Just a few stats…

So our district has just gone nutty this year playing the numbers game, so I decided to do some number crunching on my own with my first nine weeks grades. This will bore most of you but I find it interesting.

 

College Prep Math:

- in 41 days I graded 82 assignments for each student

- out of 26 kiddo’s I had 1 failure for a 96.2 % pass rate!

- last year at this time I had a 83.3% pass rate!

This increase means a lot to me. This class is my baby, no one else teaches it and I can do just about what ever I want. Last year was my first year teaching the class and I struggled a lot in my first semester, I was trying to follow the previous year’s lessons from another teacher. I guess what I am saying is that I feel more confidant teaching this class this year and by the numbers I think what I am doing is working. BTW, this is not an easy class and I expect a huge amount from these kids (if 82 grades didn’t tell you that). I am so glad to see that they are rising to meet my expectations. Having said that these are also the kids that are taking a math class because their parents are making them or because they chose to take a math class, these aren’t calc students but they are a bit above average for our school!

 

Geometry:

 - this one is a little harder to swallow.

- in 41 days I graded 67 assignments for each student

- out of 60 kids I had 16 failures for a pass rate of 73%

- last year at this time I had a 66.1% pass rate.

This failure rate is a bit hard for me to take but almost 75% of the kids passing is pretty good, really good if you consider that we have changed so much this year. I also think this is great considering that due to circumstances outside of my control I am 2 weeks ahead in the material to be covered than I was at this time last year. This time line I think is really hurting our kids and I wish that I could have seen pass rates with out moving through the material so quickly but I don’t think that will ever see the light of day.

 

Are you bored yet? Why is this important to me? With so much going on in my personal life, staying on top with my teaching has been a real struggle. Also due to all of the personal crud, I promised myself that I was going to work harder this year as a teacher, that just because my personal life was falling apart I wouldn’t let it effect my students in a negative manner. These few numbers tell me that I have succeeded, at least a little bit, an they encourage me to keep moving!