Friday, Sept. 03, 2004
School year approaching rapidly, posted at 4:37 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Very, very pumped about the beginning of school. A few quick points:1. I'm again trying the desks around the perimeter room design. I've never, ever seen another classroom set up like this. All of my students' desks are facing the wall, in a big square around the room. There's a huge open space in the middle, with one desk there designed to conference with kids. I did it for the second half of last year, and it worked well. The idea is that the student moves their entire chair and body to look at me while I'm talking or we're having a discussion, then moves back around and faces the wall when there's work to do. I'm getting made fun of a little - "What, you don't want to look at their faces?" - but others think it's pretty cool. Hey, whatever works for me and the kids. If it doesn't, I'll move it around again later.
2. I have a student with cerebral palsy who is in a wheelchair. That's a first for me.
3. I have 166 students this year, all at once. Veteran teachers have told me that if you give management an inch, they'll take a foot. That's certainly been the case with this A/B class situation. My first two years of teaching, I taught three groups of 25-30 kids at once, in semester length classes. I now teach six groups of 25-30 kids at once, in an every-other-day schedule. It's rotten. It sucks for the kids, because I think contuinity of lessons is important, and it sucks for me, because I can't ever get caught up on grading (and that, in turn, sucks for the kids because they're not getting their essays and assignments back as quickly as they should.) When it first started, it was meant only for 9th and 10th grade English. This year, they swooped in and made it for 11th grade English as well. So now I have 2 preps, because I'm teaching ENG 9 and ENG 11 this year.
Tuesday is the big day. I've gotta work tonight at the restaurant, but I think I'll probably head straight home and
1) Finish my ENG 3 syllabus.
2) Make up an XYZ Quotation Implementation sheet for ENG I.
3) Map out my ENG 3 first month.