thoughts

I’ve decided there is nothing worse than starting your teaching halfway through the school year. Besides already feeling a bit self-conscious about being the pseudo-teacher, there’s the added bonus of figuring out names and routines that are already well established and that everyone else but you seems to know, including the students.

I tried having the students work in pairs yesterday, and it was as if a bomb had been dropped or something just as mind-shattering. There were some students that thrived working one-on-one with another person, others couldn’t seem to get past the fact that their seats had moved and they had to actually talk to another person. In several cases it was those I least expected that seemed to gain the most from this interaction.

Today, I had the students pick careers out of a hat, and then reflect on what it would be like to have this job for the rest of their lives and what they would think about having someone else make that decision for them. We just finished reading Chapter 8 of The Giver and this is when Jonas and the other twelves are given their assignment (job) in the community. It will be interesting to read what they write. The funniest part was hearing kids in the hallway talking to each other about what job they had gotten, as if it was real, and there lives were either ruined or set. You know a lesson has made an impression when every period after period 1 walks in asking if they get to do it too.