Tuesday, September 2, 2008

Adaptation is the Name of the Game


They say that teachers need to be ready to adapt. The all-knowing "they" is not kidding. In my first 3 weeks of school, my teaching has been turned totally upside down. There are tons of reasons for this, most of which I will not go in to. (I know, dangling modifier...) However, these are the 2 biggest reasons. After 3 years (plus 3 weeks of this year) of teaching 2 subjects to 2 or 3 classes, we've now been informed that since our district is underperforming, we are no longer allowed to trade classes with another teacher. We are all required to be self-contained. As stated, I did not find this out until last Friday. So now, for the first time in my life, I get to do the one thing I wanted to avoid at all costs, which is teaching all the subjects at once. Given that I was never interested in this, it is pretty daunting to me to take it on in a week's time. 

The other major change was that this morning when I walked into my room, I discovered that the laptop lab that had been stored in my room was now empty of all 29 laptops. My room had been broken into, and they were all stolen. This may not seem like a big deal to my teaching, but it is to me. If no one else was using the laptops, (which was about 4 out of 5 days a week), I made a point to use them. Even if I hadn't planned on it, I found a way to incorporate them in to whatever we were doing. Now, without the laptops there to use multiple times a week, I'm almost at a loss for how to teach the kids. The textbooks all seem outdated, irrelevant, too difficult, and worst of all, boring. I guess the infamous THEY says "what doesn't kill you makes you stronger." THEY sure better be right. I guess I'll know as I get settled into this new way of teaching...if I'm a good teacher yet. 

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