Reading Frances Mallow’s thoughts on increasing self-efficacy in order to elicit more risk taking was just what I needed to read.

The older new boy in my class will not be a problem. He just wants to be challenged and be seen as a capable person. He is also bitter about still being in the third grade even though he passed the TAAS last year.

I’m going to look into fluency models for my struggling child, I’ll call him N, I feel overwhelmed by his needs and the needs of all my other students. I have to get the rest of the class rolling before I commit a disproportionate amount of time to N.

I know that this time next year I’ll know what to do. Know how to balance it all. The third year is supposedly the most rewarding. The question remains, what should I do this year? His mother wants to put him back in second grade, his second grade teacher thinks that he’s better off in third. He reads real slow and seems to have little retention. He is listed as resource or special ed but there is no Spanish language special education offered at the school.

Justin