Back for more: My first call home and redeeming myself following a boring class

So, I just finished tomorrow's lesson plan, which I'm actually really happy with, and now I get to write more!

I made my first phone call home to a parent this evening, and I feel kind of awkward about it. Poor kid. So, in my 9th grade class, the students are doing presentations on creation myths they researched. Today, one of the students scheduled to present was absent. I asked my (mean) master teacher what she thought I should do about this, and she felt very strongly that I should be very tough about this. She suggested that I dock her grade by 2 letter grades, so if she gives an A presentation tomorrow, she'll earn a C, and if she gives a C she gets an F. OUCH! I asked her what if the student has a readmit form (a legitimation of an absence) saying she was really sick or someone died or something. She said that if someone died, yes, but that people need to learn that they can't just blow something off because they're not feeling well. She even asked me, "Have you ever come to school even though you were sick?" knowing full well that I had, and I of course answered yes. "Students need to learn that that's what you do in life: you honor your responsibilities even if you're not feeling well."

I suppose that's legitimate in terms of a lesson for a 14-year-old to learn, but it's so punitive that I really don't feel comfortable coming down that harshly. Anyway, so I asked my nice master teacher. She suggested that I call home to find out what happened. Great idea. Except that it was actually scary for me to do that! I don't know why. I procrastinated for a good 15 minutes thinking through what I would say if the student answered, if a parent answered (I looked up on her info sheet to see that English and Cantonese are spoken at home, and I envisioned an awkwardness if the parent who might answer did not speak English well), if I got a machine, if an alien answered the phone, etc. I decided that I would potentially lower her grade by one letter grade, meaning she'll start at a B, unless there was a really good excuse (meaning something really bad happened). I wanted to be prepared to let her know of this punishment if it came down to it.

The mom answered and spoke perfect English and said the student had been in school today(!). So she cut. She then put the student on the phone for me to talk to (after I overheard a painful conversation between mom and daughter trying to get her to come to the phone--it was agonizing to listen to, really). I told her I was calling because I was worried about her since she wasn't in class today, and I was wondering if she's ok. Yes, she's ok. Were you in school today? Yes. How come you weren't in class? I wasn't feeling well, so I went to the Wellness Center. Do you have any concerns about your project? No. Do you want to talk at all about your project now over the phone? No. Will you be in class tomorrow? Yes. Will you be ready to present? Yes.

God, quotation marks are so overrated.

So I explained to her that I'd lower her grade by one letter grade, as I felt that was only fair for the other students who presented on time. She said ok, and I said I'd see her tomorrow, and that was that.

As soon as I got off the phone, though, I imagined all kinds of terrible things. Is mom yelling at daughter for cutting class and getting in trouble (if that's what she might consider what just happened)? Is this student, who is very shy, agonizing over having to make this presentation? Is this/am I causing some major trauma? Ugh.


In other news, my 10th grade class today was really boring. It's the only class I can say that about so far. I didn't do enough prep for it, so that was entirely predictable. I basically figured we'd do a mellow whole class discussion since their essays were due today, and we'd just kind of get back into the book, but it basically ended up with me pulling teeth and with lots of really bored faces staring at me. It was brutal. At the end of class, I acknowledged how bored they all looked today, and that that's something I'll be thinking about until tomorrow and take responsibility for.

I knew my master teacher would be observing me tomorrow, and I also knew I wanted to stem the tide of today's really low-energy class, so I have come up with an active and interactive class for tomorrow that I feel good about. We'll start with a written reflection on a dense one-setence quotation from the reading. That quote is an example of a sarcastic tone that the author takes. When we discuss the reflection, we will define tone and characterize what tone we think it is. (It's sarcastic, I tell you.) Then they will get into groups of 3 and look for examples from the text of the author taking a sarcastic tone. They will construct a well-written paragraph (including topic sentence, evidence, context, commentary--gotta love Jane Schaeffer) as a small group using the examples they find. What could be more fun???

Anyway, I think it will be an interactive class where they learn a lot of valuable info (tone, going over paragraph structures, finding evidence), and are active as readers, writers, speakers, and listeners. We'll see how it goes!

Now I'm off to bed. Tomorrow I need to bust a move to do some major planning for beginning To Kill a Mockingbird in my 9th grade class next week, as I'll be meeting with my (mean) master teacher Friday morning to show her my (yet unwritten) lesson plans for next week. Thankfully, I don't have class tomorrow night, and next week I don't have class Tuesday or Wednesday!! AND it's a short week, so we're already amazingly at Thursday. Sweet!