Sunday, May 10, 2009

The final stretch...

Well, there are only 17 1/2 days left with kids for me. WOOHOO!!! It's not that I don't like my job. It's not that I don't like the kids. It's that we are tired of each other! Actually, I think every 7th grade kid in my school has LOST THEIR EVERLASTING MINDS!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You would think we ran a school of wild animals at the moment! Why is that you ask? Our state-mandated testing is over. YEAH!

See, because of the high-stakes attached to the tests these days--NCLB, AYP and all of those other letters--schools place a great emphasis on the tests. Which they should since that should be the curriculum being taught. So, when the tests are finished, the kids think the year is finished. IT'S NOT!

We have had more kids acting like 5 year olds on a playground than ever before. The pushing/shoving/horseplay in general is DRIVING ME NUTS!!!!!!! Why can't 12, 13, 14, 15, and 16-year-olds keep their hands to themselves??? And, we aren't talking PDA! (Yes, you did read that correctly. Thanks to high-stakes testing and NLCB, we have students from age 12-16 IN THE 7TH GRADE!!!!! We half-way joke that we will need to build a student parking lot soon.)

That is another topic for another day.

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there! And, to all the teachers who play mom during the school year!

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Stupid Questions....

I am having my students work on a project at the moment. It is about Mean, Median, Mode and Range. To complete the project, they have to survey their class mates to get data. The question should start with "How many...." and be able to be answered with a number. The goal is to get a range of numbers to use to find the measures of central tendency. Here were some of the "questions" that students wanted to ask. My replies are in parenthesis.

1. What is the exact value of pi? (First, there is no answer. Second, everyone should say the same thing!)
2. How many computers do you have? (Most people will have 0 or 1. Not a good selection.)
3. How many jewelry do you have? (I was thinking "WHAT?!?!?!?" I actually said--That is too big of a number.)

My personal favorite---
4. How many fingers do you got? (With the exception of Mrs. A, I believe EVERYONE in the building has 10!)

This is our future!!!! Kinda scary, eh?