Ours

Teachers get really possessive of our young charges. Read other teaching blogs you'll see it in the language, like them or not, it's "my kids" "my students" "my classroom".
We have to own it, to make them ours to be vested into their success. We may not like them but we own them.
That's part of why it hurts when the budget axe comes falling down. Cuts take us away from our kids, they take resources from them, maybe it's electives that we know our kids love to take, maybe it's a favorite teacher who is pink-slipped, because these hurt them they hurt us.
Our colleagues are not just our friends and co-workers they're favorite teachers of our kids.
The budget is not going my way at my current school. I'm outside the bubble, so I'm trying to make the most of my last 15wks there. Something will come up for me workwise but I'm not thrilled to have to settle into a new school, new staff, new policies. The thing that saves me in the back of my mind is that once I close that door when the bell rings, it's my classroom, it's my kids and that I can handle.

Feet Up and Brain Off

I love vacation.
I love that teaching at a public school involves several mandatory vacations. I look at my friends who are still in corporate america and they're limited to 2 or 3 weeks a year, maybe 4 if they're lucky. And no snow days either!

Ah, but the trade-off, the hours, the students, the planning, the grading. We need those weeks off. This one is especially nice, some time with the kids, some time with Julie, who hates that she's not mentioned in the blog, so there you go, you're in.
But the brain is off, the bag full of grading is by the door where it was dropped when the vacation started. The 1st day back is penciled together in my head, it'll work. But I just don't need to make more work for myself right now.

But the flip of this is that the students have been away from work for a week, and they're going to have to switch gears and come back to work, that's part of my light planning for Monday, there's no sense in overplanning for overtired students. I'll save it for Tuesday.
The big kick for my students is that they have 2 weeks left until the end of the term, and FINALS! Then I'm done with Bio and go back to Earth Science, stay tuned!

Some Children Left Behind

I heard a great mock-headline on the Radio show 'Whaddya Know' on NPR the other day.
It said that President Bush concedes to the Democrat majority that 'some children will be left behind'. I thought that was great. How can some children not be left behind? I need to keep moving forward. I've got a mixed range of ages and abilities and they've all got to be taught and take something from it, even if it's just for the short term. But do they? Not enough of them.
Is it me? I doubt it, that's not what I'm hearing from the guidance counselors, from other teachers. Is it fair to blame them? No I suppose they're just kids, growing up too fast in a fast moving world. But at some point, and it's got to be soon for some of them, it's time to fish or cut bait. I'm talking about my 10th grade Bio kids. Some are beginning to realize that, that these years count toward something, something beyond HS. College. Some feel that they are just HS kids and that their antics, their performance, it doesn't count, they're too young, it won't matter. News flash it counts, it all counts. Including next week's quiz.

THE OTHER DAY I MET A BEAR

The Blog begins.
Today the teaching went pretty well. That's 2 days in a row. Something I suppose I should be able to do now in year 2. Harder than it should be though. I'm lately both glad and annoyed that I have the opportunity to teach the same batch of students in both 9th and 10th grade.

The current group of 10th graders are a pretty unique bunch. They seem to be all friends, the whole 400 person class of them. The classes just don't clique up, they are all friends. It's not like they're bosom buddies, but each group of kids can talk to the others.
This is actually not quite true. There are 2 groups in one class that just don't get along, tis like oil and water. Jocks and Hippies. Not a good mix.

4 more weeks to the new term. It's going to be a beast of a term, all new faces no carry-overs.
But, it's only one prep, no mixing and matching so I can prepare one lesson each day, and let the students fall where they may. We shall see.