Even if you are on the right track, you will get run over if you just sit there.---Will Rogers
I love snow days. Seriously, I love them. In fact, I think I love them even more now than when I was a student. Why? Because the past two days saved my butt from falling dangerously behind on life.
After sleeping in, I have used the past two days to get ahead on planning. I've used it to clean up my apartment, which was really getting quite embarrassing. Grading papers? Well... that's probably the one thing I didn't get to do as much of as I would have liked. I think eventually, I will loathe the idea of them after I've been teaching for a few years and have everything planned out more than the night before. Now I just need to keep utilizing the fact that I'm ahead of the game.
I texted my carpool friend to let her know about Snow Day #2 and her response was "Oh my gosh! I have to get online and reserve the computer lab for a different day!" I suppose I will feel the same way someday if the situation arises again.
On a happy note, a student told me that I'm "getting better at this whole teaching thing." Well, gee thanks. It must have been after I showed an entire episode of The Office in order to teach ethos, pathos, and logos that changed his mind about me. Well, Friday I'm using Lupe Fiasco in my lesson plan. I hope I can keep this up. Maybe one day they will tell me I'm cool...
The snow days this week threw my rigid schedule clear out of whack.
ReplyDeleteThe kids loved it, though. It was everyone's favorite excuse for not having their work done.
One of the things I really admire about your lesson plans is your ability to pull all sorts of interesting texts into them. When I look at my own, even though I'm teaching writing right now, I notice an absence of those things. I'll definitely be picking your brain over the next little while for ideas. :)
Reading this post reminds me of the realization I came to after reading “Transcending Egos.” In my entire first week of student teaching I felt as though I was running a marathon. I would be disappointed that the students seemed to want to talk to each other more than they listened to me. I would also be disappointed if a class didn’t get as far in a lesson as I had originally planned. I like how you mention that “teaching is often so much bigger than yourself.” Reading your post and “Transcending Egos” made me realize that we can’t control the layout of the land. We are going to have peaks and valleys. However, I have learned that this is one of the aspects of teaching that I appreciate the most. I get to experience something different every day.
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