Mr. Hilkey’s Blog

This has been an exciting year. I have made lots of new friends, and I feel blessed to have found a job at South Albany High School. I love teaching and I am pleased that I made the decision to take this direction with my career. Now, as we graduate and move into the new year, I have great concerns for my friends in the cohort and myself. The economy is terrible right now, and new jobs are unlikely to be created for the next year or two. New teachers may be the first to go if cuts are necessary. The Oregon Department of Education has put a freeze on the new math testing requirements until at least 2014, which will halt the need for many schools to add math positions. I can only hope that my cards continue to fall correctly and that I will be retained in Albany during these troubling times. I love the school and the kids…I would love to stay there for a while.

I pray that all of my new friends will find the positions that they are looking for in 2009. Good luck to all of you.

Happy Holidays! Congratulations on your achievement my friends!

For the final time…….out!

This week will be the second of my two available skipped reflections.

This week will be the first of my two available skipped reflections.

Okay, we wrapped up finals in all of my first trimester classes this week. After I graded the finals and started working on grades,  I had a real struggle with trying to assign a grade to several of my students. Most of them were pretty self-evident. What about the kid who comes to class everyday, turns in all of their homework, comes in for extra help a couple of times per week, but can’t “perform” on the tests. So, they end up with a 59% in the class. Do those students really deserve to fail…..this has made for some hard decisions for me this week.

I am going to plan some changes for the second trimester over the coming weekend. I am unsure of what those changes will be, but I need to find a better note taking strategy in my classes. The note taking skills of my students were abysmal. I will post my planned changes in the next blog.

That’s right., the end is so close, I can smell it….. What a relief to be done with Wednesday Night Classes…YEAH!! No offense Lockhart….. Also, my football team played it’s last game on Sunday morning and we finished a near perfect 10-0-1 for the season. Thanks go to my defensive coordinater, Mr. Eric Orlinski. At school, we started reviewing on Thursday and Friday and we will be taking finals on Tuesday and Wednesday…followed by some TurDucKen on Thanksgiving. The end of football, the end of Master’s classes, and the end of my first trimester as a teacher….my oh my time flies when you are….busy as hell !!

Okay, so on Friday several of my kids stayed after school, we all brought our guitars and played in my classroom for about an hour and a half…what fun! Building relationships is so key in teaching these kids. I did wonder if I would be able to connect at my young age of 37, and the answer is yes! Be real, be genuinely interested in their lives, and you can build relationships. Build relationships, and you can teach them. That is the best advice that I could give to a new teacher…..

Short week coming up, my final two papers are sitting in the lockhartpaperinbox, so I am really feeling good!!

Have a happy Thanksgiving everyone….go Beavs!!

OUT

Well, this was a short week. We had Monday and Tuesday off for Veteran’s Day. I went up to school on Monday and four of my students met me there and helped me paint my classroom. The dull gray wasn’t doing it for me. We added some red and black, so now we have the school colors well represented. I received plenty of complements from students and faculty alike. The kids had mentioned to me that they wanted to see more school spirit in my room.

I am gearing up for finals…which are in 7 more school days. I will be writing 3 finals and 2 chapter tests this weekend. My final observation from Pacific was on Wednesday, and I turned in the work sample.

One of my students attempted to commit suicide earlier in the week and another one got the crap beat out of him right before my class today……………

Just cruising along. We have 11 days left in the trimester, so I need to start getting some finals ready. My first period class went pretty well at the end of the week. I have a few students who are beginning to realize that their choices are going to result in failing my class…so they are starting to engage. A little too little a little too late for most of them. Fighting the apathy is something that I truly do not believe I was prepared for. I think that Pacific U would be well advised to spend some time dealing with the issue of student apathy. I don’t understand it very well, because I was not an apathetic student. I truly don’t understand how a student can come to class every day, yet never turn in work.

I will be going up on our day off (Monday) in order to paint some walls in my classroom. Several students have volunteered  to help. This will add some school spirit to my room, which has been requested by the kids….a little red and black to help offset the dull grey walls.

Anyway, the work sample is done, I am exhausted and looking forward to completing my football coaching obligations and my Master’s program……..

Okay, so this was Oaks testing week….(exactly what we get paid to do, right?)….teach the standards to the kids so the kids can pass a test to a certain level and satisfy the State government’s requirements….and confirm whether or not teachers are effective. I believe that I ran a total of 57 freshmen and sophomores through the tests this week….about 20 of them met the State requirement. Anyway, I don’t mind having standards….they provide a reasonable guideline in which to tailor the curriculum. What I do mind is that some idiots(Bill SIzemore) think that I should get paid based on the achievement of my students. Not a horrible idea in general…but what are you going to tie it to …the Oaks scores of my students (luck of the draw?) Dude needs to stick to racketeering….

Yes, I have two classes each day which are designed to help sophomores pass the state test. I actually really enjoy the classes, they are small and I can pretty much teach it however I see fit. The perception around campus is that Benchmark is “retard math.” Not true. We discuss and dig into a large volume of material from Algebra to Geometry to Probability. Unfortunately, we are covering material…I am definitely teaching to the test…it should not have to be that way…but it is in Oregon…so I try to make the absolute best of it.

On another note, my character was called into question this week (in a joking yet serious manner) by my administrator because my tiny mite football team won a game 70-7 a couple of weeks ago. Well, for the record, I would have scored more if possible. I believe in playing from start to finish and playing hard. If you can’t stop us…work harder…if we get our ass kicked …we will work harder. I don’t buy trophies for all of my kids and I don’t like losing….so I play to win. I will never let up, and I will never tell a kid to run out of bounds to keep the score down. I played my fifth and sixth team kids in the second half, and we still scored….that is as sympathetic as I will get. This is a competitive world and winning matters. If that is a character flaw…then so be it…..out.

Okay, this was a short week…parent teacher conferences on Wednesday night and Thursday, followed by a day off on Friday. I had 30 of my 89 students represented by a family member at conferences, which were a drop in style. I really enjoyed being able to communicate and give feedback to the families. I shared grades, missing assignment lists, behavioral issues(tardies/referrals), and student work. I also brought copies of some of my extra credit problems for parents to try. As expected, most of the parents that showed up were conected to students who were doing very well in school. They dropped by for their pat on the back. I had about 6 parents of kids who are close to failing my classes due to a lack of effort or responsibility. Those parents promised that things will change for the last 4 weeks of the trimester…we’ll see. I also had the opportunity to cry with a parent…her son received a brutal concussion two weeks ago and no longer remembers anybody, except for mom and dad and two friends. He doesn’t remember me or my class either. Very tough not to get emotional….

I have almost finished teaching the work sample, I would like to have that finished by the end of next weekend. It isabsolutely amazing how quickly time is passing….see you all in a couple of weeks. Out.

Well, this was a fascinating week. When I was at the Math Conference last week I spent some good money on a set of puzzles called the Ultimate Puzzle. The kids love them…apparently a little too much. On Wednesday, the sophomores were all excused for three periods in order to take the PSAT. Well, that left me with half of a first period class, so we had a catch up/puzzle/game day. The Ultimate Puzzles are made up of 16 pieces that must form a square. They have 48 solutions and 250,000 incorrect solutions. After the class ended, I was organizing, and I discovered that one of the puzzles was missing three pieces. I spent a while looking for the pieces, but to no avail. One of my students had apparently removed them from the room. I had a pretty good idea who it was, so I went and asked the young man in his second period class, he said he had no idea. I could tell he was lying. I asked the administrators what they thought I should do, and settled on a lecture and offer to return the pieces anonymously during class the next day. Interestingly, taht would be the period I was being observed by my supervisor from Pacific. Well, I let them have it….told them I was dissapointed that trust was broken and baffled by the lack of integrity. I told the students that if I did not receive the pieces by noon, they would lose their puzzle privileges for the rest of the trimester. A student in the back of the room replied with “that’s fuc**d up”, and I promptly ejected him to the office for a chat with the vp. Fifteen minutes later I had a confession and the pieces were returnedthe next morning. The kid said that he accidentally put them in his pocket during class and didn’t realize it until after I had pulled him out of second period. Sure dude. Crazy kids……