Dude... Teacher Workdays Rock!!!

I think I’m finally beginning to feel like – dare I say it – a real teacher. We just had our first official Teacher Workday the other day, and it was so relaxing, so peaceful to be at school and not have kids. Loved it. Looooovvved it. Got so much work done. I designed my new class tracker for the upcoming Quarter, cleaned, filed, did inventory, and a whole host of other things… all before noon. Wow. Yeah. I really like Teacher Workdays. J

It’s kinda scary to think that a whole Quarter has gone by already. We’ll begin the second one on Monday, which reminds me that we’re heading swiftly toward the half-way point of the school year. It was so cool to be able to track the kids’ progress these last few months, and see them get excited as they color in their part of the class chart to show how much they’ve grown on a particular objective or skill. I’m really getting attached to these kids. They make my day.

I have so many plans for this next quarter. So many things I’d like to try with them and teach them how to do. Question is… how to find time to do all this AND plan AND manage to have some semblance of a life outside of work with my family… there are just not enough hours in a day!

So this quarter, I’m thinking hard about starting an online Book Review page for the kids on our class website. They can do one a week in order to earn our class currency. I’m also looking into establishing a class blog, where the kids can start their own (on our secure webpage) and blog about things that interest them. I’m really trying to find interesting ways to incorporate technology into the classroom, and I figure these two would be a great start in that direction.

We’ll see how it goes!