I've done so much thinking and pondering this week, my brain should be a little frazzled. It's not - it's still running in three different directions.
Yesterday I sat in a coffee shop planning out the rest of the year. There are only eight more weeks left, after subtracting various testing days and crossing the last week of school. Eight weeks... two months... to cram in what still needs to be taught (and figure out what exactly that is??), to move my students into positive path for the upcoming year. A lot of reflection is going on and some waking up in the middle of the night worrying that I haven't done enough...
I've also been evaluating options for next year. Should I take the day off to interview for a teaching job in NYC? I miss the city and my friends horribly... (thank goodness for cheap cell phone packages! My phone bills would be enormous without them). For that matter, do I even have an interview? I keep getting these notices from the NYCDOE asking me to sign up for something, and when I do, receive an email saying we'll contact you a week prior, only to receive nothing so far... Do I just show up anyways? While I'm thinking about that, there are several practical issues that would make it difficult to live in the city. Where to live? What do I do with my car and how do I move my furniture? Most importantly, would I even be happy teaching in the City? Having to put up with stupid rules invented just to make teachers go mad, crazy students and few discipline options may just be the breaking point for me.
I have a fairly good thing going where I am. I'm pretty sure my "horrible bitch who makes you work like a fiend" reputation already has next year's freshman class quaking in their Wal-Mart trainers. I would plan to trade on it as much as I can. Next year, I'll actually know what I'm doing and have a textbook with integrated vocabulary with a whole host of other goodies. Plus, I may have a perfect house: cute, small with 7.5 acres and separate studio/workshop. Ok, the cranberry bogs next door are a bit worrisome - images of clouds of mosquitoes following me around all summer keep reappearing... as well as the phrase "needs some TLC." Needs TLC is akin to the announcement of a police action on the subway - it could mean anything from a bit of paint to new foundation.
Add into this mix the thousand pages of information process about teaching, education, reading, tracking vs. heterogenous classrooms, and even I begin to realize that I'm on overload. Maybe I should have just gone to Vegas for the week.
Yesterday I sat in a coffee shop planning out the rest of the year. There are only eight more weeks left, after subtracting various testing days and crossing the last week of school. Eight weeks... two months... to cram in what still needs to be taught (and figure out what exactly that is??), to move my students into positive path for the upcoming year. A lot of reflection is going on and some waking up in the middle of the night worrying that I haven't done enough...
I've also been evaluating options for next year. Should I take the day off to interview for a teaching job in NYC? I miss the city and my friends horribly... (thank goodness for cheap cell phone packages! My phone bills would be enormous without them). For that matter, do I even have an interview? I keep getting these notices from the NYCDOE asking me to sign up for something, and when I do, receive an email saying we'll contact you a week prior, only to receive nothing so far... Do I just show up anyways? While I'm thinking about that, there are several practical issues that would make it difficult to live in the city. Where to live? What do I do with my car and how do I move my furniture? Most importantly, would I even be happy teaching in the City? Having to put up with stupid rules invented just to make teachers go mad, crazy students and few discipline options may just be the breaking point for me.
I have a fairly good thing going where I am. I'm pretty sure my "horrible bitch who makes you work like a fiend" reputation already has next year's freshman class quaking in their Wal-Mart trainers. I would plan to trade on it as much as I can. Next year, I'll actually know what I'm doing and have a textbook with integrated vocabulary with a whole host of other goodies. Plus, I may have a perfect house: cute, small with 7.5 acres and separate studio/workshop. Ok, the cranberry bogs next door are a bit worrisome - images of clouds of mosquitoes following me around all summer keep reappearing... as well as the phrase "needs some TLC." Needs TLC is akin to the announcement of a police action on the subway - it could mean anything from a bit of paint to new foundation.
Add into this mix the thousand pages of information process about teaching, education, reading, tracking vs. heterogenous classrooms, and even I begin to realize that I'm on overload. Maybe I should have just gone to Vegas for the week.
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