Ready, Set...

Ben suggested that we should post about something we wished we had done before the school year started. I've got a long list, both of things I wished I had and had not done.

Organization - Clear, detailed procedures for my students and myself.
My most challanging problem last year was organization, which, based on the way I had made it through college, nevermind my own experiences as a student in high school, should not have been surprising. Before I started the year, I needed to have better procedures, that were much more thought out and thought through, both procedures for what the students would do and for what I would do. Where would I put the daily attendance list when it showed up at lunch, during 3rd or 4th block, or the next morning (that is, if it showed up at all)? What would I do with the do not admit list? How would I keep track of attendance in my own classroom? How would I record disciplinary infractions, and how would I inform students of consequences? How would I communicate grades with parents, and when would I have time to grade all the crap that I assigned? Would I grade at home or at school? Even simple things, like what I expected when I asked the class a question, were unclear. So I wish that before school started last year, I had set these ideas out very clearly, in writing, and played them through a few times in my head, then went to a second year and gone through all of them with the second year, just to get an idea of what is reasonable and what is not. A second year from my district would have been ideal, but since I was the first in my district, that was not possible.

My room
I wish I had taken more time to make my room an inviting place for students. I don't mean a circus, but I do mean clean, neat, bright colors. Encouraging slogans or posters. Lots of math. Things that I find exciting and interesting, so that if my students ask me about them, I can share some of my passion for other subjects, even if they are not math-related. In this regard, I would especially like to have some things posted that reflect the world outside of the town in which I taught. A world map. Posters of Russia, Africa, South America, anywhere but the delta, memphis, or chicago. College posters of both local and elite institutions. I have students who could go to Williams, Harvard, Standford, etc. Or at least Amherst. They need to know these places exist, and about the doors that they could open for a delta kid. This sounds extraordinarily elitist, maybe I am. But Delta State and Valley do not provide the kind of education my kids deserve. The fact that I was told by someone at Valley that I should teach there after I finish MTC illustrates exactly why my students deserve better than that. A continuation of the high school experience is not what they all need - although some of them certainly do. My room also needs to be neat, which means better organization, and also better procedures about leaving the room, eating, etc.

My Sanity
I wish that, before the year had started, I had set some limits for myself. Regarding, for example, grading. Next year, I plan to do all my grading at school. I have a 98 minute planning period. I am only going to allow myself to take home grading on days when, for one reason or another (covering another teacher's class, school pictures, the extravaganza, meetings, general chaos) I do not have a planning period. The sheer amount of grading I accumulated and did not deal with immediately terrified me as it piled up in my classroom, backpack, dining room, living room, and bedroom. It will all stay at school next year, organized in folders.

Discipline
I wish I had known something about my school's discipline policy before I started. I also wish that the school offered school-wide, supervised detention. But that won't happen.

Planning
I wish that I had planned ahead more. Actually, as I recall, I did plan ahead, but was completely shocked by incompetent my students were at basic mathematical operations. Few of them were actually unintelligent, but fluidity in mathematical operations was somethinng that alluded them, so I had to throw out all my planning on the first day, since it assumed that my students could add and subtract fractions, and integers. Assume nothing.

Like anything you do the first time, there are still a million other things I think I could have done better, but that's why I'm glad it's a two year program. Just a year here and I would feel completely unsatisfied.