Day 36- "Define irony: Bunch of idiots dancing on a plane to a song made famous by a band that died in a plane crash." Con Air

Today was a quick day. White days always seem to move quickly because I go non-stop, but today seemed quicker than usual. Block 1 was a listing and discussion of debatable topics. This class came up with an excellent list, but I reaffirmed today that this class is not capable at all of choosing their own groups. All my other senior classes can, but this class just does not have that capability. All my other senior classes were on a new day, and I was more like Virgil today with those classes. Keeping with our pro/con paper theme, I gave them an article on social networking that had data about the pros and cons of using a social networking site. They had to read the article, then discuss in small groups the pros and cons they found. Then, we shared out as a class what information they found from the article. The classes did a fairly good job of this, and as a class they found every pro and con. This was a little challenging for some because they wanted to insert their own opinions into the discussion, but I made them stick to strictly what they had read in the article. As an individual assessment, I had them read an article written in a similar fashion about the effects of video game violence on teen behavior, then they had to list 5 pros and cons they found. This was ironic because by sheer coincidence, today was also the release of Grand Theft Auto 5, a video game series that has been blamed for violent youth behavior. I wish I could have this was planned on my part, but it was a true coincidence.

I looked in my Google drive to see how many students had submitted their papers, and save for one class, it appears most of my students did. My second block class seemed to not understand when a paper is due considering I had 12 out of 26 students turn in the paper. My hope is they will finish quickly so they can hopefully earn a decent score. I may be calling a few of them down during iPass. I am stuck between wanting to have some of them come to iPass and make them finish the paper, but they are seniors, and its time that school stopped holding their hand and treated them like an adult. Many of them are adults and have jobs, and college is less than 12 months away. I will make a few parent contacts, but its time for many of them to accept responsibility and be ready to join the real world. Now, I need to do my responsibility and find time to grade these 110 essays. I'm very hopefully the electronic submissions will speed this long, and at times brain numbing, process up.

We had a home game tonight against Franklin Central, our only game of the week. We played a very solid game and won 2-0. I was thrilled with our effort and how we bounced back from two mediocre games on Saturday. We are currently 10-0-1, have 8 straight shutouts, and a state best 2 goals allowed, both of which game in our second and third games on communication issues on corner kicks.