"Its been one week since you looked at me"

Today is the first day of my second week of teaching. Let me back up a little and tell you about my first week. Overall everything went well. I think the students and I are starting to get to know each other. They seem to be more comfortable now. That pleases me. I only have one class that leans towards getting out of control. But they don't. For one, the class is small and secondly it's really just two kids that make each other act silly, but not what you would consider bad. They stop when I ask them to but in 5 or 10 minutes they pick it back up. The simple solution is to separate these two student. I plan to do that but first I want to talk to one of the students. He seems to feed off of the other. The problem is that while the other student can joke around and get all of his work done, this student can not. Even after one week I can see that his grade is beginning to suffer.
A second issue I am having is with students not coming prepared. More specifically I have one student that only brings a pencil to class, no book, no notebook. I think he may come from a home with little money and support. He never disrupts class, in fact he never talks. I gave him a binder with some loose leaf paper on Friday. I'm very curious to see if he brings it today.
The best thing about the week is that I was able to establish a relationship with the students. I think they like me, not that I need them to like me, but I think it makes for a more conducive learning environment. We took it easy last week in terms of content, this week I will turn it up a notch. I'll keep you posted to let you know how we progress.

PS. I'm a little disappointed that I don't have any crazy or funny stories to tell yet. I guess I should be glad in a way.

the title of this blog is a lyric form the song, "One Week" by the Barenaked Ladies.