Dan Moses

Dan Moses' visit to our classes was a nice addition. He took a back sit most of the class and observed how things were going. A couple of times he sat along student groups that did not have enough people and participated in the activities. When I got to talk to him over the break, he said he was excited about the addition of Ypsilanti High to the program. When I asked him what he thought about the discipline issues in the class room, he told me it was actually about average for his experience at other schools. The students for the most part seem not to have noticed him, and it seemed like that was what he wanted anyways.

We are still working on the first of the five modules that will be covered this year. This module, called the Trip Line, tries to relate numbers, relationships and equations using place names that are lined along a trip line that students took at the beginning of the class. The content is gradually getting to be mathematical an the students are more or less following.

The discipline issues still need to addressed, nonetheless. There are only a few students who pay attention through the entire class. It is also really interesting to see how the seating arrangements affect student behavior. As the class is structured around groups, the dynamics in each group is pretty essential to how productive that group is. I have seen students who have changed behaviors once they were sitting with a different set of people. Mr. Tuttle does a great job of trying different ways to interest the kids without having to yell at them. The fact that we still have not sent (as far as I know) any student to the principals office is a good example for that.