Dodgeball and Spoons

Once a week the students have a future class taught by Mr. Boubel and since band and future were splitting a blocktoday, they accomodated P.E. by splitting P.E. with math. Kind of an interesting subjects to split time with, but whatever works. Joyce taught all three 6th grade classes today, but she is going to be gone tomorrow and Monday, so I am going to teach the baby lessons tomorrow and Monday. The rest of my day was spent observing 5th grade math learn about perimeter, playing dodgeball with 6th grade P.E., playing spoons with 8th graders, and teaching the 15 minute lesson about perimeter. I really enjoyed playing dodgeball and I think I gained a little respect from some the boys, who were surprised that I could throw and catch the ball. It must noted that I got out the P.E. instructor and we were both kind of shocked. The only bad thing about P.E. is that some of the girls get sick of playing dodgeball and then they have bad attitudes. They sit out and then give attitude when Travis is giving directions. I swear, Joyce is the only person who can handle these kids. Other people just lose leverage fast. The students could care less if you mark their card, especially when they are with their friends. I am so curious as to what the answer is. Is it soley relationships that keep these kids behaving? And is making a relationship with these students more important behaviorally then making a relationship with middle class kids. I was talking to Ms. Starr about it when I came in, commenting that they weren't even responding to Travis after P.E. and she thinks that men may have more control over their behavior just because they may be used to ignoring their mothers, but may have few male figures around and not ones they mouth off to or ignore, but this still doesn't explain their disrespect to Travis. While I was observing 6th grade math for the second time, a very interesting event occured. Let me set it up a little. Yesterday during the 5th grade meeting with Joyce, Mrs. Mallory brought up the issue of students remaining on bench for a couple of weeks or constantly getting placed on bench. Mrs. Mallory wondered about getting them out of the school because they obviously aren't focused enough to be at KIPP. Joyce explained to her that some kids who lived on bench in 5th grade have turned into amazing students in 6th grade. She said that is what KIPP is about, giving students a lot of chances. So today Jordan, a 5th grader who lives on bench and gives ridiculous attitude was put inJoyce's room for isolation, which means they go to a different grade level to sit facing the corner and do their work. So today Joyce had Jordan stand up and talk to Jose, one of the students who did a complete turn around from 5th grade to 6th grade. Joyce told Jordan that he needed to ask Jose how he did, because Jordan needs to make some big changes if he wants to stay at this school. I just thought it was so interesting that she stopped class the make this connection. I think it made Jose feel good to be a model to other students. So it gave Jose a boost and Jordan some hope. At 3:00, I went to the 8th grade game hour to play spoons with a small group of students. There is this girl named Sabrina that I have a special bond with. We played spoons together last time and then she explained all there is to know about the KIPP karate program last week. Today she was telling me about her birthday and birthday party coming up this weekend. She is a very pleasant, sweet girl and she gave me a hug today before I left to go teach 5th grade. After the 5th graders had taken and graded their quiz, I taught them a short 12 minute lesson on perimeter. It's a pretty easy concept that picked up rather quickly. I was to the point and tried to get it in their head that the definition of perimeter is the distance around the outside of a shape. It will be interesting to see how teaching all three classes of 6th will go. Good thing it is only for half the block! Have a great Friday!