Regents Week

Not for my students, of course, but a large number of students are taking January regents this week which means proctoring and marking papers and getting in grades and continuing to teach my 8th grade class (middle school students are in regular session all week). Actually a couple of my students are in fact taking a "make-up" regents (Earth Science) due to failure to get a 65 or better in June or August, but not that many.

I had this morning "free," as in free from "teaching" a class, but I didn't even break for lunch and worked straight through from 7:30 this morning till 6:00 this evening grading projects, lab reports, & tests, and checking homeworks in preparation for semester grades. We should have a regular work week where the students once per week come in at noon (I'm much more productive in the morning) for a half day of instruction to give teachers a block of paid time to check student work or otherwise be productive in ways the board of ed refuses to recognize as meaningful labor on our part. It's a sign of what they think we really do (babysit) that they only want to consider us as "working" if we are in front of a group of students giving a lesson. I'm reluctant to use the more general term of "teaching" to describe that activity, because I consider the time I spend marking student work as teaching. Not to mention the time planning. The time collaborating with other teachers. The time consulting with parents. The time spent in faculty meetings. Etc.

OK. I didn't start this post as a rant, so I'll stop now. We are really starting to get into the meaty part of the curriculum and a lot of students are struggling. There's something more or less intuitive and easy about ecology, where we started the year, but as we get into cell processes it gets abstract very quickly and I don't think a lot of students know quite how to deal with the level of understanding they need for the regents exams. They seem to be groping around for a list of vocabulary words or simple processes or rules they can just memorize. I gave a test on some cell basics, culled from old regents exams. The results weren't impressive. I did allow them to use their books but warned them they probably wouldn't find the books very helpful - since the regents exam requires them to pull together bits & pieces of information from various parts of the book, and apply what they know to novel situations - the answers aren't in the book, they have to be synthesized in the brain. I actually made them work without the books for about 15 minutes, answering questions as best they could, then allowed them to open the books. I may do something similar in the future and find a way to compare their open book answers to their closed book answers to see how much they actually change. Hey, I might even be able to turn that idea into my master's project, with some refinements.

Speaking of master's project, I may have to put that off for another semester. For some reason that class is always in demand and filled to capacity with a waiting list, and I wasn't able to get in. I am on the waiting list, but I won't be that upset if I have to wait till next fall, when I'll have a better grip on my curriculum and materials and will not, I hope, be working 10 hours a day on a regular basis.