Semester at "C" Part 1:

Having had the past couple of days away from the classroom, I have finally started to catch my breath and reflect upon the whirlwind that has been the first semester of this school year.  Granted there are a myriad of issues going on in the district that I teach coupled with the issues that educators that across the country face, so I won't really delve into that.  Rather focusing on what I can control has been main area that I have a waded into.  Changing the mindset of our students to understand that meeting the expectation that has been set in my class doesn't equal an "A" is challenging.  Rather pushing students to strive for more beyond what is expected has been the push.  Though the final grades may not reflect it the title of this post, it felt like many students spent the "Semester at "C""!

Negatives:

1. In changing the way that we teach in our class, @schneidermf (aka The Grateful Educator...coming soon to a blog near you...I hope) and I have been frustrated at times by the general lack of motivation or willingness to work beyond what would be considered grade level expectation.  In forming the various sections of each unit that we have taught with an end date for students to complete the outlined activities and assignments, there continues to be too much wasted time and last minute "slapping together" of work.  As we have worked to in the words of @elcoopacabra "embrace the ambiguity" and relent the chalk dust covered, iron fisted control that teachers demand, a portion of students continue to do nothing.  That being said, we have been forced to remind ourselves that there is a certain percent of the population in a class that would do nothing regardless.  
2. Formative assessment of skills and knowledge has been part of this reformation of curriculum in the past eight months.  Prior to starting school this year, I read this post from Andrew Miller that discussed the challenge of providing formative feedback.  After a full semester of this, I can relate, the challenge of being able to provide timely and constructive feedback for all my classes has been a tough mountain to climb.  Hopefully some of the ideas that @schneidermf and I are floating to implement will help to alleviate this ongoing battle.
3. Teaching an overload of classes, with an increased enrollment our school needed to offer an additional class of government which I was asked to cover.  Teaching four out of a possible four class periods a day was taxing and something that I do not recommend or would do again.  The amount of time it takes to plan, prep, implement, and assess for an extra class of 35 students was a challenge.  Part of the problem might have been that many of students were only in that class since it is needed to graduate.  Again many students simply went through the motions and didn't really care about the course material with the exception of getting the credit needed for graduation.