In the Lou

I made through my first day. No issues. We did have a professional development session scheduled for the afternoon, which was a bit much for the first day. We didn’t get out until 4:30. Left the building at ~6:55.

In addition to worrying about pulling off my first week in my science class (my primary mission), I’m a little worried about this reading course (more…)

A story in three parts.

• Act I: Last minute preparations School starts Monday. The list of things to do keeps changing. My stress level keeps rising.
• Act II: Oh yeah. That’s why I’m here Things at school seemed relatively smooth, too smooth. And then it happened…
• Act III: A systematic perspective As a science teacher, I have a duty to eulegize our former planet Pluto.

Act I: Last Minute Preparations

At several points in the last 72 hours, I’ve been trying to find out where I went wrong. I knew that I had a lot to do and chose to procrastinate a little at times, but I didn’t realize how much I had to do in such a short period of time. The list of things that need to be done before my first day in the classroom is seemingly getting longer and longer. School hasn’t even started yet, but there has not been enough time in the day Wednesday through Friday of this past week. I’ve been staying up till 2 or 3 working on materials only to get up at 5:30 to get to the building early.

Somewhat sucking away my time this week has been my classroom. This may seem logical, as I am supposed to be setting it up. In actuality, my classroom was an obstacle to me setting up my classroom. (more…)

Dateline ran an hour special tonight on first-year teachers. Their main character was Monica Groves, a Teach for America teacher in Atlanta.

This story was interesting to me for two reasons:

1. I’m starting my first day on Monday!! I will be facing the same challenges of motivating my students toward making significant academic gains.
2. I have a connection to Ms. Groves’ experience! And it’s not that we’re both corps members. This summer, I taught at Brown Middle School in Atlanta, Ga., for my Teach for America training. I had many students from Young Middle School and saw Principal Kenner (featured in the story) on several occasions

There’s an interesting video blog available online, and a full set of reflective pieces to check out from the main story page.

Today was the first day to report for work at our schools. I woke up at 7 a.m. on the dot. Plenty of time to shower and get ready (~15 min) and then check my email, etc. It’s my normal morning routine; I like going at a non-frenetic pace.

I left my apartment at 8:06, admittedly 6 minutes after I had planned. But it was ok. The drive to my school is only 20 minutes with traffic.

I turned left to take the cut-through street that I have been using for two weeks on-and-off. Unfortunately (and strangely) I missed the correct turn to get to my school. (more…)