I have 3 weeks until I report to school... however, due to changes at my school, I'm not quite positive of my schedule yet. I know I will have 1 hour of AP Stat at the HS, the uni class of Intro Stats, but I don't know yet how many Geometry classes I will have at the HS because I may have to take on an AVID elective class. With 3 weeks left in summer and lots of uncertainity, I have not been as productive as I should be :( I know I need to get things to the copy shop ASAP, but until I know how many sections of Geometry I will be teaching, it's difficult to send things to the copy shop because I don't know how many copies to make. Thankfully I redid all of Geometry last year, so I don't need a lot of prep time this summer to whip it into shape.
That all said, I am struggling with getting things done. The ideas in my head keep swarming and I can't make them stop. I spent some time last week brainstorming with a friend, but that just made the confusion in my head worse :) I hate having to pin down to an idea because a better one might come along soon.
To make matters worse, I have had a very disjointed summer - this past week and this next week are the first time all summer that I have been home for two weeks in a row. Today (Sunday) is the first weekend all summer that I haven't just returned from a trip or prepping to take a new one.
What I'm suffering from is due to lack of motivation.... not even the school supply aisle has cheered me up :) So, instead, I'm turning to you! Help me out - what new things are you doing in your classrooms this year? What ideas do you have to share with others?
Sheesh! I guess I have less than a month before inservice, but I'm like you ... I know I should be reorganizing things and planning, but I'm too last minute for that. Maybe I'll make a schedule and knock a bit off a day.
ReplyDeletePlans for next year: I have some quirky idea for having a "person of the day" or some such thing in each class, and then people should go out of their way to say, "hi" to that person or be extra friendly or some such thing ... haven't worked out the mechanics, but just some idea to make everyone feel special at least once. I used to gather up all their birthdays at the beginning of the year, and then wish them a happy one on the day (one teacher passed around a calendar on the 1st day and had them all write their b-days on it for easy access to the days).
Resource: have you seen the geometry workbook by Serra/Key Press (http://www.keypress.com/x5833.xml). It has 4 pictures on each page, 3 geometry related, and at least one picture is "off" and you have to indicate which/why. Pretty cool.
That's all I've got.
Ms. Cookie
Ms Cookie -
ReplyDeleteI like the idea of the "person of the day" - depending on the size of your classes, maybe you could do a "student of the week" for each class and display something about them? I really like the calendar idea for their birthdays, I'm so bad about those!!
I had not seen that geometry book, but I love Michael Serra's stuff - I wish I had an ounce of his creativity!!!
Thanks for sharing!!
Mrs. T
Oh gosh, birthdays. I try to be good about them, but fail miserably. If I don't have something tangible, it will escape me completely. Maybe I should buy a pack of cards now. I have a card organizer that I could use to track which birthdays are each month...
ReplyDeleteI just wrote a post trying to motivate myself. (It's been a rough evening...)
I'm not sure any of the ideas I've listed there will help you; many of them felt along the lines of this year I'll have a base experience to build on. The one not listed is "having experienced enough of the chaos of working here to anticipate some of it."
Hope that the uncertainty is clearing up and you're finding your groove.
Sorry to be so late to respond - I've got very behind on my reading...
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I wanted to say that as a summer baby whose birthday always fell outside school terms, I always felt rather left out of birthday-centred things. You might want to allocate "official" birthdays (like the Queen's) for such students.