If you had any news for me today, sorry. I will not be accepting any new information; my brain is full.
I have just had 20 hours of training in adapting a business model for a classroom environment, and I haven't slept the last two nights trying to process all of it. If I was a hard drive, I'd be making that whirring sound that means something important is about to happen.
This whole time, I wasn't sure I was really "getting" it, but today when we started working on implementation steps with our principal, I had several people (including the trainer who came in from Salt Lake and her counterpart here at our school) tell me there was no way I wasn't going to make this happen.
Basically, we're looking at combining three classes--three teachers, three sets of state standards, and 90+ students--and using a business model to let students have choice and individual accountability to accomplish these standards. Our goal is to get out of the lecture-worksheet-test pattern of teaching and give students access to what they need when they need it. It really looks like a lot of work up front, and we put together a binder that's about seven inches thick and must weigh 20 pounds, but I think we have most of what we need.
I don't know how else to describe it without going into tons of details--we had three days to take it all in. But suffice to say I'll be doing as little thinking as possible for the next few hours. I'd take the weekend off, but there's a meeting tomorrow morning about possible scholarships for masters' degrees with the online university Tyson's going to, and then I have to get up to school to make up for the three days I haven't been in my room.
But for the next few hours, I'll be making homemade corned beef and vegetables and Irish soda bread instead of thinking about stuff.
4 comments:
For the next few minutes I'LL be making a microwavable Healthy Choice Panini and some frozen brussels sprouts.
Your and Elaine's culinary skills frighten me...
Hey... I love frozen brussels sprouts... just had some 2 days ago.
Wow, Erin... you sound ready to pop. What a lot of "to do" to do. Sounds interesting though. Are you planning on getting a master's?
Yes, I want some kind of computer degree. Walden (the online university where Tyson is working on his Ed.D.) apparently has something worked out with my district for tuition money--I'll go find out tomorrow morning. If that doesn't work out, another teacher I work with is starting in June at Tuoro, a brick-and-mortar school that meets from 8 to 5 every Sunday. They are one of the cheapest options (UNLV being the other, but it's program takes about 3 years).
But I may decide to do my National Board Certification, and since you have to take classes for certification modules, UNLV has a program where you do a little more coursework and can get about half of a C&I degree knocked out right there. That whole shebang will only cost about $10K, but I can't see that I'll be ready for all the videotaping and stuff for a while yet.
Anyway, it's really more thinking about the future than I can handle right now, and Tyson is in his "it's springtime and I want to move away very soon" phase, and I don't want to get started with something I can't afford to finish if we move anywhere. Tyson's Spring Fever is pretty exhausting to be around because he gets really restless, and by the time it's 115 outside and I'm ready to hire movers today and get the hell out of here, he's back in the Land of Pragmatism and insists we're staying here for 4 more years. Fall is really a better time for this kind of decision-making in our house.
Woman, if you want to move boxes and shit in June or July when it's a hundred ba-jillion degrees outside, be my guest.
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