Practice Makes Perfect

In my nearly eight months of teaching (wow!...surprising to count it out), I have had many struggles, trials, and tribulations. These are VERY well known the family and friends in my inner-most circle, less well-known to my colleagues, and almost unknown at all to all other folk. I've chosen it this way. I struggle to remain an optimist in this environment but I'd like to think that I still am one. I still see tons of potential in every student. I still try to figure out more innovation ways to engage my students in subject matter. I still replay interactions--especially negative ones--that I have with students over and over in my head thinking about what I did wrong and what I could have done better. Jay-Z once famously stated, "in order to survive you've got to learn to live with regrets," and I have done so many a time. Still, there are some things that I have found to rejoice about that my students have responded to in very positive ways.

One of the best things that I've begun to do is to check student classwork right after they complete it. It sounds simple but I'm sure many in MTC specifically and teachers outside of our program in general who teach in tough school districts can attest to the infrequency of students submitting their work (please attest to it...please don't let this be a problem that only Mr.Amutah faces). Anyway, what I did for the first semester and at the beginning of the second semester was give students homework fairly regularly and have students bring classwork up to me at the end of class or pass it to the front of their row so that I can collect it there. With homework, it wasn't uncommon for only two to five of my students to turn in their homework in a class of more than 20 kids. It also wasn't uncommon for students to actually do the work, put it in their bookbags, and forget to hand it to Mr.Amutah to be graded only to reach deep down in that bag, pull out the assignment weeks later (usually around progress report/report card time), and say "See?! I told you I did that assignment."

This was quite frustrating. On the one hand, I knew the more exposure my students had to the course's material the better off they would be and I knew that keeping them working and "teaching from bell-to-bell" (as my high school principal is fond of saying) is a means to avoid many classroom management issues--at least theoretically. On the other hand, my students just weren't taking the work seriously and/or not completing it and grades suffered quite a bit. The remedy has come in me checking student work right after they complete it, however. There are numerous benefits to this method of grading. First, students get immediate feedback on their work and I avoid the build-up of grading that seems to happen at the end of every nine weeks. Second, students tend to give more in their work when they know that they'll receive a grade before they leave that period. That makes their grade not some vague letter/number that they have to wait days or sometimes even weeks to be made aware of. It's the instant gratification that my students seek in so many different ways inside and outside of the classroom.

Every nine weeks there a sort of squabble between my admins and myself over my classes grades (see: "