I let them get to me

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 Yesterday. My 4A class. I let get to me before they even walked in the door. Yesterday was a day when I just wasn't feeling it. I was incredibly low energy. I wasn't hot on the lesson. And I just did not feel like battling them to participate. So I didn't. I gave in and showed a movie. I had a worksheet for them to fill out as we watched and offered a little bit of extra credit for the worksheet. It ended up working out well. There was one student though, who spent the entire movie on his phone and then tried to take another student's worksheet home to copy. Ummmm.....no. I told them I was only accepting the worksheets right now. After they leave the room there would be no credit for the worksheet. Ugh!!!  It actually worked out pretty okay though. It was an interesting video on bats and I even learned a few things. But for 45 minutes, I didn't have to really deal with them and that was a win. But I can't do this every class. 

Over the weekend, I need to spend a little time structuring that class so there is no downtime. I need to work them bell to bell and have it all ready to go when they walk in the door. I can't give them any free time at all. I also can't let them get to me, which I am letting happen. That is my goal over the weekend. Also, the past few weeks that's what I've been doing, getting the coming week completely ready so I really didn't have to think about it during the week and that has been working well. It is worth the time on the weekends to make my week so much smoother. 

Today will be relatively easy. The classes I have today are overall good classes and I really enjoy them. So at least today will be good. I do have lots of grading to catch up on and I need to come up with a system of remembering how I want to grade things. Some things are just participation while others get a full grade and I need to track that. I really just need to track my grading so I know what needs to be done. Maybe I'll work on that this morning during my prep. Finding/creating a tracking system for grading. Hold on, quick Google search coming. 

Okay, just found a very simple two column one. Date and assignment are the column titles. I could have one for chemistry and one of biology and highlight it when I've graded all of them. Nice. That may just work. I can make that in my journal. Which brings up another subject. I bought a new journal with the intention of recreating my bujo for school. Now I'm rethinking that and wondering if there is a better way to do this. I need to think on this for a bit. I also want to have written lesson plans. Not having them written down is really causing me a lot of mental turmoil. I need to double check everything and it gets annoying. I need a lesson plan format and I need to stick with it. I think maybe the journal would be a good option if I could come out with a layout that works for me. 

Okay, time to get my day started, off to the showers. 

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