You’d think that a teacher who has spent the majority of his career changing schools more often that a teenage boy changes his socks wouldn’t have developed many traditions.
But I, inadvertently, have developed at least one.
Right now my keyboarding classes are in room 208 and my math classes in 203, even though the rest of the math teachers are on the 3rd floor. The principal did this to keep my classes close, since I go back and forth between the two at least 6 times a day.
Well, now we’ve thrown in room 314, which is where the announcements studio I’ve been talking about is. I found out that the teacher in room 316, right next to the studio, is pregnant and not coming back next year. I figured it would be a lot easier to run the announcements and my classroom if they were right next door to each other, so I asked the principal if I could move up there.
It became official today, my math classes will be in room 316 next year.
Now I can honestly say that I never stay in my first room at any school for more than one year. Tradition.
- First school – room 328 first year, 306 the next 7.
- Second school – room 32 for a year, 33 for the remaining 3 years.
- Third school – room 121, I was only there for one year.
- Room 225 for a year, 110 the next 3.
- Started out in B7, moved to A3 for the second (and last) year.
- Right now I’m in 203, next year I’ll be in 316.
Tradition!
7 comments:
Let's see; I've been in room 20, room 11, room 15, room 25, relo 7, back to room 25, room 31, relo 3, and now relo 2. Once they tried to move me from room 25 into room 24 for no particular reason. And this year, they tried to move me again, for no particular reason. I balked. I hate moving rooms.
Glad your move is one you requested.
Hey, did you ever use my book for your typing class?
It's all set up on Canvas. They are going to re-type it on Thurdsday, when I'm at the district learning all about the new math e-book textbook we're going to use next year.
Oh, and the girl that keeps calling me "Papsi" is already asking about the second book.
Don't get me started on how all math teachers are now going to be forced to teach exactly the same way in synch with each other, like robots! Ugh. While there's nothing wrong with using an online text, I find many things wrong with forcing every math teacher to teach alike!
Glad you're using my book! Please tell the girl to keep checking amazon or Frost's books, as we'll have the book out this summer. Maybe I'll remember to send you a bookmark for her. (I hope.)
To me, for math it actually makes sense to have a nation-wide common core*, teaching the same concepts at relatively the same time. It's hard to have a kid come into my class mid-way missing some of the things I assume my students already know. And, if what I've heard about the e-book is correct, that's going to be good too. Each student is supposed to get a consumable work-book, and to be honest, about all I ever used in the textbook were the problems for homework. So far, the most we've been reigned in is with a monthly curriculum map, which very few math teachers I know follow to the letter. It would be ridiculous (but not unheard of) to expect any teacher to follow a day-to-day map. No two classes grasp concepts at the exact same speed, that kind of constraint would be a disservice to our students. (Sorry, can't go over that again, got three more things we have to cover today.)
I know she would love a bookmark, and since she's an 8th grader she'll be back in the fall, I'll remind her then too.
*See next comment
*Ironically, although the State of Utah has adopted the Common Core Initiative for math that 48 U.S. states are going to be using, we're not doing it the same way.
Although the other 47 states are still differentiating Pre-Algebra, Algebra I, Geometry, Algebra II and Trigonometry from each other, we are blending them all together and teaching some the concepts from all of them throughout the secondary math courses. I actually like this idea, but it kind of defeats the purpose of a common core. I may not be an English teacher, but it's seems that common and different are somewhat opposites. But you didn't hear that here, I already got slapped down by the district math guy for pointing that out when we first started talking about the Common Core.
I have no problem with the common core as it relates to English, as the concepts were already pretty much what I was teaching anyway. (I just had to add in teaching citations.)
But it does bother me when we're told that we'll all use the same textbook and teach the same way. (This is bothering the math dept at our school, too. One of your old buddies believes that the dist. super intends to phase out math teachers and replace them with paraprofessionals who just follow the outline. The dept head believes the dist super is trying to force out all older teachers and replace them with less-experienced, cheaper ones who will follow his command. All the others are just grumpy about the forced new text and the continuation of way too much testing.)
The English dept in the district was assigned new grammar and lit texts last year. I tried using them, but the grammar books weigh so much and have so many useless pics and distractions that the kids hated them and begged for the old books back. The lit text books had nothing good in them; every selection was mediocre (except for Romeo and Juliet in the 9th grade text). I never used any of the lit books.
We we expanded to 3 seventh-grade teams this year, the reading-teacher-turned-English-teacher whined that she had no textbooks at all. I happily had every last one of my 7th grade textbooks assigned to her and went back to using the old Warriner's grammar books and teaching poetry off photocopies.
My 9th grade textbooks have not yet even been opened, as I have Warriner's for them in grammar, and two much better sets of lit books already on the shelves. Why use poor texts when I still have good texts?
Unlike you, I was not forced to hand over my old textbooks, so I can still use them.
Being told how to teach bugs the crap out of me. Fortunately for me, the district English dept is not forcing the issue quite as much as the district math is.
Basically, our school English dept head's theory for the last two years has been: ignore what the district says and just teach English. Our CRT scores have gone WAY up. This year, 2/3 of the school passed the language CRTs. Only 2 of my sevvies did not pass, and all my 9th graders passed. Obviously, we're doing something right already -- without following district commands.
I guess it just bugs me that people who haven't been in a classroom in years think they know better than we do how we should handle our own classes. They forget that there's more than one way to skin a cat.
Glad it won't be stressing you out too much.
Sorry for the rant.
No problem with the rant. Our math department adopted the same attitude that your English department did. We didn't even do the YPP testing, although we did do the Acuity testing.
I couldn't agree more with you on the testing issue. Last year we calculated that the math department lost 16% of our instruction time to mandated testing (YPP, Acuity and the CRTs). We didn't calculate the time the English department gave up to testing, but with all the reading tests added, we were afraid to even try.
The theory that more testing = more information becomes moot when we give up so much instruction time that we don't have the time to use that information. I think we've passed that threshold already.
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