Thursday, August 27, 2009

Less Than One Week

Counting down the days until I begin officially teaching for the fall, and boy, am I amped up for it.

I've finalized the majority of my activities and short stories that I want to use for my three freshmen English courses, and I've compiled almost 50 improvisational exercises, ice-breakers, and acting activities for my theatre course. All that remains is to find out exactly what condition my Writer's Workshop students are in and I can begin figuring out lessons for them. I've heard differing views on what these students will need the most work on, ranging from simple grammar and spelling to sixth grade English concepts and terminology. Others say they need help forming sentences and completing essays and my main priorities should be to get them better at writing in general, finding their errors and self-correcting them, and then move onto stories and readings with them. Being a first-year teacher, not knowing what to expect from this class, yet trying to plan out everything for this class, is becoming the most confusing and taxing aspect of the pre-planning for the school year. I think once we actually get this class' metaphorical hot air balloon off the ground, I'll be able to see where we need to point it, but right now I'm lost somewhere in the woods waiting to see what sort of supplies they're going to come with.

Other than that I've just completed three poems that I like very much. While they might not be of the highest quality, I sure will have a lot of time to complete and revise a lot of my work in the coming months. The environment in my classroom seems to be very conducive to create work and I bet that I'll find myself revising and writing after school some days--feeling inspired and energized from teaching and familiarizing myself with the wonders of literature. I felt that way while I was student teaching, but unlike during that time, I won't have a job I have to run to directly after school. That provides me with an additional 12-15 hours per week that I didn't have when I was student teaching. Seems promising and exciting.

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