I’m going to try this out and see if it is helpful for my classes. I encourage parents to read often and if a student misses a day, this is a good way for you to keep caught up.

I will update what we did in class, hopefully on a daily basis.

Some guidelines and a little about my teaching style.

• I expect all students to come to class on time and prepared to learn.
• My belief is that you want to learn and you want to do well, but I have found this is not always the case. I have a very low tolerance for  students that waste my time.
• I believe that students learn best when they are engaged and actively thinking about an activity. But just doing an activity without doing the pre- and post-lab questions make the activity worth less than me lecturing.
• There are times when I must lecture. I don’t want to (and neither do the kids); however, it is necessary at times.
• I do not give answers, I ask questions and encourage thought. My door is always open. If I am in my room, any student is welcome to come and ask questions.
• I will do anything I can to help a student that has shown that they are concerned about their grade and are willing to do the work. Some students aren’t concerned about their grade until it’s too late to bring it up. Don’t be that student!

My recovery policy is simple. Students have two weeks from the time of the test to recovery. As per county policy, students must perform some form of remediation before they can recover. My remediation is a packet of problems covering the material that was on the test/quiz. This remediation packet is usually 20-50 problems and it must be done correctly before recovery takes place. There are two reasons why I employ this method. Number one, once students realize they’re going to have to work twice as hard on the remediation and then still have to take a recovery test, hopefully more will work hard and do it right the first time. This is true of about 75% of all recovery from last year. The other reason is that if they truly still did not get it, now we have an opportunity for them to get more practice. Those that needed the extra work did much better and also seemed to retain it longer.

Communication is a vital key to the success of students. Parents are always welcome to contact me any time. My work email is whayes@paulding.k12.ga.us