True to my word, I barely made a half-assed effort at planning a lesson for this week. I spent about an hour on Sunday morning looking online for worksheets and choosing some material from a text book to use. I settled on some Spring activities from Boggle’s World, a crossword puzzle and a gap-fill on Spring related verbs.
At first I was only going to use the worksheets for the first graders (seventh graders in the States), and even then I was afraid they’d be too hard. The first two classes did well with them however so I’ve decided to do the same activity with all my classes this week and save my original upper-grade plan for two weeks from now. The best part is I don’t have to do a whole lot of talking, just explain a few things at the beginning and let them get to it. Cake.
This afternoon I have to go to another school and watch another teacher in my program do what’s called a “demonstration” class, which makes me think picket signs and bull-horns will be involved, but (sadly) it isn’t like that. All the teachers in my deal have to do it. There are like twelve middle-school teachers in my program, and so far I’m the only one who has done a demonstration class. I did mine way back in November. Frankly, I was starting to get a little pissed that no one else had done theirs up to now. At the end of the demonstration we will have a chance to speak with our district supervisor,I’m looking forward to this class, I even wore a tie today.
* * *
The class was fine. The teacher did a really good job, which was not surprising. I kind of felt like she had a better handle on her students than I do. Girl uses Powerpoint as a matter of course, and plans her lessons collaboratively with her co-teachers.
After the class we had some Q & A with the teacher, and then the district supervisor tried to tell us that we won’t get our contractually designated extra vacation time until next winter. This announcement had the effect of making the room appear like a cage full of angry monkeys, jumping up and down and screeching; me included. The supervisor back-peddled quickly and reminded that she doesn’t have any answers, has no decision making authority, doesn’t actually know anything, and is in fact, entirely useless. To quote a colleague who was in the meeting, “You’re going to lose a lot of teachers if you do this.”
*Sigh!* I really hoped this program would be different, and now here we are getting jerked around, and being given incomplete information at best, and may have been outright lied to.
After the meeting I came home, overdosed on carbs and am now too brain-tired to do any studying. But I’m awake now and going out for a walk.
At first I was only going to use the worksheets for the first graders (seventh graders in the States), and even then I was afraid they’d be too hard. The first two classes did well with them however so I’ve decided to do the same activity with all my classes this week and save my original upper-grade plan for two weeks from now. The best part is I don’t have to do a whole lot of talking, just explain a few things at the beginning and let them get to it. Cake.
This afternoon I have to go to another school and watch another teacher in my program do what’s called a “demonstration” class, which makes me think picket signs and bull-horns will be involved, but (sadly) it isn’t like that. All the teachers in my deal have to do it. There are like twelve middle-school teachers in my program, and so far I’m the only one who has done a demonstration class. I did mine way back in November. Frankly, I was starting to get a little pissed that no one else had done theirs up to now. At the end of the demonstration we will have a chance to speak with our district supervisor,I’m looking forward to this class, I even wore a tie today.
* * *
The class was fine. The teacher did a really good job, which was not surprising. I kind of felt like she had a better handle on her students than I do. Girl uses Powerpoint as a matter of course, and plans her lessons collaboratively with her co-teachers.
After the class we had some Q & A with the teacher, and then the district supervisor tried to tell us that we won’t get our contractually designated extra vacation time until next winter. This announcement had the effect of making the room appear like a cage full of angry monkeys, jumping up and down and screeching; me included. The supervisor back-peddled quickly and reminded that she doesn’t have any answers, has no decision making authority, doesn’t actually know anything, and is in fact, entirely useless. To quote a colleague who was in the meeting, “You’re going to lose a lot of teachers if you do this.”
*Sigh!* I really hoped this program would be different, and now here we are getting jerked around, and being given incomplete information at best, and may have been outright lied to.
After the meeting I came home, overdosed on carbs and am now too brain-tired to do any studying. But I’m awake now and going out for a walk.
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