A Day in the Life of a First-Year Teacher

Tuesday, June 26, 2012

The Results are IN!

I am so proud of my students. I know I say that a lot, but I am extremely proud of them right now.

Of my 160 students, over 130 of them passed the Mathematics NYS exam this year with a score of a 3 or a 4. Of the 28 students that did not make it to a '3', 15 of them earned a '2' on the test. 50 students were able to earn the highest score, a '4'. That equates to an 82.5% passage rate! (for my first year!) By contrast, only 68% of my students passed their 7th grade NYS exam.

Between the three 8th grade classes at my school (mine, Miss Gonzalez's class, Mr. Buchell's class), an average of 73% of the students passed the NYS with a '3' or a '4'... THE HIGHEST PERCENT PASSAGE RATE IN THE HISTORY OF THE SCHOOL! :)

There were definitely some surprises with the scores. One of my brightest students who I thought for sure was going to pass - most likely earn a '4' - only scored a '2' on the NYS. She's extremely smart and hard-working and consistently has one of the highest grades among all of my classes, but I guess she just wasn't having a good day during the test or is the type of student that suffers from test anxiety. On the flip side, three of the "Four Gangstas" earned a '3' on the NYS, which was definitely unexpected.

Now, I'd love to congratulate and praise myself for yielding such successful scores, and maybe I did contribute to my students' success, but ultimately, it was my students who took the initiative and made the effort to work hard this year. This is their reward just as much - probably more - than mine. I am so proud of all of them for the work that they did this year.

In the beginning of the year, when I was making my "beginning of the year pep speeches", I told my classes that if they followed my expectations and cooperated with me, that I would be able to lead them to the path of success. One full school year later, this is one of their rewards. They did everything I asked of them and made teaching them a joy. Not only do they have stellar grades and '3''s and '4''s on the NYS to show for it, but they also have the knowledge of the concepts we covered in class, pathways to countless application situations they have under their belt now and the character, moral and teamwork skills that we worked on this year.

In the end, I know that I helped to challenge my students to be the very best they can be, to show them that they can and should reach their potential, and taught them to never stop chasing their dreams. My students have grown so much this year, and have changed academically, physically and characteristically.

It will truly be sad to see them go... but I'm proud and confident in each and every one of my students.

4 comments:

  1. Woohoo!! Congrats on everything!

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  2. What did James get on the NYS? ;) haaha

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  3. "James" earned a 2 on the NYS. He isn't part of the "Four Gangstas" though. So, in his little group, three out of five (including him) earned a "3".

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