NYC Blog

Ok, so for those that don’t know, I got a job teaching and my first week just ended.

We started on Wednesday and I can’t express how intense it was. But I am basically going from 5:50 am -7:00 pm mon-fri.  It is very intense. But some exploits from this week that I found interesting:

One of my students had his head down in 2 of my classes to sleep. I approached him the first day when he did this stuff and asked him what was going on. He would just keep telling me he never gets sleep because of his neighbors. So, this went on for all 3 days. Though, when I asked about him, he is really bad at math and it was because of that he had his head down. I can understand the want to escape these situations, but the funny part came in when he was causing a ruckus one Thursday before his head went down. My TA confronted him about the noise (they knew each other for a few years) and when the TA walked away, the kid, under his breath say, “yeah, fuckin walk away.” The TA, turned round, walked up to him and said (loudly), “What did you say? Don’t make me embarrass you here! Cuz I WILL do it!” The kid backed down sharply and put his head back down after a couple minutes of sulking to himself.

Because they are high schoolers, I don’t see a problem with keeping the students accountable and responsible for their actions. Teachers can only do so much and encourage so far. It must come from the other end too. Now, I will try and reach him over this year and battle with him about this, but it will be difficult.

In another class, another student power-struggle is in effect. I’m trying to get he “popular” student to get on board and work because he will guide the class with what he does. But on Friday, being math was the last subject for these particular students, it was completely ridiculous trying to get them to do work. But the “popular” kid decided to put his head down (has some deeper issues) the class ran smoothly. No one made outbursts, almost everyone participated in the lesson and the rest paid attention. So, I’d say overall, things are on the up and up *knock on wood*

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