The first test

My kids had their first test today. I felt like our objectives were trivial. We can spend hours trying to explain how to add negative numbers or repeat that supplementary angles add up to 180 so many times and have them still miss questions. Our test could not have been any more obvious, we practically laid it out for them the day before. Of course when so many kids have missed 3 or 4 days out of 5 all of that laying it out was really lost on them.
I was pleased to see that a lot of my students did well. I actually probably would have given up in despair if they hadn't been able to after all we'd practiced. I'm absolutely shocked at the state of the school. How do kids get to senior year without being able to add -1 +2. I'm not kidding. They think that it is three or negative three, and when they see the discouraged look on your face sometimes they guess 1.
We have on student, John, who is one of the most hardworking and polite students I have ever met. He wants to pass so badly but when you ask him, what is 12 minus 4 he thinks about it for a few seconds with a look of intense concentration on his face and guesses 7 or 6 or if you've been doing negatives maybe that. When you ask them what is negative 4 minus 7 they think that two negatives make a positive and that they answer should be 11.
I feel like I can't go anywhere with my lessons because they are so far behind but that they are so boring becuase I don't go anywhere. We do have the smart students in the class who get everything done right way with all of the answers right. I try to find extra problems for them but its so hard to help them do more and help remediate the others in a class of 35 that I only have tenuous control over. It's very discouraging to know that you are boring half the class. There were kids who I barely even know who got A's on their test and I realized that they were just sitting around being bored.

One such smart kids, Ryan, struts in late every day in a wife beater tank top showing off his arms. He thinks he's above the law and trys to test me every day.
When I call him out on it he asks why I'm only picking on him.
When I was trying to get them to see the connection between the word alternate and the angles alternate interior I put the definition of Alternate on the board which used the words "goes back and forth." Ryan, being the champ he is yells out "that sounds like sex Ms. Byerley" from the back middle.(why do I have him there right in the middle of everything, if only I had time for a seating chart.)
I tell him it's not appropriate but blush and lose track of what I'm saying. How did he get sex out of geometry. I can only imagine what he'd be like in a literature class.
Thursday some students screwed up some negative signs again and got the answer 69 degrees for an angle measure. Of course I'm not stupid enough to actually make that an answer, but kids can get things wrong in creative ways. Ryan yells out a comment about "ohhhh 69." I tell him once again that is not appropraite and he says "what are you thinking about Ms. Byerley, I'm just talking about math." Now I feel really dumb because the whole class knows that I made his connection instantly and at least for a moment was thinking of oral sex instead of trying to teach them geometry and contemplating what I should do to address the issue. He is so good at making me look dumb. One time he told me Robert's name was Jose so when I called Robert Jose he made fun of me in front of everyone for getting his name wrong.
We had a little talk this morning which kind of went okay but he accused me of changing my lesson plan and denied doing anything wrong. Eventually we got on the same page and he was my scorekeeper in Jeopordy. I liked having him at the front of the room.I've learned that if you don't enlist students to help you pass papers, keep scores, collect things, you never have time to catch them writing gang symbols on the floor, text messaging, cheating, talking, taking pictures of you with their cell phones(Ryan again, while two people were observing me.)

All in all I love my kids and want them to do well so badly. I feel like I have nothing left to give them though.