Jan 07 2007
One More Day
I’m sitting here on Sunday morning with my cup of coffee bemoaning the fact that my winter vacation is almost over. I really have nothing to complain about – I’ve had 2 ½ weeks of time off and I don’t even have to go back until Tuesday!
I had a strange dream last night about school. I dreamt that I was walking down the hallway and a student asked if she could use a computer in my room to do an assignment – it wasn’t clear if it was before school or during a planning a planning period (which I do not have this year), but we walked into my classroom and there was someone else teaching in there! The tables were all messed up too – I have four rows of tables (along both side walls and a double row going down the center of my room) in my classroom, but in my dream only the center rows were there and they were way up close to the white board at the front of the room. The kids were all over the place – which is something I don’t usually allow, but in the dream the kids did all seem to be working on assignments from the mystery teacher. The mystery teacher welcomed me into my room and it was apparent that he was not there to take my place, but was an additional teacher. Since I DO teach all six periods in my room this year, it was a bit unsettling. I woke up with the dream still in my brain and it was one of those WOW moments. I guess I’m thinking about going back to work, and that I’m not ready.
I love my job – I really do! I have the best schedule this year for my pseudo-ADD brain (I get bored easily doing the same thing). This year my schedule is Reading, Computers, Reading, Computers, Reading, Computers. All the Reading classes are the same – 7th grade average readers, but each Computer class is different – 7th grade wheel, 8th grade all year and 6th grade wheel. The 6th and 7th grade classes do basically the same things, I just go a little slower with the 6th graders. Since I get bored seeing the same assignments over and over again (I do each 6th and 7th grade class four times each year!) I mix up the assignments while still teaching the same skills.
This post was intended to get me motivated to write actual lesson plans, rather than all the planning I’ve been doing in my head lately. I write my plans on a wiki, but I don’t use it in a collaborative way – though that would be a cool thing for teachers who do plan together! Also – I hate writing plans and I’ll admit the plans on the wiki are a bit sketchy – especially the computer ones. Our plans are not checked every week – we do hand them in at the end of the school year, but that’s just for accountability in case a student comes back and says they never learned something 
It’s a beautiful day here in South Florida – 78 degrees and sunny at 10:00am – so I’m not sure when I’ll actually get to my planning – and I do still have tomorrow too, but I know in my heart that I need to plan in order to teach well on Tuesday. I’m actually going to try to plan for the next three weeks. I have two 4-day weeks then a 2 ½ day week because I’m leaving to go the Florida Educational Technology Conference (FETC) halfway through the day on Wednesday January 24th. I will need to write sub plans for Thursday and Friday, too.
