Update

Maybe it's a little early to say this, but I think I made it through the long stretch between the February and April breaks.  Only three days to go.  And, to be honest, it wasn't as bad as I expected.  There are a couple things that have come up for me during this semester, though.

I feel as though I'm not doing as good a job at teaching my honors-level class as I did last semester.  As I photocopied their midterm, I felt much less certain that they would succeed at it than I did with my last class.  Of course, that could be my own disillusionment.  My students last semester did far worse than I expected as well.  So, we'll see.

I'm happy about the relationship I seem to have with my extensions-level students.  They seem to be comfortable with me, and I certainly feel comfortable with them.  It's definitely time for a break, though.  It's also time for me to pull out the "applicable" portion of the class.  I'm glad the unit on area is coming up soon.  The students seem to be getting impatient about math that "they'll never use."

Foundations is going far better this quarter than last.  I've instituted two new policies that are helping.  First, I'm copying all their "notes" pages on colored paper and all their classwork and homework on white paper.  By doing this, they know exactly what they need to turn in, and what they need to keep.  Also, I've stopped allowing students who have missing work to leave the classroom.  This has yielded two positive results.  First, it means the amount of missing work (and thus failing students) has drastically decreased.  Second, it forces me to keep up with my grading, which means I can give more accurate IEP reports, more frequent class-progress-reports, and more up-to-date missing-work reports. 

I'm still looking for ways to introduce more technology into my classroom, but I find that when I come up with a plan I'm too nervous about using the technology (and having it not work for me in my time of need) to try it.  (That's kind of pathetic for a computer science major to say...)  I'm thinking that I might work on some lessons over break and try to implement them the week after.

Overall, things are going well.  But an April vacation is definitely needed.