Fall Break is here

-
I have been so looking forward to this break, but this year is different. I usually look forward to fall break because I'm behind and need a week to get caught up. This year I'm looking forward to it so that I can change things up in my classes. I have been doing pretty well keeping on up on things and so now it's time to switch things up. I am nearing the end of volleyball - yay!!!  And so that will be gone.

It's been a real learning experience this year though. For some reason, I've been more on it and much more interested in setting up established curriculum. Every year in chemistry I have to think, okay, what am I doing now. A couple of weeks ago I purchased some small binders and I'm slowly working on getting things put into units and in them so I don't have to recreate the wheel every single year. I put the one together for the current unit yesterday. Over break I would like to get the ones done that will take me to fall break. Initially I was going to do all my classes, but honestly, my AP classes are such a hot mess they need more attention then binders can provide. I will be working on gettng them organized also, but I might do something different for them.

Last weekend I went on a trip to DC. It was really fun and quite eye-opening. It was a completely paid weekend and was put on by the Society for Science and the Public. They have a number of STEM competitions during the year for students and the students can win some serious money for college. We do nothing like that at my school and I really think some students would be interested and good at it. So I talked to the principal briefly and my department head and we are going to talk about it. It will take some work, but I think ultimately it will be worth it.

While there I got a chance to cruise around DC for a few hours. They took us on a night tour and then before our plane left we had some time to explore on our own. I have to transfer the pictures to Google Drive so I will post them later. Now, it's time to figure out what I'm doing this break. It has got to be productive.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Going in too many directions????

-
Image
I'm having trouble organizing my lessons. There are a number of technology things that go with my lessons. I am trying to use Planbookplus to create my lesson plans: Which is great but has its limitations. So I thought I would keep all of my files in One Note so I could have access anywhere. That will be good but it is almost like creating lesson plans all over again. Then I have a class blog where things need to be uploaded and offered to the kids. As a result of trying all three of these things, I have completed nothing. All of them are half done and we have just completed the 2nd full week of school. I tried an external hard drive and thought that would be a good way to do it. It has proven to be more of a nightmare than a help. Ugggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!! What to do???? How do I organize all the electronic information I have???? How do I keep track of things and not make myself crazy??????? So that is my struggle this weekend. I am going to complete one or tw...
Read more

And so it begins.........

-
Image
We teachers returned to school on July 24th and the students returned on August 2nd. That means we had the kids 2 days last week, Wednesday and Thursday. And it went well. This year I had to revamp my classroom management system and I think I have something that will work for me. Let me explain; My first 7 years of teaching was at private schools. Even though these private schools were at the lower financial end of the spectrum and most of our students were on financial aid, they were nevertheless private school students. Classroom management was not a huge priority as these students did their work and listened and were respectful and all that stuff. So my classroom management was a little lax because it didn't need to be really strict and tough. Well, now I'm at a public school. And in spite of the fact that this is a charter school and parents have to go out of their way to send their students here, it is still a public school. Last year I handled my classroom management l...
Read more

A stroke of genius?????

-
Image
The ongoing theme of this blog has been organization. I've been teaching for 9 years, but I haven't found a way to organize my stuff that works really, really well for me. Every single year, I struggle finding things I know I have or recreating the wheel because I've forgotten I have something. So I've been working really, really hard to get organized once and for all with a system that works for me. I know that I need to have things written/printed and at my fingertips in order to make good use of them. If I have to go online and look it up it won't happen. I've played around with binders and didn't really use them after I set them up. The last 2 years I did find great success with planners. I would divide the day up into my classes - 4 each day - and jot notes on what was to happen that day. That worked great!! As long as I planned ahead. Too many days I would get to school and the planner was blank. That left me scrambling to figure out what I'm t...
Read more