Summer School

Well, yesterday was the first day of summer school. Interesting. We have 17 kids in our class - I say we because I'm team teaching with another teacher from my school - all of them 4th graders who will be 5th graders in August. For the next 4 weeks we will be teaching decimals, fractions and some geometry.

Being the first day, yesterday was kind of all over the place. Some of the kids were not thrilled about being in summer school, others were nervous, many parents brought their kids 15-30 minutes earlier than anticipated, some missed the bus, the website we use for math practice and games wouldn't work due to the overload of so many trying to log in at once... nuts.

And then of course there are the kids who are the devils in disguise. Two such angels emerged yesterday within the first hour of class. Hours later, in the cafeteria after lunch, I pulled one aside and said that with 5 hours a day for 4 days a week for 4 weeks he could choose to do it the hard way or the easy way. I told him that I expected him to change his attitude by today.

I felt very Dirty Harry, although I didn't ask him if he felt lucky. Have to save the big guns for later on! I'm afraid we're going to need them.