they're talking...

... and I'm taking it as a sign of some success. I usually have a few kids hang around my room after school, whether for tutoring or just hanging out rather than going home. Today, two girls from my advisory who have the other Spanish teacher were looking at the materials I had posted from the day's lesson for Spanish I. One of them spotted the vocabulary list and declared "Man, I'm about to transfer to your class. your class actually learning something."
"No, I heard her class is hard!"
"Yeah, but at least we'd be learning. look at all the stuff they get!"
This signals two things to me: One, kids are talking about my class outside of class. This is the old "any publicity is good publicity" motto. This means the class actually means something to them. Two, it means my expectations are probably high. This is something TFA drills us on (not lowering our expectations) and it's good to have some outside reassurance that I haven't been doing that.

Also, almost half of my students' test scores improved by more than 10% since the first test. One student went from a 34 to a 96! It's good to start seeing them realize this isn't going to be an easy class and start studying for the tests. But it's also good to see that the changes I've made to my teaching seem to be working. Now if only I could get through to more of my Spanish II kids...