Oh, I should also say...

That my classroom management problems appear to have been solved, at least temporarily, by my reading my students the riot act on Friday. (According to Lemov, you should not read riot acts because it wastes instructional time). But I told them that if they wanted to work towards their GEDs, they had to come to class prepared to do that, and that if they just aren't feeling it on a given day, that doesn't give them the right to make it hard for others in the class to work towards their GEDs. It's a volatile class, so I'm never sure if what works one day will work the next, but that appeared to hit home--and we are working on writing letters to President Obama (their idea, not mine), which they are taking very seriously, so that helped. All that stuff about authentic tasks (which I suspect the KIPPsters would see as lowering standards) might be important, as it turns out. Keeping my fingers crossed for Monday.