Friday, Nov. 26, 2004
Weekend plan: Frankenstein, The Odyssey, and Grading, posted at 1:12 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com Life is so much better after a good workout. I've been slow to get back on the horse since I returned from my Outward Bound camping trip, but today's nearly-two hour combination of weights (deadlifts, squats, shoulders, and tricepts) and cardio (25 minutes of eliptical, then I ran a mile... sort of mediocre, but I'm a little out of shape at the moment) really revved me up.That's good, because I have a lot left to accomplish this weekend, including the following:
1. Read Frankenstein and write a unit plan for it. I was supposed to read it over the summer, and only sort of skimmed it. I haven't read it since my high school senior year and I begin teaching it on Monday. I read five chapters last night and am really into it, so I think I can knock it out this weekend no problem. I'm bringing it to the restaurant tonight in case we're slow. Then, I've got to write my unit, but luckily I swiped my supervisor's files on the novel, and there's a lot of stuff on the Internet about it. Like this. I'm a little daunted by the prospect of teaching this book. Some of my juniors (unbelievably) had a hard time with Lord of the Flies, so reading this much tougher novel will be a challenge.
2. I'm working the 9th graders very hard on The Odyssey. I assigned books 3-5 over the Thanksgiving holiday, and am planning on assigning about two books a night (on an every-other-day schedule) through Christmas. I want to write check quizzes for each book - quick six-question quizzes assessing just whether they have read the required readings. So, I need to write my reading schedule for the rest of the unit, as well as bang out as many of the reading check quizzes as I can.
I feel a little like I'm reinventing the wheel with all this work I'm doing, but I basically have two new preps this year and I know that the hard work put in now will pay dividents in the future. I need to make this material and these units my own. It's not fun to teach units by feeling your way through. It's like searching for a light switch in the dark.
3. Grade, grade, grade. I'm actually not far behind right now, but I don't want anything to sneak up on me. Junior essays came in this week and I'd like to have them back to them on Monday. I actually bought a Dell Computer last week for my classroom. It's the cheapest one they have - $329 for the whole thing, including the monitor - and I got this good interest-free deal on it. It arrived Wednesday, and I'm bringing it into school on Monday, and I'm hoping I can enter in grades on it the day I get it set up. I have these fantasies about printing out class grade reports and posting them by Tuesday.
So, yeah, plenty of work to do. There's also some housework to get done, plus I work at the restaurant every day this weekend. Hopefully I'll make some good money because I stupidly left my wallet at school over the long weekend. I made $44 in tips on Wednesday night, and that has gotten me through until today. There's no way for me to get my wallet, so I'm just surviving on what tips I make. It's a good way to save money, that's for sure.