Notebooks are not easy

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 Since we got back from winter break, I've been really focusing on the notebooks. I just have to say they are not easy. They take almost as much prep as a lesson does. Deciding what questions to ask in the big ideas and summary tables. Figuring out the template for the notes and everything else. Ugh!!!  It is a lot of work. I'm working on lectures for both biology and chemistry for tomorrow and I am just drawing a blank on how the notes should be taken. It is a pain in the butt. 

I don't know if I mentioned this before but they have shuffled some of my classes and they are all much better now. The class that was giving me such a hard time is actually now a pretty good class. Some students were moved to other classes and things are much calmer now. It's not that any of them are bad kids, though some I wouldn't trust as far as I could throw them, it's just that when they all get together the group mentality takes over and it becomes chaos. 

I really don't have much more to say. One of our teachers left over winter break, very abruptly and with no warning, supposedly because she was going to retire. Well last week I looked her up on FB for something and discovered that not only had she unfriended me and everyone at school, she did not retire but is working in Mesa at a charter school there. If a place is not working out for you, that's fine. But to leave in the middle of the year with a lie. Yeah, that's bad karma right there. Well the school she's at is driven to 'excel' and they will do whatever it takes to make it look like they are amazing. They claim a 100% graduation rate but they do that by pulling in a lot of freshmen and then weeding them out before senior year. Their freshmen class my be l50 and their senior classes are like 10. That's how you play the numbers. Anyway, I was never super fond of her anyway, she was weird. So her being gone is actually a good thing. 

Then there is the science department. Our middle school science teacher is not staying. He is only still here because he agreed to stay until we found a replacement. So they are trying to find that but finding science teachers is hard. 

Okay, my tree has grown, I'm outta here. 

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