Open house

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 Last night was open house and that is always a long day. I'm truly grateful they hold it on Thursday so we have Friday off, but wow. Last night was also the first time we had it in the Fall semester. We have a lot of housing development in the area and we are trying to fill up our enrollment slots. Let's hope it was worth it. 

I did get my finals all copied while I had to stay and wait for the open house. Since I live 30 minutes away, it just didn't seem reasonable to drive home and then drive back. Of course now that I look at it I think next time I will do that. School ends at 3:30 and open house is at 7. That's a large chunk of time. I could drive home and be home by 4:30 (because I can't leave right at 3:30) and leave to come back around 6ish. That's not horrible. And it kind of beats sitting around school for 3.5 hours. Of course, if I come home there is a very real possibility that I won't go back, so that's something to consider. 

I did use my time productively though. I did get my finals all copied. I was glad for that because Monday is going to be crazy with people trying to get everything copied for finals. So at least that is done. I also started reading the book I posted about in last post. I got this book during my teacher education program - in 2009. I know that I read it because there were lots of sticky notes in it, but then I lost track of these strategies. I think at the beginning of a teaching career trying to do too much is just too exhausting. You spend the first year just trying to figure everything out and trying to do things like on the go formative assessments is just too much. At least I know that it was for me. And so it fell to the wayside and I just never went back. Well, 13 years later, I feel that I'm finally ready to go back in. I'm really looking forward to this break for the learning aspect. I feel that I'm always learning, but I feel like I'm finally ready to really dive in and make my classroom amazing. That sounds like I haven't been doing that for 13 years, and I have, it's just now I'm ready to take it to the next level. I was just checking Amazon orders because I ordered some Christmas gifts for Hubby and I see that I got her book specifically for the physical science classroom. Good, something else to read and absorb over break. 

I need to establish a specific time and place for lesson planning. Lesson planning has been a real struggle my entire teaching career but this year it has finally started to fall into place. Now I need to refine it. so I need to set aside a specific time and place that I can lesson plan and get it done every week. I have a course outline and most of my units have outlines, but things change week to week. We move too slow, or move too fast, or really struggle with some topic. So every week I need to view what we did the previous week and adjust the coming week. It shouldn't take more than 30ish minutes if I keep on top of things. I just need to get a routine around it. 

Actually, now that I think about it, I need to get a routine back in place for a few things. I've been really lax with CTY - I need to get better at that. I've also developed a habit of pushing back grading/planning until Sunday. While that has its benefits because it's football season, football doesn't last forever. Hubby goes to work every Friday morning to sterilize the building, I could use that time to do my grading/planning since I'm alone and it's quiet here. Also, getting it done at the beginning of the weekend frees up the rest of my weekend to relax and enjoy without those things hanging over my head. Yeah, I'm going to schedule a time to grade/plan every week and stick to it. I'm also going to set a time to check CTY every day and stick to it. Habits, routines, all are good to make sure things get done. 

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