Week 2: Oh, to be a student again.......

I often wonder why my seventh graders freak out as much as they do when they fail to complete an assignment on time. I like to think that I am an empathetic teacher, who understands where these kids are coming from. If they are normally responsible, I cut them slack. (If they come to me with a sob story every single time an assignment is due, I have less empathy.) But, there is definately a fine line. A huge part of teaching middle school is teaching responsibility........

I have felt overwhelmed this week due to issues that were beyond my control. I stayed home sick on Wednesday, and I thought I would get so much work done. Instead, I laid around all day, and accomplished absolutely nothing! Then, my laptop finally appeared on Wednesday, and I was so excited to have a working webcam. Well, except for the fact that it did not work. Well, I did not think it worked, because I could not connect to the internet from home.

So, I met a friend at a coffee shop on State Street this morning to work on the assignments for class this week. I figured that my laptop would work at Micheangelo's, even though it did not work at home. It did work, but skype was having its own issues. I could download it, and create an account, but I could not actually connect. So, it recognized that I had an account, but I could not talk to anyone!

I started to get stressed out. This is a new class, and the instructor doesn't know that I am not a slacker. And, he doesn't know that I am tech saavy enough to download skype. The only thing that he can see is that I have yet to skype with him. (Well, if he read my blog last week, he does know that I cannot connect my VCR......So, maybe he does think that I lack tech skills. I think my mother might even know how to set up a VCR!)

And, then I began to realize how my students can get so stressed out when something doesn't work out as they had planned. I understand why they visit my room before school nearly in tears because their computer did not work last night. And, I understand the fear in their faces when they forget their flashdrives at home. And, I understand the panic, when they forget the login and password for their wikispaces account. I have so many logins and passwords right now that my head is spinning.......

And, then I started to think about how much they could benefit from online storage. They could save all of their documents online, and never have to worry about having a flashdrive again. And, if they save their important bookmarks at a social networking site, like delicious, they will also always remember where they found their information.

After spending two hours on the phone with the people at Charter, I am finally connected from home. Which means that I have a lot of work to do........So, I better get started on that........... Thanks for reading..............