Monday Schmonday

Everyone here is having this sort of day.

I did have one major accomplishment today: I pointed out to our school director that the three hours of CM work time scheduled on Friday might be more useful earlier in the week, since our final lesson plans are due Thursday morning. Schedule changed. Yes.

In general, though, Mondays are intimidating. I can handle the thought of one day of work, but five days all thrown at me at once? Four days of teaching, four lessons to plan, and one whole day of PD? Oy.

But today's lesson went well. I tried some new ways to introduce more rigor and a higher level of understanding to the lesson. They were really getting more engaged. Besides, we were talking about vaccines, and who doesn't like vaccines? (Did you know that an estimated 300-500 million people died during the 20th century? And that the last case of smallpox ever was in 1978? I'm reading Demon in the Freezer.) The exit tickets were better (70% average), but I'll do even better tomorrow.

One of the students had to make up the midterm. She was NOT happy about it.

We had a session this morning that dealt with co-teaching. There are some interesting situations I might find myself in this fall, including having a co-teacher to deal with special ed students in my class. It would certainly be interesting having two teachers in the classroom. It would be up to us whether to split teaching duties, or have one teacher and one helper, or to split up the class. I can't wait to see what happens.

As for that, no news. They are expecting a lot of hires in the next few weeks, and I hope I'm one of them.

Back to planning. Next week we have to cram in the whole ecology unit before the final assessment on Thursday. Only 6 more days of instruction!