School has gotten off to a decent start, and I think I'm doing a decent job teaching. I'm starting to really realize my own shortcomings, however, now that I'm teaching a lot of the same material again for the first time in my career. I also can't figure out how to crack the total indifference of my students. I'm not talking about the general lack of interest of most students, although I have to fight that, too. I'm talking about my Algebra II students. I had most of them last year in Geometry, and most of them last year were bright and put in the effort, and they are all quite capable. But this year there just seems to be a general malaise that I find really frustrating. There is very little effort at all. It's like they're going backwards. Oh, well, maybe the first test will snap at least some of them out of it.
The next two weeks are going to be extremely busy for me, so I will very likely be even less communicative here than usual. I'm one of the senior class advisers, and homecoming is coming up soon. This coming week is hall decorating, and the week after that I have to help make sure that the skit and float are on track. The senior class also is selling water at every home sporting event, too, and the fall sports season is now well underway, which means we have to be there at every home football, volleyball, and soccer match. Fortunately I recruited our new math teacher to be the other adviser. He's had a lot of experience with this thing before, and he's been on top of a lot of this stuff already, particularly when I was out two days with a nasty cold last week. Between the two of us, we should be able to handle it all, but it will also make for some very long days. To throw one more monkey wrench into the works, we have to give up one planning period a month to observe our fellow teachers, and my first one is Tuesday.
To make things even more interesting, once Homecoming is done, I want to start up a drama club. I've always enjoyed being in shows, and almost minored in theater in college. So when the opportunity came up to be drama club adviser, I signed up. There are a few students here who could benefit from this sort of outlet, and it will be interesting to start up an extracurricular drama program from scratch. The high school doesn't have a stage, but if we get to that point this year, we may see about staging a show at the elementary school.
And finally, that picture I promised:
I'm just really, really happy that it turned out so nice this year. And if I do say so myself, I look pretty good in it.
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