8 Days Left

Goal of the Week:

Get the grades done in advance. They need to go in by Tuesday. Also, I need to figure out which kids will be failing due to absences and make a list of them to cover myself in the event that the powers that be don't like how many kids I'm failing.

Thought of the Day: 8 days left...

And you thought I had stopped updating.

As it turns out, my adviser for graduate school beat me to the punch. I am now on a list of people for my program that are under "academic probation." That means that the *they* powers of my transition to teaching program have decided that I haven't made enough progress as a teacher and they're thinking about throwing me out. So, for the past month I've had to turn in my lesson plans by no later than 6pm on Sunday and do little projects that show I'm growing as a teacher.

For whatever reason, it's been working. I was hesitant at first, but my classrooms are now much more controllable than they were before. Also, I'm having more fun teaching.

Don't get me wrong - things aren't perfect. I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth for this one. I just want to be able to do my job and do it well. I just wish things hadn't been so stressful this year. I really do feel like a first year teacher. If every year starts out with the sort of chaos that this year did, then I'm going to hate teaching. I don't want to go through 3 to 4 months of hell just to get to the happy period the next semester.

Actually, when I think about it, my classes sucked last year until about the end of February. Once I started having a set schedule for the day and a pattern to my classes, the kids settled down. They really do like patterns and schedules. Routine, my hopes fall on thee.

Here's to hoping the next few days are cake.