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I make a lot of parent contacts throughout the school year... one of the reasons of my popularity among moms and dads. If anyone fails the first test of a term, I send a note of concern home, reminding parents that I do drop the low test score each quarter so this one test is not a catastrophe by any means, but their child will have to work a lot harder the rest of the way. Two weeks into each term, I also send notes home to parents of any student with 50% or less as a homework average, reminding parents that their children can get 100% for homework scores the rest of the way if they correct their mistakes... and by learning how to do it right on their own will do wonders for their test grades as well. I sent seven letters home after the first week was done from my fourth period Algebra I class. Fourth periods, the last classes of the day, had always been a bit noisier than the rest... everyone's filled up with lunch and anxious to go home. Still, there were seven boys in that class who continuously violated by deepest pet peeve... talking while I'm trying to teach. By the end of the semester, the ones who were left out of the seven were brought in line. Two, however, were just a scourge on my class. One was a mouthy little ass hole named Isiah, the other a class clown named Mike. Of the seven, only Mike was doing well in class, but his confidence of knowing the material gave him the feeling that he didn't have to pay attention. Fair enough, but it was taken a step further when disrupting his buds... they thought he was hilarious (and sometimes he was), but they were also in danger of failing my class. Mike admitted about the sixth week of school that he'd taken Algebra I in eighth grade, earning a B+. I said, "You know, you should be taking Geometry right now." His reply? He didn't want to take Geometry because he thought it was dumb to learn about "shapes." What an idiot! I let him know so in front of the whole class that Geometry is more a course on logic than it is on "shapes," and that he'd just wasted an entire high school credit he could have had in eighth grade. The rest of the class agreed with me. Exit one class clown... Mike transferred at the end of the term to be another teacher's problem. |