First week of teaching

The first three days of the school year were a challenge for me on many different fronts. First, I had just traveled from seeing my family after the flooding in Baton Rouge. It was comforting to see that they are all doing well and have made great progress on their recovery. However, the trade off was not being able to spend the time that I wanted to planning out the ideally the year, but practically the first week. I have previously taught and know that one of the issues that I struggle with is planning out lessons. I am inefficient in the process and spend a great amount of time doing it. I also know that I have a history of revising my lessons, taking up even more time. I hope that I can learn from this process over time become more efficient at identifying meaningful objectives for lessons, ways to assess them, and the learning activities that best bridge the two.

On the other hand, the time that I have spent in the classroom with the students has been fun. The group that I have the opportunity to teach has done a great job taking risks in the classroom, staying focused, respectful of the material, and working with each other. I have also always found that it is difficult to plan out too much of the class before I meet the students. For some reason I am unfocused and plan out too much. This week helped me to get to know that the students are here for their first high school experience in the classes that I am teaching. It is my job to make sure that they have a good one. I have a much more practical vision of what the class needs to look like and hopefully that will help with my planning problem.