67-61

Happy end of 2nd quarter day! That probably only really means something to me, as today marks the half-way point through the year. I'm amazed.

Today being the last day of the quarter, I had the kids go through their in-class folders to see if they had forgotten to turn anything in. I probably should have done that earlier this week to give them a chance to finish anything if needed, but that I'll do next time around. I helped a few go through their folders, picking out papers that I knew they needed a grade for. I had many students, especially the ones of F's and D's, ask me (today), " Mrs. Hubert, what can I do to raise my grade?" My reply was, "Today? Nothing. Maybe a week ago if you would have asked you would have had enough time to make up some work." Then I had the other geniuses ask, "Can I write a biography report this weekend and turn it in on Monday for extra credit." Please. I post grades tomorrow for final quarter report card and you want to bring extra credit in on Monday? Ha.

Each Thursday on MTV (Mustang Television), the gym teacher gets up and does a "community of caring" piece where he tries to motivate the kids to be more respectful, responsible citizins. He talks about anything from showing respect to teachers to opening the door for other people. After he does his little motivational speech, he plays a song (usually one released before these students' time) and lets the kids get up and dance to it. Usually it drives me crazy because the kids don't listen anyway and the songs always seem to last forever. I have a group of 4 boys in my class that call themselves the "Beardalogists," (the teacher's name is Coach Beardal) and they love to dance to the songs. It's quite amusing. Today Coach talked about grades and effort, using the example of his classes grades: 67 F's and 61 A's. As I looked at my grades today, I found that mine weren't much worse! I told each class today that on Monday they'd all start out with an A, but it was up to them to decide if they wanted to keep that A. We'll see how that goes.

I received the yearbook group photo cd from the photographer yesterday. The journalism students and I had a great time looking at all the pictures. We have our first yearbook deadline on February 5th, which only gives us a few more weeks to get the first few signatures (groups of 16 pages) done and submitted. I'm working with the Jostens rep to get the kids going, but they are a bit lazy and would rather talk about their significant other problems than work on yearbook pages. Bleh.

Tomorrow we have some teacher meetings in the morning and then are to work in our rooms for 1/2 day. The principal is providing a continental breakfast, catered by Cracker Barrel, in the morning and lunch, catered by Costa Vida, in the afternoon. The whole food thing makes it so worth it to be there. I'll just be happy to have a tiny break from my little dears.