Time To Breathe
I looked over the brink today. For a moment, I wanted to throw stones at a teachable moment.Context. Not an excuse, but context.
My building has been in a state of flux for the last few years. This is not all bad news-- we have made some moves that have removed toxic elements from the life of the school, and we have embraced some new opportunities. But, oh, the time.
Last year we started a new schedule. It provides a chance for teachers to meet during the day (something we haven't had for over a decade) and some other new programming activities. But to do that, the Powers That Be shortened class periods to 40 minutes, down from 45-55 minutes previously. To anybody who doesn't teach, that seems like peanuts. Five minutes is a lot of teaching time, and it adds up quickly-- 25 minutes/week, 900 minutes/year. This year we're adding a new diagnostic test, and a digitized on-line platform for doing lesson plans, unit plans, curriculum alignment. We switched the platform for the school website, so everyone has to rebuild their web pages, and we're breaking in yet another platform for classroom stuff (just give me back my moodle, dammit). My duty period is now cafeteria duty, walking around the cafeteria, and that is a great chance to see the students, but it's instead of a study hall that I can cover in my room, at my desk. Last year we launched PLC's, and now that effort has veered off somewhere, and the waves of SLO's hit. We have a new curriculum director who's trying to create a newly aligned curriculum. At the end of last year, we cut a position from my department, so we are trying to pick up the slack, which includes trying to analyze the test data from last year's Keystone exams, but so far the data CURMUDGUCATION: Time To Breathe:
