blood on the sheets.

misplaced paperwork, 3 ~1/5hr classes, and a major scheduling mess later - i'm still kickin' it.

just had dinner with jake at a cheap/decent greek place. too tired to rummage for dinner; much too tired to think. i fear that these texts will be less analysis-heavy (a certain number of you applaud), more sparse (a certain number of you are said) as i adjust to all these new patterns. if nothing else, i hope posts to be a best of/bloopers reel from whatever i've gotten mysef into: amherst english major meets jackson public schools.

as for today, the dreaded day 1 (soon to be followed by the dreaded days 2, 3, 4, and 5), i taught three blocks of alg II after a free block in the beginning of the day - spent mostly with the lesser demons of panic. "blocks" refer to block scheduing - in particular, AB block scheduling - wherein students take four classes on "A" days and four different classes on "B" days, which alternate on the five day classweek. i.e. today was A day, tomorrow will be B day, wednesday will be A day again, etc. also, next week's AB days will be an inversion of this weeks - going BABAB.

my A day schedule:

1. free
2. Alg II
3. IB Alg II
4. IB Alg II

B day:

1. Calc
2. IB Alg II
3. IB Alg II
4. free

i had one rowdy class (block 2 - 29 students), and two relaxed ones (blocks 3 and 4 - 6 and 25, respectively). apparantly class sizes will smooth out over the next week or so. who knows.

the rowdines wasn't so bad. i do need to tighten the screws a little bit on my management policy. perhaps it'll be more functional when we're actually doing work. the students responded quite well when i rose my hands to speak, though would dissolve into chatter at the slightest pause. understandable.

my IB classes seem promising. the class of 6 was a dream today- no surprise. the larger class - even though they'd been through a long day of housekeeping and forms, did actually engage in my preliminary activity.

the scheduling mess refers to block 3, which is the lunch block. (n.b. teachers in jackson public schools [JPS] have to escort their kids to the cafeteria, and sit with them. lunch comes somewhere in the middle of block 3). something was a bit off, and i had to hold my kids for 2.5 hrs. as it was a small, very relaxed group - we played logic puzzles and chatted. had i had the rowdy bunch, i may have been eaten alive.

time to figure out a filing system.