#1 Crazy Like a Fox

Let's start kicking these new year's resolutions in the ass. I hope to accomplish my book goal this year and even make up for the six books I fell short with in 2009. I had nothing else to do on the 17h trip home so I knocked this one out pretty quickly. It is about a principal who transformed a charter school and now the API score is in the 900s! It was an interesting story but I thought it would give me more ideas in the classroom. I do not have such powers as did he, as a principal. However, it did encourage me to stop making homework and failure an option. I am now assigning detention every time students do not complete their homework. So far it is very successful. I still have kids that are barely coming to class and never doing anything, BUT some kids who did nothing last semester are coming to me between classes asking if there was homework. Love that! There is also detention for every single tardy instead of every fifth tardy. Fifth and sixth period students are actually coming on time. (Mostly. There are still some who get detention every day. Don't serve them. Get referrals. Don't care. But I am trying to focus on the bigger picture.)