Progress Towards End of Year Goals

The new semester (my last semester) of my MAT program is starting, so I decided to look back on my goals from the end of last semester. When I wrote my last blog post, I was frustrated with my students. We had just come back from Thanksgiving break and they were trying to take advantage of me before interim grades were due. I set a goal to become more confident in my teaching. I'm still nowhere near where I want to be, but I'm proud of my progress.

Friday was the last day of second quarter. Understandably, I had several students send me messages, pull me aside in the hallway, come after school, or flat out ask me during class what they could do to get a better grade. The end of the quarter has been very stressful, but I've been holding my ground and sticking to my expectations for students. For example, in my computer science class, I had a student ask me why she got a poor participation grade for her pair programming. She tried to tell me that her partner had been absent (which he had been absent maybe one or two classes the whole unit) and I explained to her that she did not finish all the programming assignments and oftentimes when I looked over, I saw that she was off task. She didn't argue. She knew I was right and understood my reasoning. And that was the end of that conversation.

I had two other geometry students ask me why they got a zero for an assignment they turned in. This particular assignment was one that I knew was a tough one. It was obvious while I was grading it that some student had found an online answer key and passed it around. Many students copied the answers verbatim. In the gradebook, I made a comment on that assignment that said "see me." When these girls asked about the "see me" assignment, I calmly explained to them what happened and how I knew they were cheating. I reasoned with them that a zero was much more fair than a detention or a call home (which I considered at first, but there were so many students that cheated, that I was exasperated and gave them all zeros instead). After my explanation, one of them asked if I was still going to put the grade in, and I told them no. They might not have liked it, but they understood. And that was the end of that.

Overall, I am proud of my growth over the past couple months. I cannot wait to see what the future holds.