I am still here - really, I promise!

So I know I haven't updated in over two weeks, and for that I truly apologize.  Once we got into the swing of things, it became really difficult to updated between going to school and going to... school?  So anyway, I thought I'd make two posts today: one to give you a little idea logistically what my days are like and what I'm doing in the classroom, and one with all my philosophical thoughts and questions on how to be a teacher.  I'll start with the logistics:

The schedule is such that every academic class is about 90 minutes long.  So my school day starts at 8am with our Math 2 class, then the next period is our prep period, then we have 40 minutes of either tutorial or advisory (depending on the day), then 30 minutes of lunch, then 45 minutes of seminar (which I think I explained but maybe not), then our final class of the day which is Math 5, and this all ends at 2:30.  So I could lay out a schedule for you, but it's not really terribly important.  Friday is shorter: we only have the three academic periods, which go from 8am to 12:30pm, then we have 25 minutes of advisory before the kids are excused for lunch.  Then we have faculty meetings 1:30-3:30pm.  So that's basically what a typical week looks like.  It's interesting because I only actually have two math classes, but then there's all this other stuff (advisory, tutorial, seminar) that gets crammed into the middle of the day.  Ironically, the 90-minute math classes always seem to go much faster than those 45 minutes of seminar... ugh.  

As far as seminar is concerned, I have no idea what I'm doing.  We split up the students between the three co-teachers, and they gave me only a three, because they know I don't know what I'm doing.  :)  Even with only three students to check in with and grade all their work, I still feel totally lost.  I don't know how to grade papers or even how to give feedback on their work.  And I worry that the students won't do well because I won't be able to support them as well as a real teacher would.  Moreover, I know nothing about senior grant, so when I have to answer their questions, I tend to send them to ask another teacher, because I can't help them.  Meanwhile, there are a few students who are trying to push me because they know I don't know how to deal with them, and I feel like I'm undermining my own authority by being clueless.  I don't know.  Basically, I hate seminar because I'm useless.

However, my math classes are going really well.  My mentor has been was out on Friday, and she'll be out again tomorrow, so I have been leading the classes.  Things went pretty well on Friday for the most part.  My first period class was a little louder than normal, and I wasn't sure how to deal with that.  But everything else was fine.  I need to grade all their quizzes this weekend.  Usually I take attendance, check homework, and pass back papers while my mentor teaches.  Then I work one-on-one with the students when they're all working independently.  I've been teaching a bit more lately - going over the homework with them at the beginning of class.  It seems to be going really well.  I really like what I'm doing, and I really like my students.  There are a few that I am still unsure how to deal with, but I am trying to approach them without assumptions and without being authoritarian and condescending.  But I'll get into that more in my next post.

So I hope that covers things.  I'll do my best to give you more specifics in the future.  I have more and more questions every day with how to deal with students and how to manage the classroom.  It's quite the adventure.