This past week was a full week. So many things going on, and not enough time for the full completion of each. From a teaching standpoint, I'm relatively well caught up for this year. From the next year perspective, I'm already feeling behind. I just came though a professional day where I worked with the science teacher from the other team (we have two 8th grade teams of students, designed to help bridge the gap from the elementary system to the high school system). There has been a large push for making both teams congruent in all subject areas. I am looking at a huge change in the coming year. I'm expected to change many things. I'm the newer teacher in this team, so my say is a bit limited. I'm having a difficult time working out some bugs and am really trying to keep up the things that I've done in the past while trying to be as similar as possible. I openly admit that my class has a limited connection to the following years, as far as content goes. Students won't see this stuff again until college! With this in mind, I spend a lot of time teaching the note taking skills, testing skills, reading skills, skimming, context clues etc. I use my content to do so. This practice will become more difficult next year. The grading policy with be different as well...I guess I'm just like a starting teacher next year, with more questions than I had when I started teaching.
All in all, it should be an interesting year. I'm relatively new, and my counterpart has been in the business for 28 years (I asked him on Friday). Combining the new technology (me) and the established worksheets (him) ought to make for an interesting year. I hope that we can both benefit from this attempt at amalgamation and homogenization…only more days of work and discussion will tell.
2 comments:
Good luck! I am feeling really blessed in that I can do my own thing in the classroom. I could never go back to the worksheet days and the other teachers would die trying to do technology all day long with 26 fourth grade students.
Old dogs can learn new tricks, keep showing the way (I have taught 27 years, so I am proof it does happen. 21 of those years were before the arrival of technology in our school).
We have an older staff and all use computers in the classrooms in one way or another (in 5 years we could have 9 of 16 teachers retire and 3 more soon after that). If our server goes down every room is in an uproar because of it! So hang in there, it can and does happen!!!
Linda
Thanks! I'm glad to hear that! Sometimes it just seems like I'm being asked to go backward...Just roll with the punches and jab whenever possible I guess. Don't look for the knockout blow...isn't that how it goes? :)
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