Wow Week 3

Hello All!
The fact that I'm snowed in this afternoon actually represents one of my biggest challenges this week. On Wednesday (or maybe it was Tuesday) Shippensburg had a two hour delay because of the snow and then they actually decided to dismiss us early on Friday just in anticipation of the snow. This meant that my classes on Wednesday and Friday were all shortned. My college prep students were in the library researching for their speeches and they lost some of that time. My Myth and Folktale class is mostly on track although I did opt to push the lesson I had planned for Friday back to Monday in order to allow time to finish Thursday's classwork and to ensure that I had enough time to do my activity. The Honors students finishesd their speeches and we'll begin Julius Caesar on Monday. Since my students did miss out on some of the time they should have had I'm trying to figure out if they need extra time for certain things and if so, how much time I should give them. Most of my college prep students seemed to find their information in the days that we were there but I have some students who were absent several days who may need to catch up. Trying to catch up students is another problem. I want to be fair and give them the same amount of time to work that the others have had. My co-op recommended that for students who had a lot of absences I extend their speech deadline so that they have enough time to research.

Something I've been learning about myself this week is that, although I usuallly have excellent organizational skills and planning skills, I need to begin planning earlier in the week for my lesson plans. I think that part of this is because I've been gradually picking up classes and so I'm not quite used to planning for all of them at once and it snuck up on me. I'm almost glad to be snowed in so I can get some work done and begin planning for week 5 (I can't believe its almost here).

One of the more interesting challenges that week 4 brings me is that it is the week that I will be in charge of all the classes. I will be teaching Honors, College prep, and Myth and Folktales. On Monday my co-op is taking a personal day so the first day I'm teaching all the classes he won't be there. In some ways I'm happy about that because it shows that he trusts that I'm ready to handle classes but in other ways I'm a little nervous because I don't want to mess up. Additionally, I value his feedback and opinions on what I'm doing so I would have liked to hear how I did. On Friday I actually left after him for the first time and had the duty of shutting the classroom down for the weekend. Being me I'll only be slightly paranoid that I didn't do something right. Haha.

Another interesting opportunity that presented itself this week was the faculty meeting. We recieved an article to read about what makes a great teacher that brought up some strong opinions and discussion. We also heard about upcoming events, 4site tests and a few other things. It was an unique look at the teachers because I discovered that most of them really didn't want to be there...or at least not for that long. I never imagined that faculty meetings would be a lot of fun but this one definitely had its entertaining moments.

One more interesting thing that happened this week. My honors students are to select a mystery/suspense novel to read for the first half of this marking period. While many are selecting Dan Brown books like the Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, some people are less sure what a suspense novel really is and have selected (or tried to select) books that I don't consider suspense like Jodi Picoult. Now if she is a suspense writer please correct me but I just don't think I consider her one. One of my students apparently was quite upset that I didn't approve her book which prompted her mother to write an email to my co-op. It wasn't a mean email, she simply was unsure why Jodi Picoult did not qualify. My co-op, rather than worry about it told her that if she knows it to be a suspense novel just to read it. I'm fine with that since I don't want to start any problems but I've been suggesting authors and books to students so I feel like this shouldn't have been a problem. When my co-op announced that the book was to be mystery/suspsense he explained what it was so the students would know. Some of them still seem unsure though. So I had my first experience, though it was second hand, with parent correspondence.

As this is getting to be a very long blog I'll say goodbye for now. I hope everyone enjoys their snowy weekend. Stay safe. Good luck as we all begin week 4! We're a quarter of the way to graduation (eeeeek).