Break from working

So I have so much to do right now (plan all next week, grade 3 weeks of work, fulfill Earthwatch requirements, etc.), but I decided to take a break to blog about today. A couple interesting things happened:

- A high. Today, I got one of the most troubled students of all 8th grade to do work in my class. All the teachers know this student. "He doesn't do work, he goofs off, he uses very derogatory language, he's a huge distraction, he smokes weed, etc., etc." Yesterday, I simply told him when he is ready to learn, I will start treating him like a student and not a dog. Today, he came in quietly and actually started to write down the warm up and do work. I taught about velocity today and he paid attention the entire time. Often, I would walk up to him and praise him for his positive attitude to reinforce his good work. The best thing has yet to come...during the class activity, I overheard him debating with one of my top students in the class about the the reason behind changes in velocity. As it turned out, he was right about his reasoning. That made my day. Hopefully this will continue...

- Girls in middle school ONLY talk about boys. My students from last year often come to hang out in my class during lunch and all they talk about is boys. I'm starting to get sick of it...but I guess it's interesting...

- My classes keep changing...and it's pissing me off! My best class went from 12 to 26...now it simply sucks...

UniCamp in 2 days...

I'm out of shape and I have to hike 26 miles...Game over...