What'cha Workin' On Wednesday...

Empowering All Students to Succeed in a Changing World.

(our school district's mission statement)

That's what I'm working on this Wednesday, 

and every other school day in the week.

Some days I feel like I am doing that...

...and some days, I'm not so sure.

This has been a discouraging month...

and, as if the weather in the Dakotas isn't bad enough.

(It is going to be 14 below tonight)

About a week ago, we met with curriculum leaders

to analyze the progress in our classrooms.

There is a new "buzz word" in education.

Teachers write SLOs.

We pretest our students' knowledge.

And at the end of the term we administer end of course exams to assess the students' growth.

Here's what my numbers indicated.

Only 33% of my students showed growth.

What? 

I am getting up at 4:30 in the morning,

planning and organizing lessons,

gathering teaching materials for the day,

and taking over 11,000 steps a day...

(according to my fitbit)

...and there are 2/3 of my students that don't care enough to try?!

Now, for the record,

the students that are pictured in this post are those that do try...

the ones keep me coming back to work every day.

But I'm not going to lie...

I walked back to my teacher planning center that day and felt like bawling.

How do we get these other students to care?

How does one develop a sense of intrinsic motivation in our children?

If I knew the answer to that question,

I would write a book and retire!

Today,

I received more discouraging school news.

It's a whole new subject...and I don't feel like talking about it yet.

For now, it's the student smiles that keep me going.

Take care,

~Natalie