Classroom Update and H.S.

This past week in class, I spent the majority of my time trying to teach the metric system to my students. Now, while I consider myself to be pretty proficient in teaching math to 7th and 8th graders, I've got to say that I really struggled this past week in finding a way to help my students understand metric system conversions. I even gave a test this past week, and I had my lowest test scores of the year on this; I'm talking like 35-40% correct answers. I did a crash course teaching session covering the test they just took from top to bottom as well as a couple of other worksheets that I made in hopes that they would understand it a little bit better for the retake. I even called as many parents as I could asking them to make sure to go over the review sheets with their child in preparation for the test retake. Well, we had the retake today and I just got finished grading. This time there was probably a 60% average for my classes. While this is a slight improvement this is still not passing!! I hate getting frustrated, but it almost seems like for this particular objective I need to be able to call each one of my students out of other teachers' classes during my planning period and go over material with them either individually or in pairs. The only problem is that this would take forever.....or as Squints from The Sandlot would say, "FOR....E...VER.....FOR....E....VER....FOR....E....VER."
The other problem that comes up is that I am already behind now for teaching the remaining objectives for this nine weeks, and we already had a meeting over how badly our school did on this past nine weeks test. This job is hard....haha.
One cool thing that has kind of rejuvenated my spirits a little bit was this past week I was hired by one of the local high schools to serve as an assistant baseball coach. Now, I was originally just supposed to step in and either coach track or tennis on the middle school level, but once the head coach talked to me about possibly doing it I was hooked. I have always loved baseball; in fact, next to basketball it is my favorite sport.
Plus, one thing that has really got me excited is the chance to work on the high school varsity level. The maturity difference between a high school junior or senior and a 7th or 8th grader is ridiculous. The kids I am working with right now are like sponges; they are constantly asking for more advice or tips to help them be better ball players. Now don't get me wrong, I love working with middle school kids. It is just a really nice break to be able to coach and teach someone who is extremely self-motivated and self-disciplined.
The only concern is that I wonder how much of a time investment this is going to be. Middle school was always so nice in that you were always going home no later than 6:30 pm, and you never had games or tournaments on the weekends. This is a whole different ballgame. Ah, Doyle, Gallagher, and Conley do it....how hard can it be?

First loss of the year!!

About a week ago the middle school basketball team that I coach played its final game of the season. I'm pretty sure that I've talked before about how talented these kids are. I coached them in football, and they beat everyone handily. I coached them in basketball and up until this game we beat everyone handily. But there is always something different about playing in front of a big crowd for a championship game. Then all of a sudden there is a new aspect brought to the equation.....PRESSURE.
Throughout the year we often times played like we had an on-off switch that we could turn on and off whenever we felt like it. We'd cruise for 3 or 4 minutes then blow a team out. We'd coast and not play our hardest, and then all of sudden put on a show that made us look like a good high school team. Plain and simple...we were cocky, talented, and unbeatable....until the last game. The first half I thought it looked like we were still on coast mode. We'd play well for a few possessions, and then the other team would have a scoring run. The lead constantly changed and it still kind of felt like we were in control of the game.
There was one aspect that hindered our confidence a little bit going in to halftime though; we had 4 players that had 3 fouls. For those of you not understanding why this is a big deal, that means that the players each had only 2 more individual fouls to give before they would be forced out of the game. Our players still seemed too comfortable as if not to take their opponent seriously. This proved to be costly in the end. With the majority of our team in foul trouble, we got destroyed on the glass. Plus, they controlled the tempo of the entire game. We did have some late minute heroics by our top scorer to send the game in to two overtimes, but in the end we ran out of steam. We would end up fouling out 6 players, including four of our starters.
It was disappointing needless to say. We would have been the first school to win titles in both football and basketball since the early 90's. On the flip side, it's been quite a while since I have been in a game as exciting as the one we played in. The basketball court was packed with fans, and the game lived up to the hype of being for the city championship. Now while there is always going to be some complaining when a loss occurs, for the most part I was extremely proud of the way our guys handled themselves. They shook the other team's hands and even the head coach and myself went in to the other team's locker room to personally congratulate the guys on a job well done. The next day at school everyone at school was talking about how great the game was. Oh well...I guess it's on to the next sport.