The Meet & Greet

So from the training the other night I decided I was going to try to greet more students at the door. This was not an altogether new strategy for me, but after the first couple weeks of school it sort of fell by the wayside. I was trying to get the boards erased, the warm up (which is on the TV screen) reset and the classroom back together before my next class came in. On Thursday and Friday I decided not to worry as much about that or to use the first 1-2 minutes of the passing period for that, then moved towards the door and greeted each student.

With finals looming and the end of the tri near, most of my students have tried to refocus their efforts and have actually behaved pretty well. However, I'd like to see this continue through next week, and through the first week of the second trimester. I would say that greeting most of the students at the door definitely helped. The one or two students who came in in those first two minutes of the passing period I'd casually go over to their area of the room and say hello. I'm gonna try and keep up with this and see how it goes.

The end of the period has been a bit more difficult for me but I've actually had some success in that I've been able to physically be near the door as they all leave, so even if I don't say bye to each I'm in the area and can make eye contact.

I will say that no matter how in the way I am they all seem to push through the door with no more than about an inch between them and so it's hard and sounds very fake when I try to speak to too many in a row.

Last Meeting & a little update

So I thought last meetings incorporation of technology was pretty cool. Personally, I would have used the Rocky vs. Drago training montage as opposed to the Matrix one, but maybe that's too old. The one the I've found, in your trainings, our weekly professional development, and every other event I've been to is that the people always run out of time for the 'cool stuff'. Typically, it goes like this:

"So today these are our goals and how we will accomplish them..."
25 min later...
"So we're running short on time so we're going to skip the cool stuff and just give you the info as fact as we can to get it in"

I don't mind this, and happen to learn well whichever method but I know a lot (maybe most) don't learn as well when the "cool stuff" is skipped. I run into the same problem in my class often when I plan something. I think some of it will be solved with experience, but given the fact that I see it across the board at all events it's apparent that it's a struggle for everyone. Anyways, those are my two cents for the day.