson with my new honors class and it went phenomenally well. Teaching them is so easy; they ask intelligent questions that drive my lessons and even if they aren't motivated to learn math for math's sake, they're at least motivated to learn for their grade.

Laura and I went out to dinner at Addis Red Sea on Saturday night to celebrate our being together for 9 monthes. That's a damn long time. Her parents are coming up this coming weekend and I'm a little nervous. I've only spent a little bit of time with them and I don't feel as confident being around them as I'd like. I guess the only way to make that better is to spend more time with them, but it doesn't make me any less nervous about it.

I went to Shaw's this morning and brought along the bucket of change I've been collecting for several years. It totaled out to 35 dollars, which I used to purchase my groceries. I think it is important to note that there were no quarters in the bucket (they get used for laundry), so that was 35 dollars in pennies, nickels, and dimes.

My St. Patty's Day weekend turned out to be pretty entertaining. Meg and Tom were supposed to come visit but the snow storm detered them from driving from Jersey to Boston. I ended up hanging out with Coco on Friday night and taking an awesome bike ride in the blizzard. Saturday afternoon saw me at Sunset drinking green beer with Steve and Drew and then watching 300 and cooking dinner with Coco. I had heard a lot of negative things about 300, specifically about the dialouge, but I loved every second of it (the dialouge was essentially spoken comic book speech bubbles, which tend to be overly dramatic, but I love comics so I can see why it didn't bother me). We then went to a bar with some people and finished the evening drinking whiskey sours.

Laura came back to Boston today (Sunday) which was very exciting. We spent most of the day together cooking and napping and catching up on the past week. I hadn't realized how much I missed her until I saw her this morning. I am really happy she's back.

I'm trying to stay positive and motivated about this whole student teaching thing. My lesson plans for tomorrow are pretty thin; I'm planning on showing up and winging it. Coco and I were talking about our classrooms this weekend and she made a comment that really put the whole thing into perspective for me. She said that usually her kids are willing to play along and pretend that she's really the teacher, even though everyone in the classroom knows she's a student teacher, but sometimes they don't feel like playing along and she really has no authority or clout to get them to do what she wants when that happens. I had never thought about it that way before, but I can absolutley see how it applies to my kids. Laura told me to just stick it out for another two monthes and then it would be over, and I guess that's what I'm going to have to do.

Today was a phenomenal day in school. I saw the C2 kids twice today and both times they were very well behaved. The took their quiz (and didn't to terribly) and managed to stay quiet for almost all of A block, and they seemed to enjoy my graphing calculator lesson during D block. That happened to be the block I was being observed, so I'm glad I picked a good lesson. My C1 class was actually way crazier today than I've ever seen them, but I think I handled it very well. I thought I was able to keep them relatively on task and I think most of them understood the lesson.

Despite that, I find myself somewhat unhappy with the whole situation. I am most upset by how restricted my schedule has become. I am a person who values my free time and to have it so suddenly and massively restricted it unsettling to say the least. A huge part of my day is taken up being at school. Another large chunk is devoted to lesson planning for the next day, something that is becoming more and more tedious for me to do well. My evenings are taken up with class and work, and I go to bed early because I have to wake up early. My time with Laura is significantly less than it was last semeseter, and the time I do get to spend with her is not nearly the amount she deserves. It seems like a huge sacrifice to make for a bunch of bratty, ungrateful kids when I'm not being paid.

I also feel generally unfulfilled with my classes right now. I don't do any of the readings and the papers I turn in are a joke. I skipped my first class ever in my now five years of college last night because I couldn't justify why I wasn't doing something useful with my time instead of listening to an old man ramble about irrelevant and useless things (this doesn't could the five or six classes I have skipped for concerts or climbing, which I consider valid reasons).

All in all, I feel like my life has taken a radical shift and I am not at all sure I like where it is going.

I've spent this past week waking up at 6:00am and heading on over to Waltham High School. I took over Jessica's mainstream Algebra 1 class and my experiences thus far have been mixed. The class is made up of almost 30 kids who are all best friends and come to my math class right after lunch. They are all good kids but in general the class is a loud and rowdy place.

On Monday I taught them the last section in Chapter 6, which was about graphing systems of linear inequalities. When I was up there speaking to them they were pretty quiet and attentive, but as soon as I left them to their own devices to do a problem or if I took too long collecting my own thoughts they quickly got out of control and I was unable to bring them back down. Twice Jessica had to raise her voice to gain control of the class and while I was grateful that she helped me out I was a bit let down by my inability to control them myself. Despite my misgivings, Jessica was very supportive and told me that it was a very difficult thing to control any group of 30 freshmen, and especially this group.

Tuesday I saw them twice and I felt much better about everything. My first lesson was a review of the second half of the chapter. They worked fairly quietly on the problems I gave them and while they weren't incredibly responsive to my questions, they weren't out of control either. The quiz went pretty well, with the average being something above 50% and below 75%.

Yesterday was the highlight of the week. After quickly going over the quiz (with excellent class participation) I gave everyone a graphing claculator and taught them how to solve systems with it. They really enjoyed working with the calculators and several of them have asked me to do more lessons with them. Hopefully the material they're going to learn will present me with the opportunity to do so.

Today's lesson was a bit ambitious on my part. It didn't exactly fail but it wasn't nearly as successful as I had hoped it would be. The major problems were a lack of clarity on my part as to what I wanted them doing and the lesson's inherent downtime (a dangerous thing in this class). I did learn some things about what I can and can't do in the class though, and I already feel lightyears more confident in front of the class than I did on Monday.

In a few hours I am going to wake up and go to the hospital to have a second ACL reconstructed. I don't really find myself nervous about the surgery itself, and I already know that I can handle the physical and mental challenges associated with all of the physical therapy. At this point I am just really just so unexcited at the prospect of having to do the whole damn thing over again. After my first surgery and subsequent recovery I was so convinved that I would never have to go through all of that again. I just felt like something that I would only ever have to deal with once and now that I have to face it again I don't feel the same anger and passion I felt the first time, I just feel like it is another obstacle that I am going to deal with.

On Thursday morning I ventured out to Waltham to meet my cooperating teacher for next semester. She was very cool and I think I am really going to enjoy learning from and working with her. She teachers three different levels of algebra (remedial, college prep, and honors) as well as a pre calc course. I will most likely end up teaching all three of the algebra courses and maybe a few lessons in the pre calc course as well. Since one of the classes has 30 kids in it I will be taking 15 of them into another classroom and teaching them while she teachers the other 15 in her classroom. This is a huge opportunity for me and while I am really excited about it I am also terrified. I have never had such a large amount of responsibility before, especially for a bunch of other people. I am also worried about how effective I can be with a huge knee brace on and a limp.