Some days...

...you just feel a bit hopeless.

It's like, if I can't even teach them this, what the heck am I even doing here?

My 6th period averaged a 25% on an area question. Here were the questions:

a) Find the area of a parallelogram with a base of 8 in. and a height of 9 in.

b) Find the area of a kite with diagonals 12 ft and 15 ft long.

c) Find the area of this triangle (they are given a picture of a triangle with a base of 16 m and a height of 7 m).

They have a formula list given to them, but they aren't told which formulas are which. But as long as they choose the correct formula, these are plug and chug problems. There are only 5 area formulas to choose from in the formula list. Only one of them has "d" for diagonals.

The formulas are:

A = bh

A = (1/2)bh

A = d1d2

A = (1/2)h(b1+b2)

A = (1/2) ap

They're all right there.

I don't know how I could possible make this problem any easier unless I told them exactly which formula to use and showed them how to plug it in.

The Gaping Holes...

Progress report time always makes me stand back and evaluate myself as a teacher. Usually, the result is depressing.

This time is no different. 60% of my students in Algebra 1 and Geometry (4 classes) are getting D's and F's. I didn't include Geometry 9 because that's one of those classes where you could put the kids with a book and then test them and they'd pass. Even if you throw in my Geometry 9 class, which only has one student below a C, about 40% of my kids have D's or F's.

Forget about falling through the cracks. It's more like there's a giant black hole in my classroom sucking kids in.

It sometimes makes me wonder, am I good enough to teach the population of students I'm teaching?

I believe that we should place our very best teachers in the schools that need them the most. After two years, I'm not really sure I'm all that great. I know I can't expect to be the teacher from Stand and Deliver, Dangerous Minds, or Freedom Writers, but good teachers who know how to motivate students do exist outside of movies. I've seen videos of them in practice, heard stories about them, and I've known some of them.

I believe part of becoming a good teacher is learned, but I wonder how much of it is innate? Certain parts of teaching just come so much more naturally to some people than others. Especially when it comes to motivating students and classroom management (in many ways those two things go hand in hand). Part of me longs to learn the secret to motivating students, and part of me wonders if I ever will.

How is it possible that 60% of my kids are not getting passing grades (not counting D's as passing)? Quite a few of these could be passing if they just did more homework. What do I do to make that happen?

I don't even work in the hardest of areas. My kids are overall decent kids, who just don't really care about math. I want to be the kind of teacher that can get kids to care, but I'm not sure what the missing factor is.

It feels so good when you have that one kid who turns things around. The frustrating thing is there are about 54 other kids who you know could do the same thing if they just tried.