2002-08-30
Getting the classroom ready, posted at 5:12 p.m.
Epiphany in Baltimore has moved to epiphanyinbaltimore.blogspot.com I'm about 80% ready for the start of the year. I was thrown a bit of a curveball by having my department give me a new curriculum this week to teach, but it is similar to the old one and there seems to be a bit of flexibility. It still looks like I'll have to teach The Chosen, though. I will try to go into it with a positive attitude. I like the baseball game, and then it gets all preachy and didactic and has 14-year old kids saying things like, "Oh, tell me more, father!" as an excuse to go into this long harangue about the Hasidic culture.I do need a bit of an attitude adjustment about the book, I guess. Maybe a reread will do me good. I've given myself 2 weeks to cover it, as a bridge between two books I love (To Kill a Mockingbird and Their Eyes Were Watching God).
I'm still enjoying the fact that this is my 2nd year. In our one-on-one today, my supervisor Joan Cusack said that the first year is sort of like in dog years - it feels like seven, because of the advancement of skills that takes place during the year. With nine new teachers out of seventeen this year, I'm feeling like an old pro. Other people in our department have been teaching for the following lengths of time: 8, 12, 17, 23, 28, 30, and 30 years. That means I'm really the only one close in experience with many of the new ones, and they've all been beating down my door with questions. It feels good.
However, many of them come with great credentials - one has taught in Great Britain, one is having her first book of poetry published by a major publishing company this fall, another is also a published poet, and another worked in the film industry. And out of the nine new hires, seven are white women. There's also a white guy and a Black woman. That makes the breakdown of our department as follows: 1 Black man, 1 Black woman, 4 white men, and 11 white women. We certainly struggle in our diversity, but that is true of much of the school.
Otherwise, I'm ecsatic that there has been a baseball settlement. I even think there will be nationally televised Tigers games this weekend. This is wonderful news.
I'm going back in on Labor Day to finish up my classroom and make copies. I wanted to pour over my syllabus a bit this weekend to ensure there are no errors, then print them out for the seventy-one 9th graders whose shiny faces will occupy the currently empty seats of my classroom.