Science is not important?!?

Thoughts after Day 1 of inservice...

The school went to a sort-of block schedule this year. Basically, the kids have 90 minutes every single day of math and language arts, but only 90 minutes every other day of science and social studies. Instructional time doubled this year for math and LA- those teachers are teaching the same amount of material, in double the amount of time.

We are teaching the same amount of material, but actually have about 25 minutes less class a week, which works out to 18 class periods over the course of a year.... we'll have to efficient!

So it is what it is, but I'm feeling pretty uneasy about the message that sends our students about how important science and social studies are. Try getting into college these days without passing 2 and more likely 3 science courses in high school.

Anyway, on another surprising note, after preparing my brain all summer to teach all boys, it turns out that we'll actually have three classes of boys and three classes of girls. So that should be interesting.

My school surely has to be one of the most diverse in the district... as of now, our homeroom roster consists of 14 African American students, 11 Hispanic students, 9 white students, and 1 Asian student. This doesn't include any African or Middle Eastern students who were labeled as one of the above races. I'm pretty excited to get the opportunity to work with such a diversity of students.

You'll notice that the numbers above add up to 35 kids-- and registration hasn't even happened yet. There is a possibility that we'll end up wit 100 total students over the school capacity... which is actually already 100 students higher than it was built for. So it'll be very interesting to see what happens at registration. Right now, my mentor and I have 32 desks in our classroom and it is cram-jam-packed. I have no idea where we would even put more desks, but apparently last year she has 40 kids in some of her classes at the beginning of the year.

So now, time to brag for my school-- we are ranked 7th out of roughly 35 middle schools in the district, including 2 optional schools that we outranked. We were also named an EPIC Silver school last year, meaning that there were academic gains in every single academic category with no regression (and that at least 50% of our student body is on free or reduced lunch... we are more like 90%). Go Falcons!