I'm stealing a quick minute before I surrender the computer over to my husband and get intimate with the couch for what I hope will be an entertaining Thursday night in front of the t.v.
It's been a long day for me. Teaching at a struggling school is so much more work than I ever dreamed. Representatives from Tallahassee will be in our school next week to make sure we are doing what we are supposed to do.
Since I teach non-English speakers, they WILL be in my classroom. My students count up to five times in the formula that determines school grades. I don't take that fact lightly.
Neither does anyone else. My principal was in my room earlier this week. An administrative from the District was in today. This afternoon.
On the day when I didn't get to eat lunch because I had to go to a "mandatory" insurance session.
On the day when I had to scrap ALL my lesson plans because my students weren't ready for them.
On the day when I had two girls in tears telling me all about their feelings toward each other and how much they miss their family back home in their country.
On the day when I didn't have all the information I was supposed to have listed on the board. For *that* class.
Oy!
It's tough work, and it's really hard to explain. My board is supposed to look something like this:
KEY CONCEPT: Vocabulary
UNIT QUESTION: What strategies can I use to learn new words?
LESSON QUESTION: How can I find clues in the text to help me determine a word's meaning?
VOCABULARY: (list of words here that will be used)
BELLWORK: Read the sentence. Use the clues in the sentence to figure out what the underlined word means. (include sentence)
HOMEWORK: Use three of the words we learned today in a paragraph.
I also have to have a detailed agenda that explains exactly what we are doing at any given point during class.
This has to be done for 4 classes.
And I was missing one.
It's been a long day for me. Teaching at a struggling school is so much more work than I ever dreamed. Representatives from Tallahassee will be in our school next week to make sure we are doing what we are supposed to do.
Since I teach non-English speakers, they WILL be in my classroom. My students count up to five times in the formula that determines school grades. I don't take that fact lightly.
Neither does anyone else. My principal was in my room earlier this week. An administrative from the District was in today. This afternoon.
On the day when I didn't get to eat lunch because I had to go to a "mandatory" insurance session.
On the day when I had to scrap ALL my lesson plans because my students weren't ready for them.
On the day when I had two girls in tears telling me all about their feelings toward each other and how much they miss their family back home in their country.
On the day when I didn't have all the information I was supposed to have listed on the board. For *that* class.
Oy!
It's tough work, and it's really hard to explain. My board is supposed to look something like this:
KEY CONCEPT: Vocabulary
UNIT QUESTION: What strategies can I use to learn new words?
LESSON QUESTION: How can I find clues in the text to help me determine a word's meaning?
VOCABULARY: (list of words here that will be used)
BELLWORK: Read the sentence. Use the clues in the sentence to figure out what the underlined word means. (include sentence)
HOMEWORK: Use three of the words we learned today in a paragraph.
I also have to have a detailed agenda that explains exactly what we are doing at any given point during class.
This has to be done for 4 classes.
And I was missing one.
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