Teaching
Teacher’s Edition Books: Not What We Thought
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Honestly, I think every student has a really skewed view of these books, myself included. They are absolutely worthless. I’m assuming most people are exactly like I was in high school; Teacher’s Editions were clearly a book full of endless information that granted the teacher insurmountable wisdom. We always wanted to know what sort of information was in there but our pitiful eyes were not worthy to gaze at the pages within this mighty tome. Not the case at all.
The teacher edition book is the exact same book with a couple extra footnotes detailing the particular section it is located in and some extra “resources” to enhance student achievement. I assumed that all teaching resources to assist teachers had to be at least somewhat beneficial, even if they couldn’t be used in all situations. Resources, according to the teacher edition are, to be put bluntly, extra crap for the kids to do. They don’t even try to offer differentiated methods of delivering the lesson. I usually count on the book to get me the core information, but I almost always come up with my own way to deliver it; whether it be in the form of group presentations, debates, or a game. The book wants you to fill out a worksheet, go through it, repeat. One great example of a resource that the teacher’s edition provides are the countless research projects that it recommends. It may just say on the bottom of the section, “Have your students do research to determine what life was really like in the 1880s”. That gives me nothing. I could go ahead and write these for anything in the world. “Find out more about the origin of lamps.” “Study why butterflies migrate”. Boom. Teacher resource.
More often than not, I turn to the internet for some ideas, or another teacher that has a really cool project. In the teaching community, a often used line in regards to materials is, “Beg, Borrow, and Steal”. This does happen a lot, though it is rarely a carbon copy, merely bouncing ideas off one another and collaborating on projects.
I’m hoping maybe the teacher’s edition books have changed. I’m working with a textbook that still has Bill Clinton as president. Maybe textbook companies realize “extra stuff to do” is not the way to go, but to actually include engaging activities to supplement the content.
Conditioning with the Soccer Team
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Formal practices are still not yet allowed because of Iowa High School Athletic Association rules, but the teams are still allowed to condition. Because Mike, the head coach, is still coaching bowling, I am in charge of running the conditioning practices on Mondays and Wednesdays. I love it. I’d love to say this isn’t a “I’m a man!” type moment, but it kind of is. Every day I have the kids do a ten minute warm up run. Today some kids decided ten minutes straight was too much, and started walking and going to get a drink. I carried on as if everything was normal and after ten minutes they did their normal stretches, and then waited for my next instructions. I coolly told them that not being able to run for ten minutes straight was unacceptable, so they’d have to try it again. They learned real fast that when I say run, that means run. Don’t think I’m too evil though, I run with them! I’m also trying another tactic to work them on conditioning, and maybe some mental acuity as well. Every time they get water, I follow it up with several leg lifts, where they have to hold their legs six inches above the ground and hold it for thirty seconds. So far they haven’t picked up on it yet, but I can’t wait for the Ah ah moment where they decide not to take a water break (unless they really need one) and don’t have to do leg lifts.
Tornado Drill and Rapping
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The school is legally obligated to do one tornado drill per semester, and yesterday was the lucky day. Luckily it was during advisory(homeroom), and my students in my advisory are pretty great. While marching through the hall making sure kids are safe, a student asked me a question. The student, not one of mine said, “How come you guys (the teachers) are standing and walking around and we have to be sitting against the wall?” Rather than try to come up with an answer, I agreed with him, and I sat my butt down.
After the drill a student in my advisory, who is working on his rap album with some other students, started practicing in class. He’s actually really good, I’ll see if I can figure out how to play it on this site. I felt it necessary to include some education in his raps. So we’re doing daily vocab that he includes in his raps. We’ve incorporated the words “chronologically”, “philosophically”, and “exponential” thus far. All the words were relatively new to my studentss, so it’s good that we’re learning new words. Probably can’t get him to rap about the civil war, or ancient Egypt, but it’s a good start.
A friend Darla, brought up that I should be giving more insight into education, and blog more about the hilarity that happens at school. I’m going to start to try and do that more often, but it is difficult to know what I should blog about and what I shouldn’t. This is a public blog, so I have to keep all things Kosher and PG-13. I have fixed my blog to the point where I don’t mind if even students are on the blog. I am going to start to make a more concerted effort to blog about my job, because I really do love it!
Nice Surprise in My Mailbox
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I have a mailbox at school, and while I normally love getting mail at home, this mail box just doesn’t have the same enjoyment level to it. The vast majority of things I get in the mailbox are order forms and catalogs from comapnies that want me to drop lots of money on classroom DVD sets about historical events. By the way these DVDs are absolutely crazy expensive, around three hundred dollars, because they are considered class sets. I think the assumption is the school would buy these but with the economy and money so tight they won’t, and I certainly will not be spending that much money. (more…)
Stoked to Coach
0Today was the first day that I began doing some actual duties related to the soccer team. The season does not start until March, but already some work is underway. Today Mike and I began looking for the coaches gear we wanted; we’re getting ourselves polos and shorts. I’ll see if I can barter my way to getting a good track jacket as well. So that’s pretty darn exciting. Also, preseason workouts start the week after finals week, which is next week, so already afterschool events are starting for me. Starting on the 21st we will be doing every Monday, Wednesday and Friday conditioning. Should be pretty simple for now. If they want to kick the ball around then we are going to tell them to go find a place somewhere else because we’re technically not allowed to coach until spring break time. Conditioning doesn’t count. And I have no problem staying late at school for an extra hour three days a week. I feel like my sleep time may begin to drop a bit though. We’ll have to see what happens in the following weeks; I have a general idea of how practices should be run, but I will be spending the majority of the time following Mike’s lead.