Taking a Second Look

So over the weekend I had decided to take a step back and really think about everything I have seen, heard, and done (or not for that matter) over this past week and let it soak in.

Here's what I have come up with.

Book reports.
Letter book reports.
Revise. Revise. Revise.
Book reports.
Letter book reports.
Revise. Revise. Revise.

I am not sure if this is a middle school thing or a Coventry school thing, but having two assignments consume every minute of class time for over a week strikes me as odd.  These kids are continually going over the same two works multiple times and not learning anything new.  Maybe I am speaking out of turn here, but how many weeks of class time can be taken to do this?

I am really not sure if I have witnessed that much actual "teaching", as much as spitting back student work over and over again and using class time to send them off to re-type them on computers across the team.

This process makes it difficult to really get to know any of the students or practice any actual teaching.  I spent my entire Wednesday of last week helping kids fix the format of their letters and basically cross their T's and dot their I's on their book reports.  While this did give me a chance to try and learn and remember some of their names, I still feel like after two weeks I barely know these kids.

Luckily, the students are great sports and quite friendly (some even remember my name which is cool), so here's hoping that teaching Wednesday and four days next week will go smoothly and the kids will learn something new from us!