160 pages of really bad spelling and grammar

The letters project is going well. Right now we have about 160 kids involved in the whole ordeal. So that means, every day a letter is due, I end up reading all of them that night and then redistribute them the following morning. It's a very time consuming and logistically demanding project but in the end I think (and hope) that it will be totally worth it.

So far, each student has written 2 letters to their secret pen-pal. There are going to be two more letter exchanges until people find out who they are writing to. They have been really excited to receive their letters so far, so thats making the whole process worthwhile in my book.

then she started weeping.

We had our third round of parent teacher conferences last night. Overall, my classes have been going well. We had our second test of the quarter on monday so I had a good number of grades going into conferences.

So far this quarter, we have finished our native american unit, started and completed our immigration unit, did three chapters (Gilded Age, America as a World Power, and Progressivism) in one day, and started World War 1. Because of that, I'm pretty proud of myself so far this quarter.

On Monday we had our test, generally the kids did really well. Out of all my classes, the average was about an 83. So I'm pretty happy about that - 1 girl got 100% so that was good too.

Tuesday we started WWI but most of my classes were a little messed up because we had a guest speaker come into the school for an assembly that day. Before each assembly or pep rally, all the students go back to their homerooms and then they get sent to the assemblies from there in an orderly fashion. My homeroom (well I'm the homeroom assistant to another teacher) was patiently and silently (the teacher I help out leads that homeroom with an iron fist, it's amazing) to be call. Randomly the teacher I help, Judy, spots one kid doing something and says to give her whatever he is messing around with. It's a tin box that says "Car" or something on the side of it. It looked like a box an old-school throw-back toy would come in. Anyway, she starts to look at it trying to figure out what it is. (At this point in my head I've already decided I would have given it back to the kid because we have no idea what it is). But Judy opens the lid to the box and she goes right back into the room, calls the kid out of his desk and immediately brings him to the main office. When Judy opened the box, I could just barely see the top of a ziploc bag, so I figured with her reaction and the fact the kid has a ziploc bag in a box that has to have been drugs. Yep, it was. He had 21 grams of marijuana in that box and he was in the process of trying to hide it when he saw him. And of course, the class that was the first to meet after the assembly was over was the Period that I'm supposed to have this kid in class. The whole period everyone is asking what happened to him and whispering back and forth to each other, I tried my best to keep the class focussed, I actually did pretty well up until the last 5 minutes.

Wednesday and Thursday the kid was absent from class, but he was still listed on my online gradebook meaning he was still enrolled in the school. But at the end of the day today, I officially got a letter in my mailbox asking me to send his final grade as of December 7 to the Vice Principal of Academics because he is no longer a member of the school community. The kid had an 88 average in my class. He was a god kid who I would have never suspected this from at all, it was actually making me upset because he was such a stupid idiot. I feel bad for his parents, who at the previous two parent teacher conferences both showed up, both times. They wanted to make sure he was on track and on top of everything. I kept telling them that he was and that he was a great student, it just sucks that they have to deal with this whole mess now.

But, parent teacher conferences. We had them last night from 5 to 7. By 5 o'clock I already had met with 2 sets of parents who decided to come in early. For the next two hours I only met with 7 other students' parents. Ridiculous. So I would sit at my table alone and bored (although I am now planned until the end of January). But one parent came up to my table at one point, looked a bit confused and said, "I think you have my daughter for history." She told me her daughter's name, I did, so we started talking.

Me: "Well Julie has a 93 average right now, she's doing great"

Her: "Oh really, wow that's great."

"Yeah, she's great in class, she pays attention, takes notes well, participates ...."

"She participates in class!? really?"

"Yes, is that surprising?"

"No teacher has ever said he participates in class, she left middle school without ever talking to one of her teachers at all."

[at this point the mother's eyes start to tear up]

"Wow, OK. I would have never known that. She's great in class, she's outgoing and seems very confident."

"Confident! Oh my God, I'm going to cry. I wish I had paper so I could write this down."

"We are talking about Julie [last name] right?"

"I wanted to ask you the same thing, yes we are."

"Out of anyone in that class, she probably exudes the most confidence."

"Oh my God [weeping] I wish I had my cellphone recorder so I could have recorded you say that. this is amazing. I am so proud of her, you must be doing something right, this is amazing. OK, I'll let you go, I don't want to hold you up if you have other parents."

"Seriously, I've been sitting here for and hour and a half, you are the 7th parent I've talked to, I don't think you have to worry about that."

Anyway the conversation kept going for a little bit more. She kept saying how this made her day and how proud she was of her daughter. Honestly, after meeting this girl you would have never been able to know that she used to have confidence issues or that she hardly ever talked. She's great in class, talks, participates, comes to my other classes to say hi (but also to avoid going to her regular classes) and stuff like that. I had to stop the woman a few times to ask if we were still talking about the same person. So that made me feel very good, but I don't think I could take any of the credit for it.

But back to teaching. We have just started WWI and part of the unit is a new and exciting project. After about three full days of planning, organizing, and coding myself and another teacher have created a World War One Letters Project. Working with one other teacher, we will be organizing a project that involves 8 different history classes made up of 3 different grades (sophomores, juniors, and seniors).

Each student has been assigned an identity (soldier in the trenches, doctor on the front lines, factory worker, mother of soldier, etc) They have to pretend that they are that person and write a letter either home or to their friend or relative in the war. A student in a different class will receive that letter as the relative at war or person at home and respond to it. The students will continue to correspond with each other through 10 letters. the whole time, the students will have no idea who they are corresponding with up until the very last letter when they sign their real names. It took a lot of organization but I think the students will really get into it and have fun with the project. The first letters are due on monday so I can't wait to read them and see what the kids are up to.

Until then.