when 36 become 37.

i promise - to both the unlikely you, and the pieces of me - that i'll write something again substantial in this space at some time. i've been doing too much of the whirlwind, i fear.

somehow i'm in a newspaper: saving the world , like i do.

so, my class of 36 became a class of 37; a big ole +1 after i had been stabilized at 36 when i gained one but lost one. we spent the whole period today focusing on being quiet and filling out a worksheet - agreeably, this is perhaps the educational model totally contrary to the needs of this particular set of children ("regular" alg II, as opposed to the vastly more mature IB kids), but i feel as if i need to be able to trust in the relative productivity, managablility, and stability of the environment before i can ever hope to accomplish anything with those kids in this class who choose to actively engage in it. anyway, we had 2 office referrals and 3 detentions during second block; and things seemed to be at a sustained fluidity for a good 70 of the 95 minutes. this is much better than the last two weeks (one office referral, one detention, and a voice-losing mountain of warnings for the whole period), but it's hard to be the militant flavor of disciplinarian (the kids were laughing during the beginning of the period because the tone of my voice had changed so much; they laughed their way to detention, i guess). just gotta keep adjusting, keep working towards a system that will work, and that can be flexible. but we've gotta start simple. we need to be able to achieve a space for independent practice/development.

in other news, my IB kids - after looking at this: 1995 info about correlation between income level and degree status - seemed ready to ask some interesting questions, starting with "why don't women make as much as men?," and heading towards "why aren't there any white people at jim hill?" before we realized that we were late for lunch. after giving them a some basic info about alexander v. holmes (1970) [which ended ms's wholesale resistance to brown v. topeka (1954)], segregation academies, and white flight - i had this awful feeling that i'm the last person that should be teaching them their own history.

damn carpetbaggery.