This week I was given a challenge; make math fun for all 63 high schoolers. I try to do fun activities in each class at least once a week. A fun review game, solving with side walk chalk, or something like that. Spending a whole week trying to involve the entire school though wasn't as easy. I had the classes make math posters for starters. They made some funny ones I think I will take home with me at the end of the year. Some funny ones were "Mathematics is like love, simple idea but it tends to get complicated" or "Math is a stalker, it follows you everywhere". One of my favorites shows me teaching at the chalkboard and a student praying at their bed, "Dear Jesus, please help Ms. Rychelle to cancel the algebra test tomorrow", on the bottom it says "As long as algebra is taught in schools, students will pray". I also had a pi competition. I never really got into pi competitions in school. I didn't see the point of memorizing a bunch of digits. However, when I promised to make a pie for the person who could memorize the most digits, a had several students get really excited. It became a huge competition! The winning student recited 198 digits! I couldn't believe it! I also had a student recite 136 and another 100 digits. I will have to make sure I make a really good pie :). The last part of math week didn't go so well. I was supposed to do an assembly at the end of the week involving all of the high school. What do you do at a math assembly with over 60 students in 4 different math classes?! The only thing I could think to do was Math Jeopardy. I had 4 participants from each class to make two teams. The idea wasn't so bad... but it did not go well. I think those participating actually had a lot of fun, but the rest of the day was a disaster.
Sometimes I feel like I have so little control of the students. We have no hallways, so it's hard to contain them inside the school. Their are only 4 of us and 63 of them. We don't have a tardy bell so attendence is only taken at the beginning of the day. Lots of them have very little motivation to do their best, much less even try. It often seems like a battle we can't win. No matter how much we try to watch them, motivate them, and encourage them. I finally learned on Friday what the problem was. I've been too cosumed with what "I" can do to help them. I pray for God's help and then I focus on what "I" can do. I finally learned this Friday I need to stop being so selfish. It doesn't matter who changes them or helps them, nobody but God can do that. Instead of trying to be the hero I have a new prayer. I'm praying for God to help my students. Work on their hearts, because that is the only thing that will really help change them. All of this came about because of the chaos of Friday. It was a particularly hard day. It seemed like none of the students were listening to anything I was saying so I repeated everything at least 10 times. They weren't following any instructions and they just didn't care about turning in or doing anything I was assigning. I started to notice some of my students acting weird so I started keeping an eye on them. I was pretty sure a few of them were either high or drunk. Before I could do anything about it though I had to go set up for the math assembly. I tried to find the principal but he had gone into town. As I was trying to do all of this I noticed a problem. Except for Sabrina, the other teachers weren't helping. Since it was math related they just kind of stepped aside and let me handle all of the students. So there I was, in the front of the chapel, trying to run the Jeopardy game, sending one of my girls out because she was drunk, and watching students just get up and leave the chapel with no way to stop them without constantly stopping the assembly and going looking for everyone outside. It was a losing battle, when I tracked down a few students more had left, when I stopped the game to take care of a problem, more problems came up. At the end of the day I just sat in my desk, close to tears, and prayed. These students have so many problems I am clueless to help them with. I learned a good lesson though. I can really see how God is teaching me this year. From now on, I need to rely more on God. I know I will still have bad days like this, but I need to stop trying to be the miracle worker. Every day I am praying for God to help my students, open their hearts to change, and use me in any way He can. My request this week is for you to pray for my students too. My heart just hurts for them. The things they go through, family situations, and the decisions they make just hurt me to see. Though I feel powerless, I know God can help them. I'm looking forward to another fresh start on Monday :).
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