In the first four weeks of the school I have been doing anything but teaching.  This cycle I am waiting for the final group of late admits to enroll in our school so I have not been teaching any regular classes, except for a class that has only 10 students which will soon be merged with the new admits.  Even my teaching hasn’t felt like real teaching.  It all comes to an end this Wednesday when I start my first regular day of classes here.  I’ve been feeling an itch to return back to the classroom since the beginning of the year, but it’s definitely gotten stronger in the last day or so.  I feel like the retired teachers coming back to visit in the fall who is way more excited to talk about what is going on with the kids than that new RV they bought.

What I’m teaching this week

So I have a hefty task for our this first week, let alone the next six.  Students need to learn about our portfolio based curriculum and get adjusted to approaching math in a different way than their old school.  Material needs to be crazy differentiated, as some students will transfer here expecting calculus, others were hoping to get through a 2nd run at geometry, and all of them are going to be in my class.  The biggest task to figure out for this week is how to explain to kids that they need to complete an appropriate portfolio project, based on their ability, by the end of the cycle.  New students who aren’t used to having a non-test based math class are going to go through some growing pains, and adjustment.  Let’s hope they get on board quickly (by ‘on board’ I mean viewing math as something that have ownership of, not merely a set of things to memorize before regurgitating it on an assessment later).  Let’s see how this goes…

What I’m blogging this week

I’ll probably blog about the diagnostic that I use with my new class and what I think the results of the diagnostic tell me about my plans for this cycle.  After my conversation with Michael Pershan, I want to look into reflective practices that can inform my blogging, and other people’s blogging as well, so I will see what I can find about that. Given the uptick in workload, that will probably be all I can have time to write

What I’m thinking this week

This week I’m wondering if someone will take the time to notice that I posted a full 6 days after it says I did.  Better late than never, right?