My teaching adventure continues
I have now completed 6 days with my students, although realistically only 5 count, since the 1/2 day before Thanksgiving was really not focused on academics and a lot of students were out. We did have some competitions of boys against girls that day where they were given information about a teacher and asked to guess which member of the team it was. They were wrong more than they were right :-)
The school does a thorough job of orienting teachers - at the start of the year. I am having to catch up with things while I am teaching, with little lead time. I am supposed to start each week with two weeks of planned lessons already submitted. I actually was able to do that Monday, although it is clear that I will have to make changes to what I had intended as I learn more about the students. I also need to be consistent with other members of my team in certain aspects of what goes on because many of our students need a consistent structure since there is so little regular organization in their lives outside of school.
What has surprised me is how exhausted I have been at the end of each school day. I am used to 45 minute periods with time during the periods when I could let my high schoolers loose and just keep an eye on them while they did group work, or while students led a whole class discussion. That is realistically not possible, and our periods are significantly longer - except for a slightly shorter (30 minutes) day on Wednesday, our periods run more than 75 minutes each. Our students require pretty close to constant attention.
But there have been successes as well as struggles.
The school does a thorough job of orienting teachers - at the start of the year. I am having to catch up with things while I am teaching, with little lead time. I am supposed to start each week with two weeks of planned lessons already submitted. I actually was able to do that Monday, although it is clear that I will have to make changes to what I had intended as I learn more about the students. I also need to be consistent with other members of my team in certain aspects of what goes on because many of our students need a consistent structure since there is so little regular organization in their lives outside of school.
What has surprised me is how exhausted I have been at the end of each school day. I am used to 45 minute periods with time during the periods when I could let my high schoolers loose and just keep an eye on them while they did group work, or while students led a whole class discussion. That is realistically not possible, and our periods are significantly longer - except for a slightly shorter (30 minutes) day on Wednesday, our periods run more than 75 minutes each. Our students require pretty close to constant attention.
But there have been successes as well as struggles.