Once again, it's a non-school day and it's my day to post. It's Sunday and any other Sunday would find me going to church, then cleaning the house and doing laundry while prepping for my school week ahead. However, this Sunday is slightly different. My cousin got married last night just south of New York City (we live in the farthest tip of Maryland; about an hour south of Washington D.C) and my son had a 9 am coaches meeting near Gaithersburg, Maryland. So this morning, I find myself thankful for free wifi at a Courtyard by Marriott so I can work on my school work while my son is at his meeting.
My son tore his ACL in the home opening football game on September 9th. It was his senior season. This devastating injury ended his playing season, but thanks to the coaches, one particularly, they kept him involved in the team as a student coach. Now, he has earned a spot as the first ever student coach for the Maryland Crab Bowl, the all-star senior showcase football game for the state of Maryland. So while traveling and arriving to the hotel at 1:30 am was a bit exhausting after the most beautiful wedding and fabulous reception, you can see that it was pretty mandatory that we do this for him.
So while he is at his meeting, I am chipping away at my school work. We had an early dismissal on Friday and as usual, I over planned. So I spent a chunk of time re-organizing my long range plans to adjust accordingly. For the first time in years, I have been able to make a long range plan by sitting down and planning out roughly 8 to 10 weeks of activities. I've never been able to do this for a variety of reasons, mostly because I keep moving grade levels or schools/school districts (since my husband is a US Marine) or the curriculum changes. However, I am in my 4th year of doing the same curriculum, so I'm fairly confident in where I am leading the students with the materials I have gathered over the years.
I still am always on the lookout for new ideas and better tasks, but rather than thinking of fitting them in, I look now at what the new can replace in my long range plans. Does it do a better job at getting the students to understand the concepts that I want them to learn? If the answer is yes, then I archive (not scrap, but archive) the previous activity. I tend to keep all of my previous activities, just in case I have a set of students that the older activity might fit better with.
Once I have finished re-organizing my long range plans, I update my website so the students can see the daily agenda and get an idea of what we are doing along with videos of our lessons once we complete them.
Next I move on to investigate a new resource called Goalbook. I spend quite a bit of time checking out this resource. It has classroom ready activities that are rich and rigorous, as well as with modified versions.... I decided that I needed to set a timer so that I don't get sucked into sitting here for hours on this one resource. I set my timer for 45 minutes and allow myself to check out what I can and bookmark it to return for later.
Time to get my son from his meeting and drive home.
Arrive home 2.5 hours later. Quickly shower and help set up for a end of the season football banquet.
It's already 4 pm, and folks are now starting to arrive. The nice thing about being a teacher, is that many of the students at the football and cheer banquet have passed through my classroom door as a middle schooler. Many of them are now in their senior year and it's nice to catch up with them to hear about what they are hoping for once they officially graduate. I am so proud of this group's achievements.
By 7:30 the banquet is over, but since my husband is the president of the Quarterback Club, I stay and help clean up the fire hall. Many hands make light work, and well, I guess you could count the four people that are here as 'many'. It would be nice to see some other volunteers, though....
By 9 pm we're finally home. I'm exhausted. This has been a long weekend! I fire up my computer one more time, because I want to make sure I have my plans for tomorrow straight in my head before heading off to bed. Another 45 minutes later, I know that what I am doing tomorrow will be engaging and fun for the students and I am officially done for the day!!
