Week Six: Sept. 22nd to Sept. 26th

I didn’t lock myself out of my classroom this week, and that’s always a good sign. I was anxious when I began the week to begin turning in my lesson plans on time to my mentor, Cecily. She asks for them to be in her office by 4:00pm each day and I have almost never met that goal. Last weekend, however, I came to the school and spent all day on Saturday trying to get myself more organized. After being here from 10am until 8pm that day and then even coming in for a couple of hours on Sunday, I had the next two lesson plans finished in advance and all my grading was done for the week.

The week was almost magical as a result of my hard work over the weekend. Because of my head start, I turned in every lesson plan on time. Each day, I went home at around 5:00pm. True, I was still exhausted when I got home, but I was able to take a nap and eat a real meal. I even went to see a movie with my husband at the dollar theater on a Wednesday night!

My kids did a lot of revising during the week and I had felt really nervous about the whole thing. I just was scared that no one would understand what it means to revise and the directions I would give might be confusing. Fortunately, I spoke with Cecily and a couple of other English teachers that I have become friends with and the kids seemed to actually understand the process and put things together alright. Now they are working on the final draft of their projects and I’m excited to see it. Maybe I’ll bring in some samples on Monday to show you how they’ve turned out… but only if it goes well!

I feel like I’m pretty ahead in my planning this week, although I’m having a hard time squeezing in everything that needs to get done… like reading Deathwatch, taking care of SRI testing, and getting them prepped to study commonly confused words. And as if I’m not crunched enough for time, this Friday most of my students will be at the theater watching an IMAX for Diamondback Day, and next week is going to be chaos with assemblies, dress-up days and the like. So here’s my question for the next internship meeting I suppose: how are we going to maintain order and productivity when our class is hyped up on sugar, crazy costumes, silly assemblies, etc? Teachers are invited to get involved in the dress-up days, but I almost don’t dare to because I’m worried that showing my goofy side will subtract from the “scary teacher” persona that I’m trying to maintain in order to keep control of my class.