Teaching vs. Following instructions??

So, I finally have internet at my house and can post whenever I want (yea!). I've been attending induction seminars all week. Mostly it consisted of information stretched out over such a ridiculous amount of time that you wanted to stab yourself with your pen just so it would be over. Imagine something you could explain in 2 hours....then imagine it was stretched over 2 days and 260 people, with a 15 minute break every hour and a half. Some of it was useful, and most of it was well intentioned, but my nerves were wearing thin today.

And then came the first session that interested me all week: Curriculum and Pacing Guides. "Yea!" I thought, "They're actually going to tell me how to get started! I can do some useful work!" This is where you should insert the snide, jaded laughter of someone who knows better. I made the niave assumption that because they broke us up into our subject areas/grade levels for the first time, we'd be recieving information specific to our subjects....how stupid of me. They had a one page example from the English curriculum. And boy, was it depressing! It quite simply gives you the story you will read with your students, the dates you will read it, and all accompanying materials you will use to teach the story. If you finish the story before the date indicated, that's too bad, cause you're going to have to suck it up and teach the story until time runs out...then, and only then, can you move on to the next topic. It is REQUIRED that we follow these pacing guides (according to the people downtown who wrote them, my only hope is that this "requirement" isn't strictly followed on a building level). So why am I there? Why do I even need a college degree? I don't get to find interesting resources or activities to teach the material (I actually got in trouble for using the word "activities" today..."We don't teach activities, we teach information"....), I get to be a district robot and follow weekly instructions. We found out earlier in the week that we don't get to write our own tests (the district requires that we use their nine-weeks test and "recommends" that we use their unit tests) and that we are required to have "interactive word walls" that we use throughout the year to teach vocabulary. Alone, these things aren't that intimidating, but combined, I'm looking at walking into my classroom for the first time next week and I've already been told what to hang on my walls, what assessments I will give, and what lessons I will teach each week.

In addition, the lesson plan format they use is thoroughly confusing to me (and in my opinion, stupid, but I'm by no means an expert on the subject of lesson plans, so I'm trying to reserve that opinion until I've taught at least a few weeks :). There is no where on the lesson plan to include what they call "input", meaning the lesson plan basically looks like this: Set, Modeling, Guided Practice, Independent practice. The trainers in that session humored me (barely) when I first asked about where the actual instruction (i.e. lecture, reading, activity (big mistake in jargon with that word)) takes place, but when I was still confused later and the people at my table suggested I ask again....well, that was when I got in trouble for using the word "activity". This jargon B.S. is driving me crazy. Also, I'd like to enter into record that I did not ask a single question all week, so I didn't drive the older teachers crazy, but today just really got to me.

I've lost most of the joy and excitement I had about the school year. I feel like my classroom is being micromanaged and my opinions aren't respected. I know they have to hold teachers to some kind of standard, but are the adults in the classroom really that stupid that you have to schedule their days for them?? If so, why are they in front of a classroom?

I'm hoping once I get to the school next week things will look up. All my building personel have been really awesome so far. But today was definitely a bad, bad day.

Thoughts of "home"

Things I miss desperately:

Sunshine, the Pacific Ocean, chores that take all day, sitting around having a beer under palm trees at the end of a hard day's work (or at the end of a day of no work), and food that didn't come out of a window.

Last minute panic

I'm starting to get really worried about the upcoming school year. We keep having sessions on all the things we should do in our classrooms before school starts, but I haven't even seen mine yet! The school has my classroom ready....I just haven't had time to go down there. I'm going on Thursday, so maybe that will help a little. I can't do anything in there next week because I'll be at New Teacher Induction at JPS. I have 1 week before school to set everything up, and I think we have meetings at our school that week. I need to make posters and my timeline for my classroom. I need to start writing the first couple of weeks of lesson plans. I need to make forms for student of the week, detention, positive letters home to parents, etc. I need to finish filling out my JPS paperwork!! On top of all that, I need to get a new driver's license (or "driver license" as they call it here), bank account, unpack all my boxes of stuff, and figure out how to get around Jackson!! I'm sure it will be fine once I get down there, but I'm NOT down there! I'm stuck up here!

At least we don't have that much classwork this week. I'm hoping I can start doing some of this stuff up here, but I'm very disorganized because most of what I own is in boxes in Jackson. I'm hoping this weekend will be a magical whirl of organization. I'm also hoping that New Teacher Induction will leave me time at night to at least work on lesson plans, so that once I'm in my classroom I can just clean and organize. In case you haven't noticed I'm a little compulsive with the organization, and my life just isn't organized right now. My plastic page protectors are in Jackson :)

TEAM Video

I don't have a lot to say about my team video. Mostly it looked pretty good. I was pacing around the classroom a lot, but I think that was because I was nervous and also because it was Friday afternoon and two of my "students" were trying to sleep. I spent a lot of time running from the back of the classroom to the overhead to change tranparencies. I think it was just a wierd day for me...I don't think I pace every day. Otherwise, the video looked pretty good. We did a lot of fun activities relating to art and music during the industrial revolution. I need to get better recordings of the music, but I knew that. The artwork I put on the overhead was really hard to see. I may just have to buy a poster or something to use for that lesson. I didn't notice a lot of fidgeting like I had on my first video. Overall, I think it was a pretty good lesson.