New Title

You may have noticed that I have changed the title of my blog. I thought it was more reflective of what I plan to focus on for future posts. I do have lots of better things to do. Especially this summer. It's weird because it's the fourth a July and I'm already starting to feel the crunch for September. I think that's partly because the next two weeks are a little busy and I know I won't get much planning done. I've been focusing on GLO's and SLO's for now. Just trying to get a broad idea of what the classes are that I'm going to cover; looking for themes and general ideas that will connect with other courses. I've also done some work getting together ideas for ELA. This class has been a heavy focus for me because it is going to make up 25% of my teaching time. I'm beginning to think that ELA is really just about experiencing different media, writing about what we think in an intelligent way and working together. A little simplistic maybe, but a start. I think ELA will end up being the easiest class because......

Math, Science and Social Studies will all be split classes. Math shouldn't be that bad because I have a pretty good background in that. But Sc and SS....wow. It's going to take a lot of planning
 ( a weakness of mine) because I really want to give my students a chance to go outside and experience life, especially in Science. But, I have the sinking feeling that in order to keep my head above water (see how I mixed my metaphors there?) I'm going to have to keep the work plain and simple and boring. ugh, that's so depressing.
Ok, that's it, time to get supper ready. If you have any words of wisdome for new teachers, please let me know. Here's what I have so far.
1. You can't cover everything
2. Don't get into a power struffle with a student. It's a lose/lose situation.
cheers.