Another exciting day in the world of teaching!!

Today was a good and interesting day. The day started off on the right foot with my Algebra II class understanding their material for the day and even got the "Oooohhh" factor as well. That's always a good feeling to have and experience. Next came Math Modeling where we did a scavenger hunt for a review of their upcoming test. What is an unfortunate thing about this class is that majority of the students it seems like that their math background is very, very poor and just about every day it seems like I'm pulling teeth when teaching the class. For example, the day before last we had to spend around 45 minutes of the class on how to read a ruler in inches. Keep in mind that these students are all Juniors in high school. I would have thought that if they weren't quite able to work some of the problems in class, at least I would have thought that they would be able to read a ruler in inches. The ruler was divided into eighths, and so when they understood on how to read 7/8 inches they then told me that the value was 0.7 inches. For those that don't see the problem at first is that 7/8 is actually 0.875. Their minds were thinking in tenths of an inch instead of 8ths and it took a while for them to finally understand it. So my hope is that these students would actually do their homework and study for their test.

Now comes the most exciting part of the day. As my mentor teacher and myself were heading towards our post for lunch duty (second floor where students tend to hang out between lunches) we were encouraging students head off to class so that they won't be tardy. After I dispersed a small group hanging out around some lockers, I looked to my left down the hall towards the bathroom I saw a good size group hanging around. Then what really caught my eye was that two female students break out into a fight by pulling their hair and throwing each other around. So my first reaction was run towards the area where the students were and yelling at them to break up the fight. Eventually I was able to seperate the female students with the aid of a couple other students on pulling them apart. As I was standing infront of one of the two girls to stop her advancing towards the other student, another teacher came running down the hall to stop the other student. My mentor teacher was also able to get the campus police officer's attention to escort the students towards their offices. I then had to fill out a report on what I witnessed as well.

With all that excitement of breaking up a fight, the rest of the day was a breeze and went by in a blur. However, one thing that did brightent the day after the fight was seeing one of my students working at the local Taco Bell. Kind of a surprise but pretty cool feeling as well. I'm not quite sure how to further explain of than pride to see a student that is in one of my classes working a part-time job. Turned out I surpised him just about as much as he surprised me.

With all that has happened to me within the now almost 4 weeks of student teaching, I don't want to ask what else will I or might experience while I complete my student teaching.