I’ve gone through three weeks of teaching 7th grade science at Jose De Diego (JDD) Middle School in Miami, FL. I teach 5 7th grade science classes and 1 homeroom class that is designed to help 7thgraders prep for the Reading FCAT (state standardized test). I have a total of 126 students in these 6 classes… it’s a lot of names and personalities to remember but I got most of them down by the middle of week 2. I teach at a school that was a “F” school for three years straight but then became a “C” school last year which means the pressure is on to go from a “C” to a “B” or “A” – these grades are based on what students get on the FCAT test.
JDD is a rough school… the students come from rough families and many don’t know what it means to respect, behave and act relatively normal. Apparently last year, a student cut school, went to a nearby Target, stole the fire extinguisher and starting spraying people from the roof of the building!! Another student (who is in my class) is diabetic and intentionally ate 5 snickers candy bars before the FCAT last year so that he would be physically unable to take the test!
I have one student who always tells me that I'm pretty and that he wants to bring me an apple like "in the movies." I've had to call his mom to stop the weird comments. In general, middle schoolers are so strange; they have weird ideas, thoughts and outbursts. I have a lot of students who have failed the 7th grade :( . I have students who immigrated recently and don’t know much English. The school is 60% Latino and 40% black. In one class I have 5 English Language Learners and I have to translate parts of the lecture… teaching Science in Spanish is not easy, but its great being able to connect to my students through the Spanish language. Many students calm down and stop talking when I start talking in Spanish. I sometimes reprimand students in Spanish, which can have a stronger effect.
Unfortunately, a lot of my day goes to behavior management. I do have some really great kids who I try to recognize through raffle tickets, but it’s hard when the troublemakers take ALL the attention. There was a fight on Friday in front of my classroom where two girls were pulling out each other’s weave… my students ran out of the classroom just to watch and two security guards had to break up the fight. There was another fight that same day in the stairwell where two boys were punching/kicking a girl who they had a crush on! It was ridiculous. Apparently, boys show their affection by fighting the girls… it’s sad.
The highlights of my day are with my advanced science class… they are amazing! I feel like a real teacher in that class because I spend my time asking questions and listening to students’ thoughts. Similar to the Socratic method because I probe their thinking and direct them to understanding the concept (I’ve only taught heat, thermal energy, states of matter and other physical science stuff that’s not too complicated). They are a smart bunch… we’ve done labs and online interactive lessons and most scored As and Bs on my first quiz. A few students in that class even asked me if I can teach them Spanish after school!
My roughest class is 6th period where I have 32 students and only 26 desks and 3 stools. In that class I have the WORST combination of students… a lot of them have repeated 7th grade, have a history of behavior problems and don’t get along. I had to rearrange the room 3 times already but it doesn’t seem to work… they don’t stop talking and throwing things. They get the lowest scores on small quizzes and they never turn in HW… I have had to call parents but that doesn’t always work b/c parents are busy with work. But even in this rough class I had two girls tell me that it’s their favorite class bc they like science and they like my style of teaching. I’ve had a lot of sentimental moments… I had a student one the second day say “Ms. Hidalgo, you understand me… you don’t treat me like a bad kid” and I wanted to cry!! It was so sweet!! To this day he hasn’t caused major problems… except for the fact that he hates Duke because he’s a UM fan… that’s another thing, a lot of my students LOVE basketball so we get to talk about that a lot (and I always try to relate it to science somehow haha).
