Summer School!!!!

Yes that's right -- I'm teachin' summer school!

It's actually not nearly as bad as you might think. My kids get a little chatty sometimes, but they're overall pretty good. They don't want to be stuck taking English forever!

I'm "teaching" 2 classes - I say "teaching" because the first class is an online course, where my role is that of a mentor. The students have an online teacher, but I am there to make sure they stay on task, answer questions they may have, help them with the technology (which is Blackboard), etc. From my end, this is nice - I don't have to plan, the students can take whatever English course they failed, regardless of the school schedule, and it's something new and experimental. On the other hand, I wonder how many of them will be successful. There's a whole lot of YouTube going on when I look around at the computers, despite my parrot-like commands for them to focus on their work and stay on track. That, and some other tech-related issues having to do with what we have in our computer lab, and the organization of the students' courses. I'm still out on whether I think this is a good option for struggling students.

My other class is a "live" class: 9th grade English. I really enjoy this one. I spend 2 hours with the kids each day, Monday to Thursday, and I'm really surprised at how quickly the time moves. It makes me wonder how we get through everything in 40-minute spurts during the year! It moves quickly for me, but I know it's a long time for some of the students --- some of them get really restless during the 2nd half. Overall, though, I think it affords the time to allow them to practice writing, and allows me time to check in with everyone at least once during class. We also have our own laptop cart, and I've set the kids up on Google docs. It's nice to have the time to experiment.

Anyway, that's all for now. More to come...!