Today was my first day “back” from parental leave. Got an email from an admin, apparently they sent a survey out to students asking them who they missed since the school closures started. I would have thought with me being gone since January I’d be mostly out of sight out of mind for 15 year olds dealing with a pandemic and trying to adjust to online learning. But 6 or 7 kids mentioned missing me and my class and said some really nice things. Getting that type of feedback is always the best.
only if you graduated within the last 4 years I think. I graduated in spring 2015 (I think?) and they attempted to pilot it with us before giving up because they didn’t have all the necessary direction on it yet
This fall I need to get like 70 hours of field experience and then next spring I am supposed to student teach. It's gonna rule when the schools stay closed and I can't get my license
Our profession is going to look drastically different...maybe forever? The talk has been no more than 12 kids in a class at a time. Whether that means a staggered schedule or every other day classes like college I don't know. We're in for some weird stuff coming up, whenever it is that school is opening.
that's what makes it great to be a teacher - happy for you! in the past 24 hours i've received 130+ 30 second videos from seniors delivering personal thank you's to teachers. every single senior submitted at least one, and every since faculty member was recognized. granted, now i'm stuck editing a massive hour long video, but this is the type of thing that makes it all worthwhile.
I should be accruing my BCBA hours in the fall, but god knows how that’s going to work now. And congrats to all edTPA passers and good luck to all submitters! Whether you pass or don’t, remember that it’s meaningless and expensive and in no way, shape, or form assesses your true knowledge as an educator!!
Any AP Government teachers here? I'm taking the training for it this summer and am(probably) going to be teaching it next year. Trying to get an early jump on any resources possible now
look on Facebook, there’s probably an amazing group. The one for AP world is just a wealth of resources and knowledge. Also, you should get a ton of stuff through your APSI. I received a thumb drive of stuff both times a went. Are you doing a local one? In a normal year I’d say do the one at Lewes but since everything’s online it takes away from the attraction.
Yeah already been hunting for a good FB group. Seems like the “main” one that supposedly has a lot of good resources is super locked down. I can’t join that one until I have my “official credentials” so to speak. yep the Lewes one was the one I was supposed to attend but it is going virtual this summer for obvious reasons. I’m hoping they still send us the stuff they would normally give us. I’m bummed about it, would have been a great week at the beach heh
they’ll send it, that’s the entire reason you pay the money! And yeah, they are def locked down but totally worth it.
Our department did our schedule build for next year today. These are almost never final but a very good chance mine is since 1. No one ever wants to teach the 9th graders so the fact that I volunteer to do it means it's probably mine and 2. I'm the only one who wants to do AP Government lol So looks like I'm gonna have AP Government, 2 Honors level Civics/Economics, and 3 lower level Civics/Economics, one with a co-teacher. That last part will be the most likely part to change, they might stick me with more co-taught classes at the lower levels. But I'm excited. There were enough World and US history classes this year, as well as a newer class that is half Psych/half Sociology, that I could have maybe pushed for getting a couple of those and taking on the extra preps but....with being new to AP Gov, I'm playing it safe.
Definitely smart to play it safe being new to AP. When I was doing one AP world and 4 regular level world classes, the AP class took more time to plan and grade than the other four combined. six classes with three preps though? That’s wild. Put your union to work!
Social studies departments especially here are always low on the totem poll. So we always function with probably 1 less teacher than we should in our department haha. Tbh I’m lucky for just having 5 classes that are the same subject tbh. Another teacher in my department is gonna have AP US, Honors World, Lower level World, and lower level US. He asked for it but still lol. TBH, my honors and college prep (that’s what we call the lower level class below honors) Civics/Econ classes aren’t very different in terms of what we cover. I make the honors kids do a little more work in certain units and their tests are harder, but that’s the biggest difference. I also make the honors kids take their own notes from scratch, while I give my CP level kids fill in the blank/guided notes. Otherwise they wouldn’t take any notes at all, and I know most of them don’t look at the slide presentations posted on schoology lol. So the separate preps for those two isn’t too bad, I just have to find some extension activities here and there for my Honors kids at times. And I basically have the class built already (thanks mostly to my wife who was teaching it first lmao) so I can kind of channel my prep energy into AP Gov this year. I need to make some tweaks to my Econ units, and was going to do that this year but a combo of parental leave and then covid hitting in the middle of that derailed those plans.
i love that every one was plural except "male elementary school teacher" don't know if that was intentional, but that's basically how it as at our school
I'm supposed to be student teaching this year and I have no idea what that's going to look like. I am starting to wonder if I will even get the opportunity considering schools are probably going to be closed