My Kids - H

Gosh, I'm really tired. Two full weeks have passed...and I'm really enjoying myself. The ecology unit is better this year than in the previous two years, and I'm really happy about that. I love seeing progress and improvement! I realized this year that ninth graders are not as far along in their intellectual and social development as I assumed, and that I've probably been expecting more from them than I should. They just need a little more nurturing and a lot more direction than I expected. They often have a hard time grasping abstract ideas and making connections. For example, I was giving notes with the help of a few Power Point slides. I'd listed some of the major points and used it as an outline. The important information was in my lecture. I know that they need cues to know what information to take notes on, so I was constantly telling them, "...and that's a really important bit of information. Make sure you know that." "I also want to highlight and emphasize the idea that..." ...and I'm looking around, and not a single person has picked up their pencil to write a single thing in their notes. So, then I say, "You should be writing this in your notes." ...and the whole class scrambles to pick up their pencils. They don't make the connection that what I say is as important and perhaps more important than what's on the screen. It's so simple for the teachers/adults to understand, but it's so easy for me to forget that they have yet to learn what seems to me to be such a simple task.