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(Mostly) Random Thoughts
The difference between the first-year and the second-year teacher is simple. The second-year teacher is working a lot more. Last year, by this time, I had already read three books and four plays since the start of school. This year, I’ve watched about 12 episodes of The Office. I’m putting in more hours.
But I’m also much less stressed. I have a lesson plan for tomorrow that will work. My quiz is written for Friday, so I know that I won’t get any “You never taught us this…” sort of comments. And I know that I–not my students–will be in charge of the classroom. Any first-years out there, know this: It gets better.
But it’s still a lot of work. Last fall, I lesson planned while watching football in my room. In the spring, I started going to coffeeshops to…
For some reason, Baltimore City schools close on Election Days. Today is the primary for the mayoral election. Though this break is nice for teachers, I think we should take it away. Maybe then the people of Baltimore would see what really goes on inside in the schools. Maybe then there would be real change.
read more »Being a second year teacher is beyond awesome. I walked into school the first day knowing what I wanted my students to do. That’s something I didn’t have last year even by the end of the year. Harry Wong is right: The first two weeks are critical. Overall, things are going well. I have two…
read more »Tonight, Clay Buchholz became the first pitcher younger than me to throw a no-hitter.
read more »So I found out something very exciting today: 67% of my students passed their HSAs. That’s a little higher than the school average. More importantly, of the kids I had all year, 88% passed the test. So I met my Big Goal after all. Pretty good news on a day where my main activity has…
read more »Well, my first day was awesome because I had the presence of mind to hold lunch detention. Assorted other things from today (hopefully I’ll be able to process better this weekend): First block wasn’t quite as crazy as I thought it was going to be. Only one of my students left, and I only got…
read more »School starts tomorrow. Year 2. I sat around with my roommates trying to remember what we did last year. None of us remembered the calm before the storm. So for the record: Today I went to school, finished up my room, made copies, went to a coffeehouse for a couple hours, ate dinner, and drank…
read more »Why does our professional development suck so much? I’ve been in DC all week attending a PD event so that I can teach entrepreneurship next year. Let me give you two examples of what’s happened there: 1) We were put into pairs. One person was to be the car, the other the driver. The car…
read more »I will be teaching an economics/entrepreneurship course in the fall. And I’m asking for/offering help to anyone who reads this. It seems like I can do pretty much whatever I want in this course. I have some excellent curricular materials from organizations like the National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship (NFTE) and the National Council on…
read more »I got back late last night from New York, where I went to a conference held by the National Council on Economic Education. It was amazing. I got a lot of great activities for my classroom, and I’m even starting to get excited about going back to school. Plus it was in New York. And…
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