Quarter End

The quarter has ended, the halls are quiet.  Everyone is off to spring break.  

This was one of the most peaceful end of quarters I have had in a very long time.  I must give myself a little credit, but my students deserve some as well.  

I had an overload this quarter, which means I got to teach all four blocks in our block schedule, each one was a different prep, so that was an adventure.  I survived it.  It was a lot of work, especially early on, but I laid out my expectations, took out the busy work (for myself and my students) and learning seems to have taken place.  

The biggest change that has worked for me:  

I know I've said it 100 times, but getting rid of daily homework being graded has been the most liberating part of my teaching career.  That sounds a bit dramatic, but seriously, grading is my least favorite part of my job and grading busy work ranks even lower than that.  The way homework was being used in my class was wasteful and not purposeful.  

Today I surveyed my algebra 2 students and the most interesting responses were on the homework policy change.  Many students said just what I was expecting they would experience.  Here are some direct quotes from my awesome students' responses to the question "Did the homework policy help or hurt your performance in the class?": 

"I think it helped because I didn't feel the stress to get it done, so I could soak in the information better."

"I like it but it defiantly hurt me because I didn't do it. But then again I probably wouldn't have done it anyway."

"Helped I think. Because otherwise I'd probably have a lot of wrong answers on my assignments, and that'd have hurt my grade a lot."

"I think it helped me. It made me take responsibility for myself and my grade."

"I think it helped my performance because I was more comfortable to self-learn and think through things."

"It helped it because if I didn't have time because of work I wasn't to worried as long as I knew how to do it, and I did majority of the time."

"I think it helped me because when we corrected our homework I had to fix my mistakes by myself and I knew what I got wrong."

I think for the most part, much of what they said was what I expected they would say. There were only a couple that said they don't think it's fair that they don't get points for doing the homework or that the points 'save' their grade because they don't do well on tests. To those students, I think they need to pay more attention in math class-especially in most math classes that only give 10% of the grade to the homework. Homework won't save you if you are bombing every single test. They just like that security blanket, I get it.

Ahh. I feel good. I am thrilled to embark on a new quarter with a new philosophy that I truly believe in. There are still things I need to work on to make it better yet. I still need to keep on top of my reflection support for the students; I want to keep the reflection meaningful and important to the learning experience. I also need to continue to work on finding more awesome activities and experiences for the students to better learn the material. It will never be perfect, but I sure do feel like I have made a big step this year.

Bonus: I didn't have to hear the pleading students that want to turn in 9 week late work for .04% added to an already low grade.