"YES SIR"

Today was the best school day so far. We finished those government tests yesterday, and so we jumped into the full curriculum today. Since the school doesn't have bells, and my class really needs structure, I've set up a little alarm on my computer that goes off that the beginning and end of each class.

They're starting to get more motivated too. I yell, "Are you going to work hard in my class?" "YES SIR", they yell back. "Are you going to have a lot of fun in my class?" "YES SIR", they reply. Whenever we do that they get all jazzed up. I gave them a little pep talk, and got them to move their test forward to this Friday so that they could get through more material. I love getting them inspired to really learn a lot and feel like they're going somewhere. I think they got really disheartened last year and felt like they were just wasting their time. So I assigned over twenty pages of reading tonight, which is probably more than they've ever been assigned in one night! I'm kind of excited to see where they go from here.

Looking at their test scores from the government test in math, some of them are scoring at a first grade level. I'm not a math genius...actually I'm pretty sure I would fail anything above 8th grade math. But I'm excited at the challenge of seeing if I can teach math anyway to these kids and have them rocket up to a 7th or 8th grade level this year. I'm setting the bar pretty high for these kids, but I'm committed to each one of them to make it and grow.