Day 92: Aioncé

Any of the Astronomy students who had not chosen, or completed, another option spent the period taking the chapter test.  The ones who were not taking it were excellently behaved and very respectful of their classmates.

While that was going on, I went through the various assignments that had been turned in.  Some of them were pretty amazing.

One of the optional assignments was to create tourist brochures for each of the planets giving reasons why tourists should visit.

These includes some gems:

• If you're not a fan of the sun, Neptune is the furthest from it!
• If you're into being cold then grab a coat and come up!
• No living things at all so you can feel safe knowing you're alone.
• We provide oxygen tanks for the first 14 visitors!
• We have 63 moons! (Nothing more romantic!)

When I wasn't grading, I was dancing and lip syncing to songs on the Duran Duran station on Pandora.

Apparently, my skills were on point because I received a letter!

He then sent me a message over our learning management system that simply said "YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS OUT!"


I may not be the greatest teacher in the world (I know for a fact that I'm not) but I work to build relationships with my students.


Now if you'll excuse me, I have a track to cut.

Aioncé out!

Day 91: MP3

I'm making some changes during this marking period.  The first is that I will accept late work only 1 day late.  I will evaluate extenuating circumstances on a case-by-case basis.

The other major change is that the discussion questions which we have been doing weekly will be closed at midnight on the day they are due.  This past marking period I have allowed students to go back and answer the questions late, but I'm stopping this for two reasons.

First, the discussions are open for 7 days.  I post them on Sunday and will close them on the following Sunday.  Students have a week to answer the question and respond to their classmates.  The process takes literally 5 minutes.  I think it's important that I hold them to finding 5 minutes over the course of a week to have a meaningful and academic interaction with their classmates.

Second, the purpose of that assignment is to foster that academic interaction.  In order for that to happen in a meaningful way, there needs to be a timeliness to it.

In addition, I was deeply annoyed at receiving emails to review 250+ discussion board postings in the past 3 days from students who hadn't done it before.


These deadline enforcement choices were made after much internal and external debate.  I want my grade book to be open for students who are having difficulty grasping the concepts, allowing more time to master the material.  Unfortunately, over the past 90 days, I can't think of a single time when that was used as I intended.  The students who were having genuine difficulty came to speak to me and we worked through the issues.  Students who missed school due to extended illness did the same.

The students who were waiting until the end of the marking period to turn in assignments weren't doing so in an effort to perfect the highest quality work.

In short, they were using my flexible deadlines out of something other than necessity.

I consider the flexible deadlines to be a sociological experiment in educational practice.  It did not have the intended or desired results and so I am choosing to discontinue the experiment.

I expect that grades will take a hit, but hopefully that will have an effect on the attention to detail that my experiment did not.

Either way, I won't be spending hours at the end of the marking periods grading assignments that were thrown together the night before.

Day 89: Just Knock

My district has a policy that states  that the lowest grade that a student can receive on their report card for a marking period is a 50%.  For students in special education, with individual education plan or 504 plans, the lowest grade is a 59%

The purpose of this is to make sure that a student won't fail for the year because they have a single, or even a second bad marking period.  It's designed to encourage student to improve rather than saying "there's no way I can pass for the year."

I think there are very important benefits to this policy as well as some serious drawbacks.  The majority of teachers override and replace grades that are below 50 in the grade book.  I used to do this.

Now, I add an assignment to each marking period.  It's called "Grade Boost" and is worth 0 points.  In the description, I write "points needed for student to receive district mandated minimum."

While I agree that a grade shouldn't be irrevocably damaged by a single bad marking period, I also think it's important to accurately report progress.  Missing a passing grade by a few points is a very different thing than missing it by 30%.  The interventions needed are very different.

This marking period, almost half of my Astronomy students needed points given to them so they would receive a 50.

As I was going through my grade book adding these in, I also noticed something interesting.  While many of my students earned (significantly) below 50% for the marking period, there was very few who earned C's and even fewer who earned D's.

The breakdown looks like a parabola, with lots of grades on the ends and very few in the middle.  Looking at the names, there are very few surprises.  The students who complete assignments by the due dates have done well and those who haven't, haven't.


Data makes it much easier for me to see my own level of responsibility.

Day 88: Talking To Myself

I allow students to turn in work late. In the last 48 hours, I've received 203 discussion responses for the marking period. Shame on me.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion I don't want to be grading kids on responsibility. I want to be grading what knowledge they demonstrate. Some kids take longer.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion I'm not sure where the balance is. I don't mind the extra work for kids who use that time wisely, to learn, to grow

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion I think it absolutely can. But how do I say "this is great work" to one kid and "this is a waste of my time to grade" to another

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion even allowing that late work to come in, more than half of my students are failing and not because they can't learn the material

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion Yes, but most of my kids are there because they need the science credit to graduate. Failure = no graduation

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion I provide guided notes, weekly discussions, differentiated assessments, time in class.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion isn't part of the job of a teacher to inspire? To convince students of the benefits of learning?

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion do I really want to be the teacher associated with keeping a kid from graduation because of Astronomy class?

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion perhaps minimal, but I have no control over what they do in other classes.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion Shouldn't my actions be ones that inspire them to learn?

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion maybe I'm looking for reasons to blame myself because I hate how powerless this makes me feel. If it's my fault, I have power.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion I don't think my best is good enough

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

@JustinAion very few of us do.

— Justin (@JustinAion) January 26, 2016

Day 87: I Yelled

And it killed my mood for the day.

I hate yelling.  It's not effective, productive or helpful.  I yelled because my frustration got to a breaking point.

It's one thing for students to be rude by putting their heads down  and quite another to constantly be talking over the teacher.

I had had enough today.

So I yelled.

And they laughed.

Not all of them, but the ones whom I really needed to be quiet, the ones whose parents I am unable to reach, the ones who need to pass my class in order to graduate high school.

I managed not to scream profanity or try to shame them into less rude behavior.

I ran through the list of option that I had to reassert order, or at least to remove them from the class without seeming like a petty child stamping his feet.  I came up empty.

I am powerless.

While I don't ENJOY being powerless, I don't really mind it as much with these kids as they are making their choices.  By junior or senior year, I can provide them with support, but I am fairly realistic about being able to change the habits of people who don't see the need to change.

What saddens me is the group of students who are genuinely interested in the subject and WANT to learn it and do well.  The rest of the students seem intent on sabotaging that, not out of malice, but out of genuine lack of understanding that their actions have an effect on the class as a whole.

I consoled myself with organizing my hexagons.  It was very soothing.

Each column pair contains 50

Day 86: Checklists

You guys, midterms are super serious!

I had a student in each class who magically shrunk when it came time to take their test.


While the students took tests, I spent most of the day organizing my giant tub of hexagons.

This chaos got to be a bit too much for me

When kids finished their tests, they started coming up in droves to help me sort.  I attribute their willingness to do this kind of repetitive task to the fact that you can clearly see the incremental progress.

Being able to see the work that you've done is incredibly satisfying.  So much of the work that is done at school is inside the mind and intangible, or VERY long term, that students (as well as myself) often gravitate towards tasks where they can see exactly what has been accomplished.

It's one of the reasons why vacuuming and dusting are my favorite household chores.  Everywhere you run the vacuum, everywhere you wipe the dust rag, you get a clear visual of your work.  Check lists also work very well for me.

When I was in school, I generally did very poorly on assignments that were long term without incremental steps to turn in along the way.  I did MUCH better when I was given a timeline.  Interestingly, I'm pretty awful at making checklists and timelines for myself.

I think this need for checking in is what has made the science contract assignment to be (somewhat) more successful than they other assignments.  I give due dates, but they are flexible for kids who need it.

My checklist for this weekend includes grading midterms, putting in midterm grades, thinking of a new hypothetical question for astronomy and finishing watching Gotham on Netflix.

Also, probably something with my children.



On top of all of this, kids I don't even know are starting to use the phrase #HighFiveFriday.

Day 85: Review-ish

Every class is required to have a midterm of some sort, but the form of that midterm is left up the teacher.  Those who teach subjects taught by multiple teachers generally have a common assessment which they develop as a group.

No one else teaches what I teach this year, so I have a great deal of freedom in what I do for the midterm.

The astronomy kids are getting a 50 question test tomorrow.  It's entirely true/false and multiple choice and the questions have all been pulled from previous assessments.  I told them about it yesterday and I gave them today to work on anything they owed me.  I made myself available to answer any questions that they might want to ask before the midterm.

In all five sections, the girls in the class (with 4 exceptions) worked very well while the boys (with 5 exceptions) spent the time chatting.

The physics kids were supposed to take their midterm tomorrow, but I decided I would rather them take it today so they could use the double period.

I colored.

My daughter received a guitar for her birthday in November.  Her interest in it waxes and wanes, but since then, I've been teaching myself to play.

I'm at the point of learning a new skill where you want to practice all the time.

I'm thinking about guitar right now.  I was when I started this post.

I will continue thinking about it after I hit "publish."