Day 142: I’m going to admit this from the get-go: This is a whiny post. I had next-to-no teaching to do today. On Mondays, I teach twice. One of those two times was going to be spent at the back of my room with my principal, observing a teacher hoping to have my job next year.…
read more »Day 141: Ladies and gentlemen, it’s field trip time. Specifically, Friday was our annual Opportunity Day, when classes go to visit various workplaces. I took my students to Google, where a friend of mine from college who works as a software engineer was set to host us. The short version: It was awesome. My kids were…
read more »Day 140: Through TFA, I was able to have a scientist visit my class Thursday to speak about his job. He is an electrophysiologist with Amgen, so he spoke about taking cells and measuring their electric potential, so he knows when the drugs he’s testing are working. Specifically, he’s working on a drug to treat major…
read more »Day 139: First week back from a break, and I’m already a full day behind on these posts? Yeesh. Not a great sign. At this point, I actually can’t really remember what happened Wednesday. My kids either made their kingdoms posters, or did a gallery walk to learn from other groups’ posters. More memorable is the…
read more »This week, and next week, I have two Physical Science classes and my Physics class…my other three classes are Biology tutorials. State tests are approaching (May 5th is less than two weeks away!?!) and once again I find myself teaching Biology. I thought this summer was the end of it, but when our students are…
read more »Day 138: I hope visitors learn something when they come to my classroom. Selfishly, though, I kind of like having visitors because it helps me reflect on what’s going on. Case in point: 6D enters the room 2nd period. After the Do Now, I debrief very quickly, and then put kids into groups. Each group reads…
read more »Day 137: First day back, already up late. Oh well. I’m going to find the good in this. First, I was legitimately happy to see my kids. I put JP in a headlock and told him I’d missed him. I stook in front of my homeroom and told each kid, “Welcome back!” Coming into morning homeroom,…
read more »Hard to believe that a year ago I found out I had gotten into Teach for America. Actually, I think it was a year ago this week. I remember the criticism, the anger from my family that I would do this, the fear of not knowing what the classroom would hold. I would read critics…
read more »I have officially accepted my offer to join Teach For America in the South Louisiana region. It was a difficult decision, but I am so happy with the outcome and can’t wait to get to Baton Rouge in June. So why did I join TFA? That’s kind of a complicated question, but I’m going to…
read more »Day 136: Well, I know what I’ve been told You got to work to feed the soul But I can’t do this all on my own No I know, I’m no superman - Lazlo Bane, “Superman” Friday was about what you’d expect for the day before you go on break. Nothing crazy happened, but it…
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