Tales from the science classroom

 Heading back to school in an hour or so. First day of teacher in-service. My favorite part of the year (🤦‍♀️).  Hours and hours of sitting in boring meetings, listening to the same things over and over again, and teachers asking ridiculous questions. Yeah, that's my idea of a good time.  I am looking forward to getting back to school though. As I've said before, the last 18 months of school was such a giant cluster f*ck, it will be nice to get some semblance of normality.  I'm looking forward to revamping some procedures and generally staring all over. Kind of like the first time.  So I'll be out of the house all day for the first time in months. I'll have to interact with people all day for the first time in months. I'll need to be nice all day for the first time in months. I'll need to stay awake all day for the first time in months.  

  Last time I posted I had 19 days until I had to return. Today I have 1 day. I still have much of the to-do list that I posted last time to complete. I have done a few things. I've kind of been enjoying my last few days of freedom. I know that these things will get done when they get done. I also know that I'm the only one who needs them done, the students will roll with it.  I do want to set a goal of keeping this blog up this year. I do so much during the year that I then forget about, I would really like to keep track of this stuff. So I'm thinking of making a goal of blogging on Fridays. That will be the day I do my grading and it's a good time to sit and review the week as I plan for the next week. I'm even going to put that in my planner so that I remember to do it each week.  Other than that, I'm as ready as I will ever be to get started. I'm excited for the new year. In the summer of 2019 I took the modeling classes at ASU. In the fall of 2019 I sta...

  That's how I've been feeling this week. We return to school in 19 days and I don't feel ready. I still have so much I want to accomplish before I have to return. Thankfully I have 28 days until I actually have to teach anything, but still I'm not ready.  So I need to prioritize things and have a solid plan for action for these next couple of weeks. I just don't know what that should be. Let's look at what I need to do.  Get my orders ready so that I can get the things before school starts  Finish setting up my Google site  Make the video introduction for my Google site Get my Google Classrooms set up Finish my lessons for both classes Okay, now that I list it out, I realize that I don't have all that much to do. My units for both classes are all laid out, I just need to tweak the individual lessons. I should practice making videos anyway, so I could do that with my introduction video. My orders will take the longest since I have to go through each subject ...

 I'm really excited about the new school year. After the last year and a half, I'm really looking forward to the return to some sort of normal. I get to teach 2 classes that I'm passionate about, chemistry and biology, and it's just looking to be a great year. I was telling a fellow teacher the other day, it feels like my first year teaching but this time I know what I'm doing.  Having said all that, I can't help but think that I'm trying to do too much at one time. In fact, as I type this I realize that I am and that I need to just slow my role. Let's examine it a little bit. I am working on flipping my classes. Now this sounds like a rather daunting task but in honesty, when looking through the modeling curriculum I will be using for both of my classes, there is not a whole lot of lecturing that goes on so there really isn't that many videos that I will need to make. So it's really not a daunting as it first sounded. I am taking an online cours...