I remember well my first days of teaching, and the trepidation about walking into a class of students and wondering how I was going to manage. One of the first places I taught was a rural school in Ireland and the kids there were a real challenge. There was no animosity or badness to them, but they just could not understand why they had to be in school when most of them just wanted to be working on the farm. They were charismatic and smart, but a real challenge due to their motivation being elsewhere. I suppose there are parallels to what I am seeing today too. I have just finished grading 68 freshman bio semester exams, and the polite way of putting it is they were excrement! I have spent time this year more than others on study skills and mindset. An early Sept exercise we did was for the kids to get into groups and speak about their hopes for the year and to discuss what would be a “win” for them. They also discussed how they would go about it! The sheets are still taped to t